Moodle Project Paper-Ellis

Teacher Professional Development through Moodle

We developed a course to be used as professional development for teachers. We entitled our course “Find, Save Share.” The course focused on practical web based tools for K-12 teachers. Specifically we designed three sessions around using Google Reader, Delicious and Diigo. These classes are designed to introduce teachers to these tools. Our hope is that teachers by the end of the three sessions will feel comfortable enough with the tools, specifically Google Reader and Delicious, that they will continue to use them in the future. The ultimate goal is that they will feel so comfortable that they will go on to share these tools with others.

In creating this course we used many different administrative tools. Since this was our first experience being the author of the course we tried to incorporate as many features as possible to get a feel for the ease of creation and the information and analysis that was possible on the instructor side. Most importantly we divided our sessions neatly using the sections feature. Within each section there were pre and post assignments. To facilitate these assignments, we created multiple forums so we could monitor student participation and communicate effectively with them, as in the case of the help forum. We created a pre and post quiz to monitor student progress and development. We created an assignments section for the items that needed to be completed outside of the web tools.

One of the assignments we created was the development of a glossary. We also imbedded many links and resources to aid our students. In this course we wanted to try to push the teachers to be more independent learners so along with the pre-work there is a lot of assistance in various forms. Other administrative functions we used include posting in the upcoming events section and the creation of a calendar. At the end of the course we included a survey so that users could give feedback on the content and delivery of the course material.

Creating the course basics in Moodle was rather straight forward. It was easy to layout the course sequentially and add basic features like links and forums. The more time consuming aspect was the details of the layout. Creating the quiz and survey took some time. It was also difficult to figure out how to change the look of the page. Some of the features were much less intuitive to add than others. Once we knew how to create different features it was easy to edit them to fit our needs. It was also easy to remove items. As we had more detail in our course we found that we did not need all the forums we had created and it was extremely easy to remove them.

The quiz feature was one of my favorites. I liked how images and video could be imbedded into the quiz. However this feature was one of the most puzzling in terms of establishing what information was available to the instructor and what information was available to the student. Since the pre and post quiz was the same we wanted students to know how they did without showing them the answers on the pre-quiz. On the post quiz we wanted to make sure that they had not only there score but also the correct information. We also tried to incorporate some short answer responses which proved much more difficult to analyze. Again most of the features were easy to add and edit with a few exceptions. Only one person in the group figured out how to change the look of the site.

We had 3 people test out the site. Two of which were teachers. I was one of the participants since I had never had any experience with topics for our course. In almost all areas the course scored exemplary except in the area of course design and delivery. The main issue was there was to much depth being taught. Since this course is designed for new users it became overwhelming trying to share our newly created accounts in the first session. In the future there will be another session added before the session on Diigo. In this session the instructors will review the power of sharing accounts and information. The tools taught in the first two sessions were a huge hit. All participants found them practical and relatively easy to navigate. I might eliminate the Diigo lesson for more novice users and allow more practice and expansion of Google Reader and Delicious.

Our course used many of the characteristics of Virtual Dynamic Instructional and Learning Systems. We organized each session so that the pre-work, deliverables and objectives were very clear. All three categories had a strong connection with each other so that every activity had a purpose. Students had opportunities to work individually and collaboratively. The collaboration aspect was one of the foundations of the course as they connected with each other through their web based tools. The students also received individual instruction when needed to help them meet the objectives.

My main contribution to this project was my teacher perspective. The two other members in my group run the computer lab and provide much of the technology based staff development at their sights. I took the out line from their instructor perspective outline and changed it to student focused direction. I made sure that the objectives were clear and that the pre-work, assignments and assessments all aligned. I also made sure that all needed resources were properly located so that users could find them. As noted earlier I piloted the course giving expensive feedback and helping to make changes. I also created the forums, added other features as well as creating the Dimdim room.

Dana, my other group member, created much of the content of the course. She picked the tools and created the order. She was the instructor in the pilot. She was also the one who figured out how to change the background of the page. Sue, the third member, was the Moodle guru. She became the expert on many of the Moodle tools and features. She created the pre and post quiz as well as adding on many of the supporting features. Both helped to find the outside resources that are imbedded throughout the course.