LMS Proposal
Mentoring with Moodle
Background info
The Ontario Ministry of Education supports programs to develop mentors and mentoring processes for new teachers, new school leaders and system leaders. All school boards are required to establish practices and processes for mentoring. In the Barrie District, ten school boards recently used Open Space Technology to problem solve, review best practices and share successes. Tri-level initiatives (ministry, board, school) are encouraged and supported.
Rationale – Purpose
Employees new to a specific role in education live a constructivist learning experience. Constructivist instructional strategies that support adult learners in education include modeling, coaching and scaffolding (Jonassen, 1999). These strategies can be integrated and explored within a Moodle e-mentoring course made available to all school boards within the Barrie District to support current mentoring practices. E-mentoring is a means of supporting mentors and mentees in personal and professional growth, developing professional networks, improving interpersonal effectiveness and enhancing personal confidence (Credit Union National Org., 2009).
Authentic learning focuses on “real-world, complex problems, uses role-playing, problem-based activities, case studies, and participation in virtual communities of practice.” (Lombardi, 2007) Current face-to-face mentoring sessions provide authentic learning activities. E-mentoring with Moodle is a cost effective way to extend face-to-face meetings. Moodle’s constructivist theories of learning are reflected in current mentoring and professional learning communities practices. Additionally it provides a means for experienced educators to continue authentic learning in a supported, collaborative and constructivist learning environment.
Principles from Chickering and Ehrman’s article Implementing the Seven Principles outlines how contact among participants can be supported in online learning environments.
Each school district individually develops and incorporates mentoring practices. Concerns include sustainability, consistency and extension of current mentoring programs. Interest in developing e-mentoring modules to support face-to-face sessions is growing. The goal of the Moodle mentoring course would be to support mentors and mentees in all Barrie District school systems within a collaborative, networked professional learning community of practice. It would provide tools, topics, support and collaboration within the larger group but allow for district and job specific groups to be established. System size, demographics, finances, geographic locations and the varied needs of mentors and mentees would necessitate a flexible, secure and robust LMS, accessible outside of board platforms and IT systems.
SECTIONS (Bates and Poole, 2003) Rationale for Moodle
Students: Course participants are mentors and mentees in varying roles and jobs. They would be entered into the course once matched. Flexibility and choice in course materials is essential. Users would need to be familiar with basic electronic skills to access email and use the internet. Moodle provides a collaborative forum to extend relationships and conversations for participating employee groups. Affordances include:
- Group work – groups, based on mentor match, role or need can have separate discussion forums, chats, assignments or activities.
- Community Networking – Students can create online clubs, interest and study groups at the system and regional levels.
- Portfolios – Mentors and mentees can create personal portfolios within the Moodle course environment.
- Chat and Discussion Forums – Moodle supports unlimited simultaneous chat and asynchronous group discussions that can be archived for later review.
- Feedback and assessments can be monitored through course tools and can be differentiated to meet user group and school board systems’ needs.
Ease of use and reliability: Moodle is ready to go ‘right out of the box’ so basic module setup can be done quickly with additional modules built over time. Documentation and support is available online. Moodle is a proven stable and reliable LMS.
Costs: Moodle is open source and therefore free with no licensing fees to develop content. The e-mentoring course can be set up on a dedicated server located at the Barrie District Education offices. Participating school boards could share costs for the server, technician, course developer and instructor. The Ministry of Education provides some funding for mentoring programs. School board mentoring leads would support course management and planning. Infrastructure costs for each school board would need to be reviewed internally in each board.
Teaching and learning: Moodle’s flexible and robust LMS can be personalized for mentoring leads, participants and content delivery. The capacity to personalize navigation, templates and course materials is critical. Tracking participant’s interactions with others and course content is essential. Moodle’s capacity to produce reports showing the number of times, time, date, frequency and IP address of course participants accessing course content, discussion forums, course assessments, and assignments is a valuable review and planning tool. Moodle has capacity to build a repository for school boards or the district level. The ability to support template creation and sharing, consistent navigational tools, customization ability, and reusability are all valuable elements of a multi-system, multi-user course environment.
Interactivity: Moodle course participants interact as mentoring partners, groups and all those in the course. Participants from one school board would be identified as one class or course section. Interactivity occurs with content and group specific assignments, extended with internal and external content options and choices.
Organization: Moodle supports administrative tools to authenticate participants, authorize or restrict course access to certain users based on roles, and distribute permissions across multiple institutions or departments. It is secure and stable.
Novelty: Moodle is novel technology for most school systems in the Barrie District. Since Web 2.0 tools would be integrated into the course work this would also provide novelty to the course users.
Speed: Course material for two modules can be developed for the first term of the first year, with development and testing of subsequent modules done within the first year. Timelines for access would vary depending on board’s current progress, infrastructures and practices in the area of mentoring. One school system would initiate e-mentoring with two employee groups. Plans to integrate the Moodle course into all school systems and all employee groups within five years would be established. Moodle course administrators can integrate and interchange staff data from Human Resources and Program and Service departments to speed up course access once mentoring matches are established.
Conclusion
Moodle meets the needs of integrating district and board e-mentoring programs, thereby building sustainable, flexible and effective mentoring supports.
Appendix
A Mentoring Course developed for ETEC 510 would be a model for this e-mentoring course. Elements and additions would be integrated into the Moodle course in order to meet the needs of the course users, developers and instructors. View this sample at https://blogs.ubc.ca/mentoringdesign/.
References
Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Chapter 4: a Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. (pp. 77-105). San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers.
Chickering, A.W. & Ehrmann, S.C. (1996). Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 49(2), 3-6. http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples.htm
Credit Union National Organization. (2009). Mentoring goes online. Credit Union National Organization Newsletter, 35 (18), 6-8. Retrieved March 4, 2011 from http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?hid=110&sid=4727e3ec-d6b1-45e7-bdd8-4847a6d8290b%40sessionmgr104&vid=2
EduTools. (2011). CMS: compare. Retrieved June 05, 2011 from http://www.edutools.info/compare.jsp?pj=4&i=554,592,616
Jonassen, D. (1999). Designing constructivist learning environments. In C. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional design theories and models: Volume II. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Lombardi, M. (2009) Authentic Learning for the 21st Century: An Overview Educause Learning Initiative Paper – May, 2007 Retrieved June 4, 2011 from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI3009.pdf
MoodleDocs. (2011) Top 10 Moodle Myths. Retrieved June 4, 2011 from http://docs.moodle.org/en/Top_10_Moodle_Myths
Moodle. (2011). Philosophy. Retrieved June 4, 2011 from http://docs.moodle.org/en/Philosophy
Ontario Government, Ministry of Education Website, Leadership Development, Mentoring http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/policyfunding/leadership/mentoring.html
Open Space Technology found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Space_Technology