My Reflection on my Moodle Assignment:
Having worked in Moodle for a number of assignments now, I was not expecting to experience any new challenges. Going into this assignment, I was feeling confident after designing and creating my introductory module and my quiz component, however, this latest assignment did not go quite as smoothly as I expected it to.

My Challenges:
After submitting our quiz assignment, I received feedback from my instructor in regard to the fact that there was a lack of a welcoming message upon entering my Moodle course. Wanting to remedy this neglected area which would serve to help situate a student into the course upon their entry, I managed to figure out how to create a simple welcome (‘splash’) page with a course title and image. I planned my module scope and sequence and then returned to the splash page to create the GUI requirement of 4 navigational links. This is when I hit the greatest stumbling block of this particular assignment. When I attempted to set up my navigational links (I knew how to set up my text and pictures and create links to outside sites quite easily) for my own site content, I did not see what I expected to see in my link options. I am used to working in Weebly and SmartNotebook (my Smartboard software) both of which offer specific options for navigational links that will function within the file or website environment that you are creating. I expected to see the same type of internal navigational features when I went to create my links in Moodle. I was stumped and couldn’t get past this particular challenge no matter what approach I tried. I spent a number of hours researching on support sites and eventually posted a query on Blackboard, which still did not solve my problem. I carried on with the task of developing my module content and then decided to attempt to create my internal links one more time. I am not sure what made me come to the realization at this time, but I suddenly realized that each of the individual components that I had created in Moodle had its own unique URL. I went through the various items that I wanted to link and copied the URLs into a word document. I then returned to my splash page, activated the link for each picture and copied the URL into the appropriate input area. With a few more clicks, I had all of my desired links completed. I felt relieved, but also extremely frustrated that something so simple had caused me such a great amount of frustration and wasted time. The only other aspect of the assignment that I found challenging was the establishment of groups, not because I was unable to learn how to do it quickly, but because I was unsure if I had done it correctly. When I re-entered the group designated discussion areas after having set up the two separate groups, the group assignments that I had designated and saved kept changing from group 1 to group 2. I am hopeful that this part of the task was in fact done correctly. Other than that, the rest of the module development went fairly smoothly.

My Rationale:
In this module, I wanted to leave the student learning more open ended than I did in the introductory module. Knowing the power of collaborative learning and self-directed exploration, I designed the content pages in this module with some choice built in for the students. As Alexander (2006) posits users are ‘playing more of a foundational role in formation architecture’ (Alexander, 2006, p. 34) and social bookmarking has become a particularly popular and powerful Web 2.0 tool. Being that my target age group is 9 and 10 year olds, I do not necessarily want to have my students loose on the internet using folksonomies such as delicious.com, but at the same time, I wanted to come up with a simplified (and potentially safer way) to take advantage of the leverage that is attainable via ‘people connecting through shared metadata’ (Alexander, 2006, p. 36).

Being that this is the initial offering of this course that I have created, as an educator I would want to gather student feedback throughout the duration of the course in order to best meet the needs of the learners for the remainder of the course and as a means of fine tuning my pedagogical choices for future offerings of the course. On the topic of multimedia and its potential to help achieve learning outcomes, Siemens (2003) points out the importance of educators selecting ‘the media type that most effectively presents the learning material in order to achieve intended learning outcomes’ (Siemens, 2003, para. 1). Courses and units of study need to be dynamic and not static entities, that change and shift depending on the needs and interests of the learners. In my face-to-face practice, I regularly seek feedback from my students in regard to what motivates them, interests them, bores them, challenges them etc. to make their educational experience the best one that I can. If I were to teach online or in a blended environment, I would just as actively, if not more seek the same feedback from my learners.

My Lesson Development and Pedagogical Choices:
My splash page contains an eye catching image of the inner workings of the human head. I have included six smaller images with labels on this page as well to serve as my GUI component, but only the first 4 of them are currently active links (although if I had the opportunity to complete the entire Moodle course, I would have all 6 images linked to course content pages).

My content module (Module 1) focuses on the digestive system. I open the module with a very brief introductory page containing information about the module length, the percentage of the overall mark that it accounts for, and the extra information that this module will be broken up by the winter break. I also included an image of the digestive system. I wanted to incorporate a synchronous communication opportunity in this module. Because I would ideally like this discussion to take place prior to the students diving into the digestive system content (it is a pre-assessment activity), I have set the chat room to be available for only the first 2 days of the module. The next sections of the module are the main content pages for this portion of the unit. I have tried to provide the students with a wide variety of links to websites, web based resources, learning games, interactive information sites, and two videos. Incorporating game based learning activities into my instruction is so important as Siemens (2003) notes that games and simulations are showing promise as being effective and engaging, while providing life-like learning opportunities for students (Siemens, 2003, Software, para, 2). My hope in designing this part of the module in this way is that the students would peruse the content that suited their interest and learning style and potentially would venture out onto the web from those linked sites to find more information on their own. I added in the ‘Reflection & Feedback’ discussion area for the purpose of providing the students with a space to share which links and resources they found to be most useful, least useful, and also to provide them with the opportunity to share their own good finds from their internet excursions. In this way, I would hope to expand upon the list of included resource links for both the present and future students.

The section called ‘Food for Thought’ has been designed to help students apply their new understanding of how the digestive system works to diet, nutrition and maintaining a healthy body. Again, students will have the opportunity to view a variety of sites to gather information about the importance of maintaining a healthy and balanced diet. The students will be divided into two separate groups for this particular discussion. The discourse will be based on the four question prompts that the students have been provided with. By splitting the class into two separate groups for this task, I hope to avoid some of the repetitive tendencies that can be prevalent in discussion threads of this nature, especially toward the latter part of the module.

In preparation for the students’ final quiz (which was created for my previous Moodle assignment but has been included within this new module as well), I have designed a simple assignment that requires the students to list and define the role/function of each of the major parts of the digestive system. This will allow the students to summarize their learning while helping them master the digestive system module content before moving on to the next topic of study. The final activity is the digestive system quiz which will be the culminating activity for module 1.

References:

Alexander, B. (2006). Web 2.0: A new wave of innovation for teaching and learning? EDUCAUSE Review, 41(2), 34-44. Retrieved from http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0621.pdf

Siemens, G. (2003). Evaluating media characteristics: Using multimedia to achieve learning outcomes. Elearnspace. Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/mediacharacteristics.htm