It is the first time for me using Moodle to create a course. It is a great experience as I am building a lighter version of an LMS. I found the UX of Moodle very challenging and it is sometime difficult to predict/image the outcomes of your design. In this course I used the below steps to evaluate the media I intend to use within my course (Siemens, 2003):
1.Outcomes: The learning outcomes within my content module are clearly stated in the introduction of the unit. Yet I need to use those outcomes to select the media that better represent the different outcomes. I used video to give short explanation to the term Entrepreneurship. Videos are a very effective delivery mechanize yet it should not be abused. Videos need to be short when used in education in order not to lose the attention of the viewer. Moreover, I used a PDF journal covering most of the important details of entrepreneurship as an industry and an environment to give a deep understanding of the entrepreneur, the environment & eco system, and the challenges along with real-life examples. I also used the digital story to connect with my learners and share my own experience while highlighting the “Lean” methodology that will be introduced in the next unit.
2.Rate my outcomes: In this unit the aim is to establish both the cognitive & affective domains (Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, and Krathwohl, 1956). The activities did not involve the learner with a practical experience of entrepreneurship yet the learner improved analytical skills in what can be a successful startup. Furthermore, learners felt the emotions found within an entrepreneur journey for success. The challenges and the different cased shared with learners throughout the media allowed for those feeling to mature.
3.Media characteristics: Text is used for deep learning. The format is in PDF to allow for offline reading. Videos are used to deliver short explanations. Digital storytelling allowed me to connect and share a personal story with my learner. I used my own voice in the digital story to make it more personal. Discussion groups as tools helped learners to engage in peer-to-peer learning.
4.Media selection: I selected media using a criteria of time, cost, and message effectiveness. Go Animate as a tool for my digital story gave me a free trial and excellent delivery method. Moodle as a platform costs learners only the bandwidth to access the website. All content used is under Creative Common making it free to share.
I believe Moodle as a platform is excellent because it is robust yet it needs some work on the UI & UX. As a first user to the system I found it difficult to understand even though I am sure Moodle is pre-setup to me via a professional administrator. Which means there is even more complexity to installing a Moodle environment.
More about the digital story part
Go Animate is a tool using flash with predesigned objects and themes to simplify the process of creating a full digital story. The tool allows the designer to include different audio & video files to the digital story. This was the first time I use this tool and I was not sure if it is the right tool to deliver the story. Yet I believe it is an excellent tool that saves time and effort. As a tool Go Animate is as good as the content and the design instructed by the author. Go Animate runs on any browser which makes it easy to access. Yet using Flash may be a limitation as Flash support is not available and will become an obsolete technology soon.
I selected Go Animate because it allows for both visual and audio delivery of the digital story, which accommodate for different learning styles (Valley, 2011). The fact that the digital story is recorded this allows the learner to pause, rewind, and forward. This also allows the learner to watch the digital story on her/his own time. Telling a story is a good way to deliver a message, yet it is even better to bring your learners closer to you and to open-up and share their own experiences and concerns. The fact that an online course is a culture on its own means that all learners are new to this culture and need a motivation to start sharing and collaborating together (Benedikt, 1991).
I started building the digital story with a learner-centric design (Anderson, 2008a). The learner is a startup company or a person trying to build one. The digital story offered a simple and effective way to share my experience with my learners and to illustrate how the method I am offering in my course was applied by me during my carrier. This modeling approach requires the educator to fully understand the learner and to have a learner-centric design. The digital story explained how the LeanStartupMachine tool is used. This makes the design Knowledge-centric. Furthermore, The LeanStartupMachine methodology was applied to an existing company throughout the digital story. This delivers the message that this tool can be applied at any point of time a new product or idea is proposed.
The Go Animate digital story offers a modeling approach for the educator to share her/his own experience with learners. The digital story allowed me to engage with the content “teacher content” and to share the content with the learner “learner content” and opened a possibility for learners to communicate with me “learner teacher” (Anderson, 2003). I also opened discussion within the same unit in order to achieve a hybrid approach for synchronous and asynchronous communication (Richardson, 2000).
My digital story explains my journey as an entrepreneur which relates to the learners as they consider themselves entrepreneurs and wish to succeed in a specific domain. The digital story is a fun and engaging method and it is a powerful teaching tool offering personal narratives, music & audio, images & animations that create unique snapshots intro the learner’s experience (Matthews, 2014).
References
Anderson, T. (2008a). Towards a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and practice of online learning. Edmonton AB: Athabasca University. Retrieved from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/02_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf
Anderson, T. (2008b). Teaching in an online learning context. In Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F.Theory and practice of online learning. Athabasca University. Retrieved fromhttp://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/14_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf
Anderson, T. (2003). Getting the mix right: An updated and theoretical rational for interaction. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 4(2). Retrieved August 27, 2007, from http://www. irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/149/230
Bloom, B.S. (Ed.). Engelhart, M.D., Furst, E.J., Hill, W.H., Krathwohl, D.R. (1956).Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: The Cognitive Domain. New
Benedikt, M. (1991). Cyberspace: Some proposals. In M. Benedikt (Ed.), Cyberspace: First steps (pp. 119–224). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Matthews, J. (2014). Voices from the heart: The use of digital storytelling in education. Community Practitioner, 87(1), 28.
Richardson, J. (2000). Researching student learning: Approaches to studying in campus-based and distance education. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.
Valley, K. (2011). Learning styles and courseware design. Research in Learning Technology,5(2)
Siemens, G. (2003). Evaluating media characteristics: Using multimedia to achieve learning outcomes. Elearnspace. Retrieved fromhttp://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/mediacharacteristics.htmUBC Copyright requirements. Retrieved from http://copyright.ubc.ca/requirements/