I have always believed that two heads are better than one, and in no case is that more true than in the field of education. Terry Anderson, a professor of distance education from Athabasca University, has accumulated much research in support of this belief. He asserts that social presence is an integral part of the educational experience, and as such, should be an important consideration when designing online learning environments (Anderson, 2008).  To help improve social presence in my Moodle’s grade 7, it was, therefore, important for me to include multiple activities for my students to work with one another, so that they could share ideas, enlighten one another with their unique perspectives, and critique one another’s ideas in a positive environment. From my own personal experiences in education as a student and teacher, I know that this will be appreciated from my Grade 7 students, as they always seem happiest when allowed to work together.

In each of my unit’s lessons I tried to incorporate a collaborative activity, where students could learn about the material in a collective way. For example, I inserted asynchronous discussion boards so that students could introduce themselves using an original cinquain poem, and again to help them exchange with one another poems they found that contained similes. These asynchronous posts not only allow them to broadcast their ideas, art, and findings, but permitted their fellow peers to comment on their posts so they can receive critical feedback to see if they are the right path, or if they haven’t quite hit the mark. I have also used some of Moodle’s synchronous communication tools; most notably the chat activity. I used this tool to support my “Life as a Metaphor” activity, where students had to read about four different “life as a metaphor” scenarios, and then share with one another which one they thought best represented their own view. The activity also gave students opportunities to come up with their own life metaphors, which they could share with one another using the chat feature. This allowed them to give real-time feedback, as well as providing them with the freedom of spontaneity, so that they could throw ideas back and forth and build upon each other’s work.

For my latest collaborative activity I chose to use a tool recommended to me by my instructor, Natasha Boskic. One of the tasks I gave my students was to download a poetry glossary of all the terms we would be covering throughout the unit. My intent was for them to add their definitions to the sheet after each lesson, thereby giving them a resource they could use to study for the culminating unit test. Natasha suggested that instead of making this a solely independent task, that it could be modified so as to create a collaborative activity, perhaps in the form of a wiki. The more I looked into it, the more I discovered that wiki’s are an excellent collaborative tool that can be useful for assessments (Ben-Zvi, 2007). In the end, I amalgamated the two activities. Students would still keep their own records of the poetry terms by completing their respective poetry glossary, but for the final collaborative activity, which would also serve as their review, the class would be divided into small groups and each group would be responsible for creating a poetry glossary wiki. Each page of their wiki would be dedicated to a synopsis of the various parts of speech, sound devices, and poetry forms we covered in the class, as well other terms they may have come across on their own. To help me with this activity, I used an excellent tutorial video on Youtube by L. Mikowychock(2012), who walked me through the steps and procedures of inserting such an activity into my design. In terms of an assessment tool, the wiki is fantastic. It allows both the teacher, and the students who created them, to see who authored which wiki page, who modified it and when, as well as a comment feature that keeps a record of the discussions that were taking place throughout the assignment. Because students have access to these records of information, and know their instructor does to, it makes students more accountable; no one wants to have evidence that they contributed very little to a project.

So far, I’ve been quite pleased with Moodle’s various collaborative tools. Whether using its asynchronous or synchronous tools, I feel as though I am able to construct an online learning environment that can support and engage my students and serve as a community. I look forward to continuing with my exploration of Moodle.

References

Anderson, T. (2008). Teaching in an online context. In. T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.) Theory and practice of online learning. Athabasca University.

Ben-Zvi, Dani. (2007). Using Wiki to Promote Collaborative Learning in Statistics Education. Technology Innovations in Statistics Education, 1(1). Retrieved from: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6jv107c7

Mikowychock, L. (2012). Learn Moodle 2.0: collaborative wiki. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE80eat03SQ