Moodle Project Report

Moodle Project—Working With Digital Photographs
Cynthia Jackson and Robert Conrad

Administrative Functions

Besides the all important "Turn Editing On/Off" feature, Robert and I used the following administrative functions frequently in our Moodle course: Files, Questions, and Settings. We also investigated Assign Roles, Grades, Backup, and Reports, knowing that when this course is on-line we would want to use these assets.

Course Creation Functions

Becoming comfortable with the look and feel of Moodle took us some time. We had both used it as students, but we were novice administrators/instructors. We use the Moodle Support site frequently! In the setting function, we changed our theme to Serenity thinking that it worked best with our photographs. We also inserted a site description that we moved to the top right of our Moodle course.

At first we thought creating a "web site" for each of our modules would be what we were looking for, but we couldn't "see" them, so we soon discovered "labels." We used labels for instruction, design elements, explanation, and link creation. We also used "files" to house all of the digital photographs that we used for design features and quiz questions. We could also see that this would be a useful tool for future course readings.

Creating questions for our quizzes took a while. We did not have quizzes to import, and we are curious as to how that feature functions. So, we created our quizzes one question at a time. This was tedious. We definitely used the "copy" and "paste" functions frequently, but it took us awhile to figure out how to add questions to our quiz. Once we discovered that little trick, things moved along at a quicker pace. We do like the fact that there is a Question Bank that stores our questions, so that we can use them to add to future quizzes or the final exams. The choice of question type is extensive and we used quite a few: multiple choice, short answer, and true/false. We randomized answer choice (except on the few "all of the above") choices we had, and we used the feedback function to provide clues as a method of backfading if our learners needed the assistance.

From an instructor's perspective, we liked the Reports feature, but being that this course is not active, we can only see our activity. However, we could see the use of this as an analysis tool to help guide our instruction.

We backed up our work using the Backup tool and we changed some of the settings on grades to view the different functions.

Editing Functions

We found the editing tools an intuitive function of Moodle. The symbols made sense and were easy to use. It is pretty easy to figure out that means "delete." The tool was probably the most used as we worked through our design and development phase of this course. The tool at times seemed a bit cumbersome at first. We kept thinking, "Why can't we just place our cursor where we want our resource or activity to appear?" However, we soon became pretty adept at moving our items into a logical instructional sequence.
From both a design and development tool, we could see that the tool would be useful in the future to hide items from student view. Seeing the entire course at once creates a lot of extraneous cognitive load.

Course Description

Working With Digital Photographs is a seven unit course on the basic process of accessing, editing and using digital photographs. It is intended for 9-12th grade high school students who will have access to PC computer workstations with the Windows operating system and Photoshop software. The overall objective is to teach students how to properly handle, edit, backup, and store their own digital photographs. Each student will create a personal Google Site where they will display their work and describe the processes they have learned in class. A culminating event of the class will be for students to share their site with their classmates and comment on the results. This course will be implemented in a "live" classroom where students have access to an instructor. We fully developed the first three units.

Rubric Assessment by Live Participants

Success of Course

I had a high school student preview the course using the High Quality Online Rubric. She is a junior and a photography student in her high school. She spent a little under an hour going through the site and making comments on the rubric I gave her. Most of her comments were rankings were "Exemplary," and she gave us explanations about her answers. She struggled with the questions concerning alignment to objectives noting, "I really don't know what that means other than you are teaching me what you said you would be teaching."

Changes

One of the changes that I would make is investigating a different way to layout the course. My previewer gave us an "Effective" rating in the second row under "Online Organization and Design." She wrote, "I was overwhelmed at first. I had to go through it awhile before I could figure out the separate parts." As we finished creating our first course, we came across the words "Pages" in the Moodle Support tool. Another factor would be "hiding" future weeks or modules. The only concern with that aspect, is that when we designed this course, we wanted to keep the activities asynchronous as a way to differentiate for our diverse learner's needs.

Positive Aspects to Keep

Our previewer made positive comments about our activities. When asked about visual, textual, and kinesthetic elements she noted, "I liked the Sample Google Site. It helped me picture what my site should look like." She also commented on the videos saying, "It is nice to have a video. I could hear and see the information, and in class I can't rewind my teacher." One of the best things she said is, "I felt like the quizzes helped me learn." Based on her analysis, I would definitely keep the videos, resources, and quizzes.

VDILS
One of the key features to our course is the student-created Google site that serves as an ePortfolio to house and showcase their learning. In the first Module, students upload their URL to one of our forums creating a dynamic element that is key to the concept of VDILS. These sites will continue to change and evolve as our course is presented and the learner interacts.

The course content itself will grow as students share their knowledge through the Reading and Discussion Forum. The students have choice in what articles to read and share giving the learner autonomy. Most of the activities we chose provide not only autonomy but flexibility as the learner engages in the content, makes choices about photographs, reads and responds to classmates, and asks and answers questions.

Our course follows the structural elements of VDILS not only in our syllabus but also in each module. We set our objectives, define and explain activities and media, and give clear due dates for each deliverable. We are excited to implement this course with "real" students and see how these principles impact learning.