I have just completed the last few elements for the online course. This is a course that I delivered this past summer session at BCIT to first year Sustainable Resource Management students and so I had the benefit of ‘trying it out’ before creating the course in the UBC Moodle format. The course was originally built in the Desire 2 Learn or D2L format and, as Murphy’s law dictates, these two LMS platforms are not compatible in any way and all content had to be rebuilt and restructured for Moodle. This was not a bad thing in this setting as it was a requirement of the course and of John when I asked him if I could use the course for my course assignment. However, the time and difficulty in moving the course would cause me to pause and advise a team or administrator to consider the cost and time if a move from one LMS to another was being considered in a school or department.
The other stipulation for using this course was that it had to be ‘developed’ and improved based on the work and discussions that we have completed in this course. Given the time restrictions and other assignments, I have not polished the course to the degree that I would if it were to be delivered to another set of students. That said, the discussions, groups, additional assignments, redesign of the questions and content and the additional elements such as the calendar, links and resources and the splash page GUI have been added in the Moodle version. I have played around with selective release of modules and the due dates and conditions for modules to satisfy the course requirements and discovered the many features and options available for an online course. As an instructor, you have a great deal of control over certain elements in the course and the overall experience of the student as they make their way through the course.
I am not sure I would limit access to future content as I would be quite happy to have a student ‘read ahead’ as they would be able to do with a book or hard copy of the course cdntent. However, i like the idea that a student cannot begin the next task before completing the previous one as this would eliminate the panic that occurs in the last week or so when students tune in to their marks in the last stretch and then realize they are missing grades and required submissions for the course.
I found some of the HTML coding very frustrating in Moodle. The commands and options are limited and HTML can be altered or fail to function at times. That said, the basics work and it just took some creativity to find a different way to present or provide the tool I wanted on the page.
This portion of the course was very valuable to me and I appreciated having the time to develop the course and to do so while I was reading and interacting in the class on subjects and issues that were directly relevant to the construction and design of an online course.