Course Site
Planning, developing and creating my LMS Course Site has by far been one of the most worthwhile and interesting project of the MET so far. One of my main goals of completing this master’s degree was to have the knowledge and experience to be able to create opportunities for students to work through the mathematics curriculum online, as well as the classroom. I know feel that by using the Moodle Site currently supplied by my school district I would be able to design and continually contribute to an LMS that my students would be able to access immediately.
Completing this assignment has been both challenging and rewarding. The scope and size of this project demanded that it be started early and worked on often. Considering how to change my teaching methods from being in front of students to being behind the computer screen was difficult. There are many things as teachers we deal with on an “as needed basis”, but when creating an LMS I needed to consider the multitude of questions that can arise. Creating discussion forums is extremely advantageous in that it provides students a place to ask questions that could be answered by other students as well as myself. I created a forum for students to ask for help on homework questions and test questions, as well as a forum where they could discuss topics posed in class.
It would take a great deal of time to create test banks that would allow multiple students to use the LMS without quiz and test questions being repeated (and copied). Developing deeper thinking questions that could be automatically marked by the site would also take a lot of consideration as it is much easier to ask multiple choice or true/false questions. Taking the time to fully develop integrated feedback into the quizzes and tests would be quite onerous, but very valuable as it would continue to provide many students with immediate feedback.
I enjoyed the design of this project. Finding clip art and pictures that supported information on pages and quizzes enhanced the quality and readability of the pages. Creating links on a splash page allowed the Moodle to look more like a web page and offers students more options when navigating through the different pages and can help students to avoid having to scroll up or down. The multitude of different resources and activities offered by Moodle provided me with options when deciding what type of activity a student will participate in. I would anticipate that as I had students move through the modules and participate in the discussion forums I would get a better understanding of what sections needed more content or activities that provided students with further clarification.