Reflecting on my experience in creating my Grade 6 Ancient River Civilizations Moodle Course, I know that I relied on my previous experience in Moodle, struggled to create the HTML pages and ultimately, feel that the course I have developed is something that I could ‘pick up’ and bring into my current teaching practice.
One section of the Moodle course that I am most proud of is my Introductory activity. This activity is a collaborative and interactive Google map. Mc Namee and Moscheta (2015) support the use of a collaborative introductory activity such as this.
Students get a chance to introduce themselves and begin the discussion on ancient rivers. First by recounting their prior knowledge of a river that they have been to (and in the event that they had never been to a river, a phenomenon that I have discovered among some groups of students while teaching abroad, they can describe a river that they would like to go to. Lin, Lin and Huang discuss the importance of strengthening student’s prior knowledge before commencing the unit of study in their article Development of a diagnostic system using a testing-based approach for strengthening student prior knowledge. (2011)
Originally, I had planned to complete a similar introductory activity in Google Drawings. Students would have contributed a personal textbox to a photo of a river. I am glad that I revised this activity to include some basic mapping skills, and I think that student participants would also enjoy how this activity allows them to get a glimpse of rivers worldwide.
Communication with my students
There are five communication channels that I have created and addressed in my Moodle course pages. The first area for students to see is the Important Information HTML page which clearly states different communication methods, where they are located and what type of communication issues that they address.
I have utilized and created two discussion forums. Though the New Forum is automatically created in the Moodle course, I will use this forum for the teacher to give reminders and whole class feedback and advice. The second is the Course Materials Forum, which will address student queries about access to and understanding of the course materials. This forum will also hopefully be beneficial since if one student has a query about a specific resource, once I clarify the issue then all students will have access to the answers to these replies.
In the event of student illness, emergencies and asking for extensions with the final assessments, I have an email which is specific to these circumstances.
Lastly, there is an email address given to tech support and Moodle issues.
Assessment strategies
This Moodle course uses Option 2 for assessment – there is a shorter quiz in addition to a comparison poster assignment. The strategy for the first assessment is for the student to show their comprehension and familiarity with the Knowledge Bank materials before proceeding onto Assessment 2.
Assessment two asks students to find six artifacts from the two different river civilizations and curate them in a Comparison Poster. Students are given a template poster that they will populate with the required information of the assessment. I have used this assessment before successfully in a blended classroom environment so was interested to see how it would accompany a fully online version of the unit.
Students have access to the two rubrics that they will be assessed with. The rubrics utilize MYP (Middle Years Programme) Humanities/ Individuals and Societies criteria. These rubrics had been created for the previous blended course and I have altered them to be suitable in this fully online course.
References
Lin, Y., Lin, Y., & Huang, Y. (2011). Development of a diagnostic system using a testing-based approach for strengthening student prior knowledge. Computers & Education, 57(2), 1557-1570. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2011.03.004
McNamee, S. and Moscheta, M. (2015), Relational Intelligence and Collaborative Learning. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 2015: 25–40. doi: 10.1002/tl.20134