moodle newsletter - december 2011

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A Note from John S. Lucas

The past month, IES Abroad Moodlers around the world have been very busy. Faculty champions h

completed a survey about Moodle use at their Centers in order to tell the regional educational technolo

specialists (RETS) and the Chicago Moodle team about current Moodle use at their Centers and about th

expectations and needs for future training. In the coming weeks, the RETS will create a plan to meet the ne

of the faculty members at Centers in their regions. Some RETS may host faculty champions at their own Cent

some may visit other Centers, and all of them will work with their faculty remotely to provide training a

support. RETS will be contacting faculty champions with more information as their plans take shape.

cial thanks to Dieter Strobl from the IES Abroad Vienna Center for submitting these photos!

December

In November, Kattrina and Erika hosted several webinars to introduce MoodleLearn to faculty champio

Webinar participants gave positive feedback over the phone, and we hope that you have found the informat

helpful. In early 2012, Erika and Kattrina will host a make-up session about MoodleLearn for people who we

unable to attend last month, as well as a webinar for faculty about using Gradebook and a webinar for Moodle administrators.We are

also starting to implement assessment tools to measure Moodles impact. As part of this eort, we have added six new items to the

course evaluation form distributed to students at the end of each course. Some Centers will include these questions for the Fall 2011

semester, but many Centers will include them for the rst time in Spring 2012. The new items include:

Like other questions on the evaluation, students will respond to these items with strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree

This will only be a part of our assessment of Moodles impact at IES Abroad; over the next year, we will determine other ways to

quantitatively and qualitatively assess the Moodle initiative.

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The instructor used Moodle as appropriate to course content.

The resources provided in Moodle helped me to meet the learning outcomes for the course.

The activities in Moodle enhanced my classroom experience.

I used Moodle to extend my learning outside the classroom. The activities in Moodle helped me to learn more about the local community.

The interactive activities in Moodle allowed me to share information and opinions with my fellow

students outside the classroom.

As a part of our partnership with Woord College, several IES Abroad Centers will be hosting several Woord faculty members over the

next year. The selected faculty and the Centers they are visiting are:

Dr. Beate Brunow, IES Abroad Berlin

Dr. Begoa Caballero Garcia, IES Abroad Buenos Aires & IES Abroad Santiago

Dr. Mark Ferguson, IES Abroad London & IES Abroad Dublin

Dr. Kaye Savage, IES Abroad San Jos

Dr. Cynthia Fowler, IES Abroad Cape Town

During these week-long exchanges, the visiting faculty member will present a master class or lecture on a topic related to his or he

academic expertise, visit classes, provide an informal talk to students, facilitate a workshop on the use of educational technology fo

faculty, and engage in his or her own research or other academic activities.

Finally, I am very pleased to announce that IES Abroad Chicago will begin using Moodle this Spring to share information and

communicate with the U.S. study abroad administrators and faculty members who will travel to our Centers for some of the upcoming

faculty seminars, familiarization trips, and program reviews. Kattrina and Erika have been working with the Program Associates and

Deans in Chicago to learn basic Moodle functionality in order to begin designing these faculty development courses.

I wish you a happy and safe holiday season.

Happy Moodling!


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December

Featured Moodle Module - Choice Activity

New Modules/BlocksAdd Labels to Help Organize

Your Moodle Course

Forum Module:

The Forum Module can be the most important - it is here tha

most discussion takes place. Forums can be structured in

dierent ways, and can include peer rating of each posting

The postings can be viewed in a variety for formats, and can

include attachments. By subscribing to a forum, participant

receive copies of each new posting in their email. The facult

can require all students to subscribe to the forum.

Unlike the Survey Activity, the Choice Activity allow

you to ask any question youd like, as long as i

multiple choice. Once youve set up your choice, it ac

as a poll in your course. Students are able to click on t

choice and select their answer. You can choose whe

and if students are able to view the results of the cho

A label serves as a spacer on a Moodle course page.

It can be used to add text, images, multimedia or

code in between other resources in the dierent

sections. It is a very versatile resource and can help

to improve the appearance of a course if used

thoughtfully. Banners or descriptions may be added

to labels to distinguish between and highlight

dierent areas.

Journal Module:

This module is a very important reective activity. The teach

asks the student to reect on a particular topic, and the

student can edit and rene his/her answer over time. This

answer is private and can only be seen by the teacher, who

can oer feedback and/or give a grade on each journal entr

It's usually a good idea to have about one Journal activity pe

week.

This newsletter was sent to provide the latest information for IES Abroad Moodle.

IES Abroad Chicago

33 N. LaSalle Street, Chicago, IL 60602-2602Phone: 1.800.995.2300

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You may even allow them to change their minds about a choice theyve selected. After students have answered the choic

you can view their responses. When viewing the choice results you will see a column for each response along with th

students name corresponding to that response. Selected responses may be deleted, for example to delete test respons

that you have entered. The choice activity can be used as a virtual sign-up sheet for eld trips or events. It can also be use

to obtain feedback data from students, or as a quick poll to gauge opinions about a particular topic. Choices can encourag

students to think in advance about a follow-up related activity, such as a forum discussion or an online text assignmen

Choices can also be used as a starting point to encourage students to think about and articulate their knowledge an

understanding of a topic.

To create a label for a topic or section: Click the Turn editing on button.

Go to any week/topic. Click the Add a resource

drop-down.

Select Insert a label.

Click the Insert Table button to create a one

row, one column label. You can add text,

background colors and border designs to your

label.


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Faculty Access for IES MoodleLearn SiteThe IES MoodleLearn site is an excellent informational resource and training site for all IES Centers. MoodleLearn cont

video tutorials and how-to reference guides for Moodle activities and modules, practice courses and information ab

upcoming Moodle events and conferences. The IES Center Directors can request access to the IES MoodleLearn site for tfaculty via the IES Helpdesk Ticketing System: https://helpdesk.iesabroad.org/

IES Center Directors can request access to the IES MoodleLearn site for their faculty members by submitting a Helpdesk ti

to [email protected]. In the helpdesk ticket, include the rst and last names of the faculty members and their e

addresses.

More Moodle Webinars

Coming Soon!

Moodle Webinars on Gradebook and on

Moodle Administration for IES Center

Admins are coming soon!

Dates will be emailed to the RETS, Faculty

Champions and Center Admins for

scheduling.

Moodle Course Backups

All IES Moodle courses are congured to automatically create back-ups every Saturday at 12pm (your centers time zone). Ple

note that Moodle may be slower on weekends due to course back-ups. The back-up reports can be viewed from your cenMoodle home page under Site Administration > Reports > Backups. Back-ups that complete successfully appear in green.

back-up status appears at the end of the row and the status legend is listed below:

1. OK the back-up completed successfully

2. Error The back-up procedure has found an error and has not completed successfully. These are controlled errors

and in this case the scheduled back-up continues to the next course. This error happens mainly when a course le

too large (over 50 MB) or when data is uploading or downloading to/from a course, which causes the back-up to st

3. Unnished The back-up procedure expires without a known reason.

4. Skipped The course is unavailable to students and has not been changed in the last 31 days. This is not an error

situation, but instead a feature that saves process time for sites with many unavailable old courses.

ES Abroad instructors should regularly back-up their courses to a ash drive or hard drive in order to safeguard against the

of student and faculty data. Back-up and restore features are available for every source, and faculty members have access to

eature in Moodle. For your convenience, a copy of the Back-up and Restore guide can be found on the MoodleLearn

under Faculty Resources.

Need Help With Moodle Gradebook?

Its Now On MoodleLearn!

Faculty can use the Moodle Gradebook for calculating grades and

recording scores. Students can check their grades any time and comp

themselves to the class average. Weve added lessons outlining four n

examples which explains the methods faculty can set-up and begin us

the gradebook to meet their needs.

Simple Weighted Mean of Grades

Weighted Mean of Grades

Mean of Grades

Sum of Grades

Four ways the gradebook can be calculated are:

Each gradebook example on MoodleLearn has detailed information ab

how each grading method is calculated. Sample assignments, and do

loadable grading worksheets are included as well. If you have any quest

about gradebook, please email your IES Moodle Administrators.

moodle newsletter - december 2011

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