I posted my proposal the other day, thinking it could be better, but knowing time and space conspired against me to make it better. I started with too big a task, the creation of my own rubric, which quickly made me realize why we were asked to create rubrics in groups. Taking on too much at once, and considering deadlines and space limitations, can be frustrating and stressful. The adage that graduate students complain about maximum limits while undergraduates complain about minimum limits is not disproven in this experience.

One of the challenges I face is the present practice in my organization of using Google Sites as an on-line learning platform, and so my proposal needed not to simply espouse the benefits of such a system, but to illustrate the differences between what we are doing now, and Moodle. To me the advantages are obvious, but to others they are not. Where I see a benefit, others see a barrier. Where I see short staff training sessions, others see impossibilities. Knowing this, my proposal started out too large, slightly off focus, and missing items in the criteria such as budget needs.  Thinking of Chickering & Gamson’s (1987) first principles, Encourages contacts between students and faculty, helped me to see how Students and Teaching and Learning in SECTIONS (Bates & Poole, 2003) are not well served by a Content Management System, which, I would argue,  Google Sites are; rather ,students require a Learning Management System to afford and encourage interactivity, not just between themselves and the content, but between themselves and the instructor and between each other. As such, my proposal ended up focusing on the benefits to students, teachers and learning that an LMS like Moodle afford, such as chats, discussion forums as well as the security and privacy concerns with Google.

Maurice
October 2012

Chickering, A.W. & Gamson, Z.F. (1987).  Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education.  American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 39 (7), 3-7.
http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples1987.htm

Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Chapter 4: a Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. (pp. 77-105). San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers.