In the general course area (not defined as a ‘Topic’) of my Moodle course, I included a number of opportunities for the students to participate in discussions with the instructor and also with their fellow classmates via asynchronous features within the Moodle platform. I included two general discussion forum areas titled ‘Useful Websites and Interesting Online Resources’ and ‘Course Questions and Technical Support.’ I chose to include these two discussion areas in order to serve as a means for students to quickly communicate any course queries in a learning area that was accessible by both the teacher and the students. This will enable students to read and respond to all of the questions that may arise as the course proceeds and may also reduce the number of repeated questions asked since the students will all be able access the posted inquiries at any time. As the Trinh case study under discussion this week and the Anderson (2008) chapter reinforced in my thinking, having open and transparent discussion areas such as these is critical for the establishment of a positive learning community from an early stage in the course. It can also serve to increase student involvement, accountability and consequently help the students to develop an increased feeling of ownership over their own learning. If students are able to provide support to their classmates, it will lighten the load placed upon the teacher and allow the teacher to take a step back and act more as a facilitator as the discourse unfolds.

In the introductory module that I created, I also included two discussion forums for the students to participate in. The first discussion area is titled ‘Introduction Activity’ and this is an area in which the students will be expected to introduce themselves, share a little bit of their background knowledge and areas of interest related to the unit of study. The students are expected to read and respond to the posts of their classmates. My hope in adding the additional KWL style introductory activity into the discussion area was to enable students to make connections with their classmates early on. The students may also make an effort to initiate relationships based on common areas of interest that could be used later on in the course for collaborative project work. The second discussion forum is titled ‘Human Body Basics’ and the rationale for the inclusion of this forum is twofold. As stated above, this discussion area can serve to help create the close-knit community of learners that I am hoping for, but it also serves a purpose for me as the teacher too. This is essentially the students’ first ‘assignment’ of sorts, as they are responding to a specific content related question to conclude the first module. The student discourse that comes out of this particular discussion area will tell me if the students have a good understanding of the big ideas shared thus far and I can then gage if there is any need to facilitate additional supportive activities on the topic prior to moving on to the first real content module; the digestive system. I am not sure as to whether or not this counts as communication as it is one sided in nature, but I have also included a questionnaire in the introductory module to gather information about the students’ comfort level with the learning platform. Information gathered through this activity will shape my support as we continue on in the course. If the majority of the students are feeling uncomfortable with the navigation within the site, I may need to offer a synchronous support session in which the students can ask their questions directly to me and receive information immediately in order to increase their comfort level with Moodle at an early stage in the learning.

Not being overly familiar with Moodle prior to this assignment, I did some investigating as to what synchronous and asynchronous supports that it offers and I found the information shared on this Moodle support site quite helpful (http://www.howtomoodle.com/about-us/about-moodle/communication/). Although I am not sure if I will keep it as a part of the first content module or not, I did set up a chat activity to assess background knowledge in regard to the first body system that will be covered; the digestive system. I also noticed that there is an area titled ‘Recent Activity’ within Moodle and when I go into that area it lists all of the various discussion forums, as well as the questionnaire that I created. I am assuming that this would enable a teacher to quickly view the recent student activity. Having these interactive tasks all connected in one area ‘behind the scenes’ could be a real time saver and would allow me to stay on top of the student activity and enable me to more readily jump into a discussion thread in order to model, redirect, or question the students as a means to push the collective learning further. The reports section under administration items also would be an advantageous source of information to the teacher as data in regard to things such as course participation and activity completion are available through these features. It is very interesting to be getting a behind the scenes look at course design and development and course management features in an LMS such as Moodle.

References:
Anderson, T. (2008b). Teaching in an online learning context. In Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. Theory and practice of online learning. Athabasca University. Retrieved from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/14_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf