Course Site

For my Moodle course site I decided to create a grade 6/7 Social Studies program focusing on 2 major themes (Developing Nations and Ancient China). I approached this assignment knowing that I wanted to create an online course that could be useful to me in the future. Although I felt some major frustration working with Moodle (some of it my own doing), the experience has been educational, meaningful, and enjoyable. To see my course, please click here.

It was an interesting process to look back at my Flight Path and rediscover that one of my goals for ETEC 565 was to gain a greater understanding in developing Learning Management Systems, particularly working with Moodle. ETEC 565 provided me with this opportunity to advance my Moodle skills and accomplish my goal. I can safely say that my understanding and implementation of Moodle has quickly grown to the point where I now feel competent in working with the program.  The evolution of my thinking towards LMS course sites has been gradual yet steady. As I became more knowledgeable about the workings of Moodle, my LMS was able to evolve to a point where I feel that I have created a thought-provoking, interactive online course, perfectly suited for the needs of my students. What is apparent to me now that I have created a course using Moodle is to be prepared to put in a lot of hours of hard work and set aside the time to test, test, test.

At the start of this course I did not have any experience in working with Moodle. I was fortunate enough to have briefly seen a colleague of mine using the LMS but had no hands on experience. Looking over his shoulder, it seemed like a relatively easy program to use. Besides, I had done some past web design so I was confident I would be able to easily develop my own Moodle course site. However, as I began using Moodle for myself, problems began to arise and my over confidence quickly transformed into slight panic. It wasn’t so much that Moodle itself was difficult to use. In fact, for creating a simple online course, it is actually a breeze to work with. What I found difficult was in regards to design and organization. How was I going to create an online course that was going to meet the criteria for the assignment and provide my students with an appropriate learning platform? I decided to refer back to the SECTIONS framework for some guidance. Since the site is for young learners, it needed to be structured in an organized, reliable, easy to follow format. Furthermore, the activities and technologies provided would have to be age appropriate. As a result I decided  to structure my course in a way that my students would be able to easily navigate the site, and quickly understand requirements. In addition I wanted it to be beneficial and tailored to students with different learning needs. Furthermore, the activities needed to be meaningful, interactive, and engaging with a focus on a constructivist framework. One of my goals in creating my LMS course site was to engage the students in critical thinking within a group context and to share ideas using an online discussion forum. As Xin and Feenberg acknowledge (2007), “As the principal form of computer supported human interaction in online education, discussion plays a vital role, even more significant for learning than in the face-to-face classroom” (pg. 1).

Most of my dealings with working with Moodle were positive and I really enjoyed working with the program. However, there were some problems that I encountered that led to a whole lot of frustration on my part. My first problem was related to inserting a picture into a Moodle webpage. To me this process should have been incredibly easy to do and it is if your browser is compatible with Moodle’s WYSIWYG interface. What I finally came to realize was that my browser was not displaying the edit tools properly so I wasn’t able to view the insert picture button. After many hours of frustration, a change of Internet  browsers (Google Chrome to Firefox), and an update to said browser, the problem was finally cured and I was able to breath a little easier. Another snag I ran into was with uploading my own html pages. Once I had my pages uploaded to my Moodle, the pictures within those pages would not display properly. Using John’s excellent advice on the WebCT/Vista forum, I was still encountering the same problem and so my frustration began to build. Upon further investigation, I noticed that the link for the pictures was pointing to my own personal computer instead of on the Moodle server. Of course this was the problem so I needed to find a cure. At one point I even decided to change software programs but soon abandoned the idea. Instead, I stepped away from the computer and decided that it would be best if I tried again tomorrow. This seemed to be the trick as the next day I was able to solve the problem. It turns out that with Nvu (webpage building software), the html file that is being created needs to be saved first before you can add any pictures or you will run into the same problem that I had. In any event, it was pretty satisfying to be able to persevere and move on.

One of the assignment’s requirements was to set up one of the modules to be programmed for selective release. Of course I was a little worried because the research I conducted had informed me that Moodle doesn’t offer a selective release feature (Moodle 2.0 apparently does) or entire modules. So how was I going to implement this? After many frustrating hours of research, I decided that the best way to accomplish this feat was to use the “hide the topic” feature. Since my site was set up in topic mode, this was going to be a lot easier than I thought. By using this feature, I was able to easily hide the module until needed. Once ready, I can quickly toggle the module to be seen. It would be a great feature if Moodle could selectively release a module based on date rather than have to manually release. Perhaps in a future release (Moodle 2.0)?

Throughout this journey I have learned a lot about, not only Moodle, but also myself. Sometimes in life, it is the failures and frustrations that you learn the most from and this experience was no exception. There were many pitfalls and many setbacks but I was able to keep going and work through the problems. Sometimes you just need to plug away and persevere. Creating this Moodle has been a lot of hard work but I feel that I have gained the necessary skills to successfully work with LMS in the future…and that is exciting!

References

Bates, A. W. & Poole, G. (2003). Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. New York: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated.

Chickering, A. W. & Ehrmann, S.C. (1996). Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as lever. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 49(2), p. 3-6.

Xin, C. & Feenberg, A. (2007). Pedagogy in Cyberspace: the dynamics of online discourse, E-Learning and Digital Media, 4(4), 415-432. http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/elea.2007.4.4.415

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