ETEC 565 HJD e-portfolio

My Moodle Experience or

The Ten Top Lessons Learned from Moodling Around

 

When I first began the Moodle course design, my familiarity with the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS) was limited. I had heard about Moodle but had no concept of the affordances of the system or any experience in the Moodle environment. That has changed dramatically over the course of the past three months.

 

Before I delve into my reflections of my Moodle course development experience, here are the top ten lessons I have learned from ‘moodling around’ in Moodle.

1. Build it first: Creating course content outside of the LMS has dramatically changed the design of the course, by making each teaching or content section work as a stand-alone unit. Breaking the content into smaller, more manageable parts can provide increased user control not only for the course designer, but also for the course instructor and the end user, the student.
2. Work Flow: Taking time to plan and layout the full course content into the smaller units and chunks helps with consistency in design, flow of information and scaffolding of task elements, both for the instructor and the student.
3. Keep Good Notes: Having a task notebook at your side at all times when moodling and designing, you can jot down tasks, errors, next steps and general insights, rather than stopping the current flow. It’s important to keep track of what needs to be done, corrected, updated, changed or just tweaked.
4. Design is Never Done: Since moodling and course design can be a never-ending project, you have to come to some understanding when ‘good is good enough’. Within this lesson is also the lesson that the current design can be the basis or bedrock of the next design or a similar design in the future. There is always a next design, on the drawing board, while working on the current project.
5. Test, Test and Test: Since the only way to find the errors, missing links, items that don’t work as they should, the trial and error approach is the best way to create the best Moodle course possible.
6. Take Time to Play: The best way to learn about moodling is by moodling. By taking time to view videos, read articles, and review forum dialogues you can save time in the end. Learning by doing, undoing and redoing can be an effective way to play and learn at the same time.
7. Take time to Reflect: The best way to review goals, plans, directions and actions is by taking time to think about them. Some reflection between course workflow sessions can provide opportunities for insights, improvements and enhancements to the course design.
8. Keep it simple: Complicated plans create for complicated corrections and re-designs. If a simple layout and design are used, it will enhance the course accessibility and the overall feel and flow of the course components.
9. Keep it consistent: To provide a moodling experience that has a familiar look and feel for the course user, it is important to build a consistent design. Building in novel experiences into the course content will help keep the learning new and interesting. Providing a consistent start to the course environment before inserting novelty will ensure that the course users will not become overwhelmed with many new elements introduced too quickly.
10. Keep it connected: Consider the connections between Moodle capabilities, the course content delivery mechanisms and the skills and abilities of the course end user (students). These need to be aligned to have an effective, well designed course.

My experience creating this course was based on preliminary content development done in a previous MET course and work done on a mentoring steering committee with the school system. The initial directions were discussed and structured. The intention to create this course for specific use in the Fall of 2011 provided pressure and impetus for this course. It was challenging to work on the content in absence of the collaborative group, but choices and content selections can be changed quickly once feedback from the mentor steering committee is received.

 

The work itself evolved and changed. I began, as M. Fullan stated, with a ‘ready, fire, aim’ model of work. I began designing early, but did not fully realize an overall plan and framework until well into the development of the first module. When it became clear that a consistent, well-designed course needed to have an underlying plan, I took half a day to create that plan which incorporated all the necessary elements and actions. These may change and adapt as the course design flows, but the plan will keep the look and feel of the elements consistent for the facilitator and end user.

 

My best work periods came when I could take uninterrupted long blocks of time to delve in and deeply engage in the design, creation and formation of course elements. It was during these periods that the most effective work was completed. One lesson I learned was to take time between these intense work periods to reflect and review what had been created and how the overall plan matched the elements created.

 

The ultimate challenge for me was learning more about moodle, how to create what I had in mind, and finding new affordances (such as the label element). Reflecting on how newly found tips and tricks would improve the overall course experience for the end user was an essential step. Managing the learning tasks with new software (Moodle CMS, Amaya HTML editor) continue to challenge my skills. Adding additional elements to the Moodle course from various e-toolkit lessons was interesting and exciting.  Overall, the Moodle course that I have created is reflective of lessons learned from various tasks done while completing this ETEC 565 course.

 

In summary, the Moodle course experience stretched my digital and e-learning skills and abilities, often to the point of frustration, but in true Vygotzgy style, it was still within my personal zone of proximal development. Learning on the edge of discomfort was how this Moodle course project created new knowledge, skills and abilities for me. These will develop and extend as I continue working through future MET courses and applying digital tools and techniques to my work as an educator.

 

Moodle course design reflection – MOODLE according to SECTIONS

 

I took some time to reflect on the course design and decisions made for the structure, timing, activity choices and content items. I used the SECTIONS framework developed by Bates and Poole. This process helped me think through and review the design elements, keeping in mind the students, ease of use, cost, teaching and learning, interactivity, organizational issues, novelty and support.

 

Since this particular framework has been a focus for work within ETEC 565, I felt that using the Bates and Poole SECTIONS framework was the right tool to review and reflect on the Moodle course creation experience. Throughout the design and implementation phases, I tried to keep the learning experiences, the underlying skills and needs of the users, and the specific affordances of the technology and it’s impact on the end user in mind.

 

S – Students: The students for the Moodle course I have designed are employees of a school system who are working full time but are involved in mentoring relationships during the course of their regular work. Modules needed to be designed in small, time sensitive units, organized in a logical sequence so users could complete one or two components during a prep period or partnering session and still have time to complete other work related tasks. The units had to have small incremental additions to the task expectations since these ‘students’ are busy in their regular work environments. Lots of choice needed to be incorporated since the users are a diverse group with varying degrees of post secondary experiences, online course experiences and digital learning experiences. Another consideration in the design was a sequence of work-flow for the users with easy tracking of units completed or to be completed.

 

E – Ease of use and reliability: The Moodle work environment was fairly easy to use, with many built-in design elements ready to incorporate. From the student’s perspective, the course design had to have a simple, yet detailed appearance. The design needed to be easy to move from one task to the next without losing track of where you were and what you needed to do next. Logical sequence needed to be built into the course design to ensure ease of use. To ensure reliability, all web links had to be checked, rechecked and embedded links had to work simply and readily.

 

C – Costs: Since all the costs of this mentoring course, at this point in time, include the time for development and design, there a few costs involved. The intention is to create this course in order to save time and costs down the road for the implementation of mentoring support across the school system. Reducing time away from work locations, travel costs to provide central face to face sessions, and costs relating to effective use of face to face sessions, the cost savings potential of a blended mentoring program will be significant.

 

T – Teaching and learning: For this mentoring online course, the learning tasks are focused on two distinct areas. The first is the underlying skills relating to being a mentor or being mentored. Those specific skills needed to begin with foundational elements and sequentially move to more complex concepts. The second teaching and learning focus is relating to increasing experiences and opportunities for various employee groups with digital and e-learning technologies. These experiences need to begin with common understandings and move through a variety of supported learning opportunities. Building these technological experiences into the mentoring process would assist in keeping the mentoring focus on student learning.

 

I – Interactivity: Within the Moodle course environment, interactions between distinct user-groups need to be established. Discussion forums needed to be created for mentors, those being mentored, and role specific groups. Interactivity with web based tasks, creating individual, partner, group and collaborative work-spaces needed to be built into the modules and introduced in increments of difficulty, supported in a community of practice. Since this is a new concept to many in this work environment, it needed to be well supported with detailed instructions and collaboration with other users.

 

O – Organizational issues: Within the current organization, e-learning for adults is at a beginning point. Investigations primarily with email, chat, web page design and occasional webinars have been conducted. For student learning, more opportunities have been initiated with some high school course design and delivery being conducted. The design of this e-mentoring course had to consider the digital and technological skills of the users and the system capacity to deliver the modules within a structured and supportive manner.

 

N – Novelty: Moodle technology is very new to the end users working on this e-mentoring course. Some of the experiences and explorations conducted through the modules will also be new to the majority of users, with some of the more tech-savvy individuals being engaged to support others. This could potentially provide opportunities for people being mentored to reverse the roles and provide mentoring for the mentors in digital learning.

 

S – Speed: When initiating the e-mentoring program, the materials provided in the current course modules can quickly be changed, new items developed and incorporated with relative ease, and course changes made fairly rapidly. One course facilitator and one course design/developer would work collaboratively with the various employee groups to respond to their individual and role specific needs.

 

Each of the items in the SECTIONS framework need to be reviewed regularly and within a collaborative team when developing, designing and implementing this e-Mentoring course within Moodle.

 

References:

 

Bates A. W. & Poole, G. (2003). A Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In A.W. Bates & G. Poole, Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education (pp. 75-108). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 4.

 

Fullan, M. (2010) Motion leadership – the skinny on being change savvy. Corwin Press Handout retrieved July 24, 2011 from http://www.michaelfullan.ca/resource_assets/handouts/10_MotionLeadership_Handout_A4.pdf

 

Wikipedia (n.d.) Zone of Proximal development  Retreived July 24, 2011 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_development