INTRODUCTION
The Nanaimo and Ladysmith Public Schools have a long history of offering blended-model Distributed Learning (DL) courses at all levels through the Learn@Home K-7 and Learn@Home 8-12 schools. Since their inceptions, these schools have demonstrated many of the educational ideals recently set forth in the Ministry of Education’s BCEd Plan (2011) including increased flexibility in how and when students learn, as well as goals of the 2010 Premier’s Technology Counsel (PTC) such as increasing technology literacy. These are among reasons that enrolment numbers continue to increase, especially in the high school grades (Ministry of Education, 2011). While enrolment remains strong, increasing course completion rates is continued goal of these schools.
Success in DL courses is affected by many factors including course design, format, communication, orientation and student motivation (Westley, 2006; LearnNowBC, 2012). It is the latter two factors that we wish to address by setting up elementary coursework hosted on a MOODLE platform. Because relatively few students enter Learn@Home 8-12 from the elementary program, many students in the high school program have not had a thorough orientation to Learning Management Systems (LMSs) and online learning. As a result, these students may face the double-duty of learning their enrolled course materials as well as the LMS on which it is hosted. We wish to mitigate this by giving students broad access and experiences using an LMS at the elementary level where the pressures of course content are somewhat lower.
In addition to the long-term goals of increasing DL course completion rates, we also want to expand on the goals and ideals BCEd Plan and PTC to include the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers and Students developed by the International Society for Technology Education (iste nets-s and iste nets-t) through the development and implementation of universal practices for 21st Century Learning. Increased implementation of such practices is the direct goal of a Professional Learning Community (PLC) recently formed amongst staff at Coal Tyee Elementary School and the newly appointed district Instructional Coordinators.
It is with these short-term and long-term goals in mind, that we request the Nanaimo and Ladysmith Public Schools to host a MOODLE server.
OBJECTIVES
Our PLC intends to use an inquiry model of Project Based Learning (PBL) to increase classroom engagement, create a community of learners and increase student proficiency with the iste nets in the short term as well as providing the thorough orientation to an LMS that we feel will contribute to increased completion rate for students who take DL courses in the long term.
The following is a discussion of the iste nets-s and their application to our PLC’s use of inquiry.
Creativity and Innovation
A fundamental tenet of inquiry learning is that it focuses on finding solutions to meaningful questions. These questions tend to be in the higher domains of Bloom’s Taxonomy especially analyzing, evaluating and creating.
Communication and Collaboration
Solving meaningful problems will require that students work together in groups to break down the main inquiry problem into smaller components that can be managed individually or sequentially. Students will then communicate their learning to other group members, the class and their teachers.
Research and Information Fluency
Throughout their inquiry, students will be required work with a large amount of information needed to address their inquiry problem. Some of this will be provided for them, but students will also locate additional information and organize the data in a useful form.
Critical Thinking, Problem Solving and Decision Making
At varying levels, students will need manage their time and resources, and plan their research approach. Using the information they have gathered and their collective background knowledge, students will analyze their data and make decisions on potential solutions as well as identify significant questions that arise from their research that may be addressed in subsequent inquiries.
Digital Citizenship
Students will be expected to identify and mitigate hazards associated with the digital safety and the legal and ethical use technology. These include, but are not limited to, the safety of personal information, cyber-bullying and plagiarism.
Technology Operations and Concepts
As students progress through multiple inquiry projects, they will be expected to come to see technology as an integral part of their education beyond its uses for simple word processing. They will use a variety of online and offline applications to conduct research, collect and organize data, and communicate with each other and a broader audience.
FEATURES
MOODLE offers a number of key features that make it an appropriate platform for hosting our PLC’s inquiry projects. While many or all of these features are available on other platforms as well, MOODLE was chosen for reasons to be discussed in the evaluation section.
- Repository for inquiry project outlines
- Selective release of materials for student viewing
- Forums and e-mail for student-student and student-teacher communication
- Announcements for broadcast teacher-student communication
- Wikis for students to curate their research
- Group management utilities
EVALUATION
Using Bates and Poole’s SECTIONS model (2003) to compare MOODLE with other LMSs, MOODLE was effectively equal to the others in all areas of comparison and superior in the following:
- Ease of Use – Student use and navigation of MOODLE is comparable to other LMSs; however, teacher use for developing and maintaining courses was found to be easier a have a lower learning-curve because some of the teachers on the PLC already have experience with MOODLE.
- Cost – Being open source, able to be hosted on existing hardware and developed by PLC members the cost of MOODLE for the intents of this project is minimal.
- Interactivity – As open source software, there is a large number of plugins developed by the MOODLE community to suit all of the PLC’s needs and are able to be used at no additional cost.
- Speed – Due to the ease of use already identified and the availability of plugins, creating “courses” with Moodle will be much faster than with other LMSs.
CONCLUSION
Our PLC at Coal Tyee has already begun significant work in creating a community of learners in order to lay the foundations for inquiry learning. In order to enhance inquiry and meet the goals, ideals and standards of the BCED Plan, Premier’s Technology Counsel and the iste nets in the short-term while increasing DL course completion rates in the long-term, we believe that a MOODLE server is necessary.
REFERENCES
Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Effective teaching with technology in higher education: Foundations for success. San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers
LearnNowBC. (2012) DL myths. Retrieved from http://www.learnnowbc.ca/information/what_is_dl/Myths_About_DL.aspx
Ministry of Education (2011) BC’s Education Plan. Retrieved from http://www.bcedplan.ca/assets/pdf/bc_edu_plan.pdf
Ministry of Education. (March 2011). 2010/2011 Summary of key information. Retrieved from http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/reporting/docs/SoK_2011.pdf
Premier’s Technology Council. (December 2010) A Vision for 21st Century Learning. Retrieved from The Government Of British Columbia website: http://www.gov.bc.ca/premier/attachments/PTC_vision%20for_education.pdf
Westly, R. C. (2006). Maximizing students’ distributed learning success. Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database. (304910573).