PHYSICS 11: SPECIAL RELATIVITY

The major assignment in this course was to complete a Moodle Learning Management System (LMS) worth 25% of the course. My Moodle course can be found by clicking the following link:  
My Moodle Site.

BACKGROUND

I previously had very little experience with Moodle but had heard a lot of great things about it. The thing about word of mouth is that you never really know what to expect until you get right into it yourself.

I found ETEC 565A did a great job gently exposing me to what a LMS is capable of. Playing around with Moodle at the beginning was important to start developing awareness of the various features that Moodle affords. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Moodle allows for easy creation of quizzes and tests, which can be set to grade automatically and give immediate feedback as well.

QUESTION FORMAT

I was drawn to the embedded answer (cloze) variety, which are very flexible questions consisting of a passage of text with various answers embedded within it. These include multiple choice, short answers and numerical answers. What I liked best about the numerical answers is that they are open ended questions that allow me to accept numerical values within a predetermined range of values. Since I teach Math and Physics this is very valuable.

PAGE CONSTRUCTION

I began my Moodle pages using Amaya, which is a web editor and is free to use. It is fairly user friendly but after creating a number of pages and uploading them to Moodle I ran into some problems. My concern was that I would not be able to easily edit my pages after uploading them. It turns out that I was right. Initially I would edit in Amaya and then replace the original page in Moodle with the new one. Moodle, however, would not accept the changes unless I gave the page a new name and then made the appropriate changes in Moodle to access the new page. This proved to be very time consuming.

Following that I thought I could just edit using HTML coding right within Moodle, but the same problem occured and I still needed to rename the page. I realized that the overall look of the Amaya pages was not much different than the appearance of pages created right within Moodle, so I abandoned Amaya and worked right in Moodle. We were encouraged to use a web editor for aesthetics but I  do not think I sacrificed anything. After hearing that so many of my colleagues had problems with navigation buttons and page editing, I was glad with my decision.

MOODLE LAYOUT

I decided to create a unique layout on the main Moodle page. In the past, I have not liked the look of all the various links to course activities on the main page of a Moodle course. I had my links appear in the form of a staircase that takes the learner down into the module. I think this is aesthetically pleasing and appropriate for the difficult content. I checked to make sure my site worked with Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari and there appeared to be no problems. Originally, I had the stair effect go right across the page but I scaled this back because it could not be viewed very well with a hand-held device.

REQUIREMENTS

I did my best to meet the requirements of all the Moodle LMS criteria. Here is a breakdown of what I included in my site:

• Splash page with a graphic user interface (GUI)
  On my splash page I put six navigation buttons, which direct the user to the important pages in my Moodle course when clicked. I made sure to link the images as well as the descriptive text on the splash page. I positioned these buttons by placing them in a table. I tried to give my splash page a look that was fun, colorful, and clean and I think I achieved that. It helped that I created my own header, which is vibrant and fits the site completely.
• Two (or more) complete learning modules (module shells or placeholder pages not acceptable)
  I created two complete learning modules along with one extensive introduction module including a welcome page, outline, video, key terms wiki, and three discussion forums. The two learning modules are designed to give short lessons with intriguing videos followed by a practice assignment or a discussion forum. There are various quizzes throughout and a final unit test at the very end.
  
• One (or more) module programmed for selective release
  Creating a module with selective release was no easy task. I do, however, feel that I have come up with a method that works and is very effective as well. first of all, I love the idea of selective release. This was the method used in ETEC 565A and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It kept me focused and on task with the rest of the class.To make it so that module 2 was locked until a certain date, I created a lesson and linked it to a home page that contains a link to each of my module 2 pages. I did it this way because the lesson feature on Moodle allows for selective release. Once the selected date arrives, the students will have access to the module 2 home page and can then continue the course.It took some time to tweak things, but I managed to get it working. 

  The one thing to note is that unlike module 1, the links for module 2 will never be visible on the course main page. That is because I did not want students to be able to bypass the module 2 home page by accessing the pages in the Moodle main page. This was necessary for the selective release to work. To doubly ensure I fulfilled the selective release requirement, in addition to my pre-programming of module 2 I plan to manually release module one by having the eye closed until I want the course open to the students.

• Two general discussion forum topics
  I created three general discussion forums with no groups. These forums are “Icebreaker Discussion”, “Frames of Reference Forum”, and “Einstein’s Famous Equation Forum”. The “Announcement forum” was created in the same way as the other three, but it is meant to be a place where the teacher can put important announcements. Since Special Relativity is a very difficult topic with mind boggling concepts, the three general discussion forums will be a place where students can bounce ideas off of each other and reflect on the lessons in a community setting.
• One group discussion forum for (at least) 2 groups (must set up groups; they need not be populated)
  I created three discussion forums for two separate groups. The forums are “Why Am I Learning This”, “Time Dilation Forum “, and “Length Contraction Forum”. Sometimes it is nice to have an asynchronous discussion with a small group instead of a large one. Small groups allow for individual student’s voices to be heard and more people feel part of the conversation.

CONCLUSION

Overall, creating my Moodle course has been very fulfilling and rewarding. I feel that I have accomplished something very practical that I set out to do in the very beginning. It is exciting to know that I can now use Moodle in my classes and the skills I have developed in ETEC 565A can be put to good use. I have learned how to think critically about LMS creation and I now have the necessary resources and know-how to make sound pedagogical decisions as it applies to any LMS. I am very pleased with ETEC 565A and would recommend it to any instructor.