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Moodle Training – Use of Online Learning Community/e-Learning Technologies

(The Japan Disposition Workshop: Knowledge Transfer Seminar)

Andrew C. Samuels, Information Technology Specialist Trainer

c/o Ministry of Education, JamaicaMona High School

Presented at Denham Town High School

Kingston, JamaicaJuly 16, 2013

KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER WORKSHOP FOR e-Learning Educators of the 21st Century

Theme: “The e-Learning Teacher - enriching classroom deliver!”.

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Overview

• Moodle – “As a Student” & “As a Teacher”• Use of PowerPoint in Learning• Use of Eclipse (Puzzle Maker)• Incorporating Web Video in Lessons (YouTube)• Introducing e-Video Lesson Notes (Camtasia)• Creating Online Fillable Exams/Activities (with MS

Word)• Equipment Handling – use of A/V Tools for learning• Use of Video Conferencing in Classroom

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What is Moodle?

• Moodle is an Open Source Course Management System (CMS)

• Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

• It has become very popular among educators around the world as a tool for creating online dynamic web sites for their students.

• To work, it needs to be installed on a web server somewhere, either on one of your own computers or one at a web hosting company.

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Focus of MoodleThe focus of the Moodle project is always on giving educators the best tools to manage and promote learning, but there are many ways to use Moodle:• Moodle has features that allow it to scale to very large deployments and

hundreds of thousands of students, yet it can also be used for a primary school or an education hobbyist.

• Many institutions use it as their platform to conduct fully online courses, while some use it simply to augment face-to-face courses (known as blended learning).

• Many of our users love to use the activity modules (such as forums, databases and wikis) to build richly collaborative communities of learning around their subject matter (in the social constructionist tradition), while others prefer to use Moodle assess learning using assignments or quizzes.

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Let’s Get Started

DOING MOODLE AS A STUDENT

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A Online Course is given a Title/Course Name

Here is a Course in CXC Geography.

Topic: Rivers1. In this segment, we will review and discuss the

use of tools on Moodle to do a lesson and have you participate as a student.

2. Please take this activity seriously as you will be required to design a short course in the follow-up activity of this learning exercise.

URL: http://itsilms.owl-tech.edu.jmLOGIN: first initial last name (asamuels)PASSWORD: denham123

You may also log on as a GUEST for this exercise

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Once you have logged into Moodle, you will see the courses that were set up for you to participate in.

Course Main Page

Some courses, you will later find out can be created with Guest Access and allows persons to view content, who are not students in class who were enrolled!

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Effective use of Office Productivity Tools

1. PowerPoint files can be loaded to Moodle for students. Similarly, any file created in Microsoft Office can be added.

Let us review PowerPoint and Activity Sheet on Rivers

2. Chat rooms – a great way to get students to interact by sharing content and stimulating discussion. We know, social chat is the biggest thing since yo-yo!

Let us try chatting.

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Effective use of Chat Rooms

The term chat room is primarily used to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. The term can thus mean any technology ranging from real-time online chat and virtual interaction with strangers over instant messaging and online forums to fully immersive graphical social environments. Source: Wikipedia

In a chat room, the teacher can set the questions and encourage students to discuss content. Can be done in small group or large group.

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Glossary – Useful for building key concepts

A glossary, also known as a vocabulary, or clavis, is an alphabetical list of terms in a particular domain of knowledge with the definitions for those terms.

When used, Glossary

allow students to build

vocabulary and reinforce

key points in definitions.

Are there any drawbacks to using

Glossary?

How else can Glossary be used positively in a

Constructivist Classroom?

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LET’S TALK

Student CenteredLearning

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Web Content In The Classroom

• Web content is the textual, visual or aural content that is encountered as part of the user experience on websites. It may include, among other things: text, images, sounds, videos and animations.

Web Links you find on the Internet maybe posted and shared so others can benefit from the

information.

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Online Testing

• Online Testing is a tool used to assess a student’s competence using real time computing skills. (Samuels 2013)

Password: test123

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Part II

DOING MOODLE AS A TEACHER

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Course Creation – First Step

As a Teacher, the primary role of Moodle is used to create courses for your students to take part in online. Let us go

through in how to create a course!

Follow and create your own Subject based course, in which

you will use three of the activities to design the course.

What do you do?

Course Creation1. Create the Course online2. Add the content to the Course3. Add Activities to the Course

EnrolmentCreate log in for students (done once) using Name and email address.Enrol them in course

Monitor Students in CourseMark Assignments and Give feedback along with grades.

A

B

C

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Course CreatorMoodle

Is ManagedFrom Here

Users: This option allows you to create the persons who are to take your course and assign their roles.Courses: This option allows you to create a new course for student to take. Inside the course, your course activities are placed.Grades: Allow you to adjust grading scheme to match your school’s system.

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Course Creation

1.Choose Courses2.Select ADD / EDIT Course

You may select ADD A NEW

COURSE

OR A NEW CATEGORY WITHIN AN

EXISTING COURSE

Choose Denham Town and add course there

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Course TreeCourse:

Information TechnologySub Category: These maybe the classes /groups taughtGrade 8 DGrade 8 EGrade 10 Option AGrade 11 Option A

Choose Add a New Sub Category

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Creating a course Choose create a course

Provide Course Information:•Course Full Name•Course Short Name•Course ID Number•Course Summary•Format of Course•Num. of Weeks/Topics•Course Start Date•Hide Sections•News Item to Show•Show Grade book to student•Show activity report•Maximum Upload size•Guest Access

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COURSE CREATED

Following the creation of a course, the task of adding content is dependent on the teacher. You must determine what Resources and Activities are best to be used to achieve your objectives.

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Adding Course ResourcesFile: When you wish to share with your students a simple file such as a Word-processed document or slideshow (e.g. created in MS Word, PowerPoint, or Open Office) you use the file resource type. It allows you to upload and display a variety of resources on your course. How your students access them depends on your choices in File resource settings. Note also that they will only be able to open your files if they have the appropriate software on their own computers.

Folder: A folder allows a teacher to display several course resources together. The resources may be of different types and they may be uploaded in one go, as a zipped folder which is then unzipped, or they may be added one at a time to an empty folder on the course page.

Label: 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 different 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 different areas.

Page: A page resource creates a link to a screen that displays the content created by the teacher. The robust Text editor allows the page to display many different kinds of content such as plain text, images, audio, video, embedded code or a combination of all these.

URL: A URL (Uniform or Universal Resource Locator) is a link on the internet to a website or online file. Teachers can use the URL resource to provide their students with web links for research, saving the student time and effort in manually typing out the address. The URLS can be displayed in various ways - see the URL resource settings for example, opening in a new window so a student can access and use the URL, close it and return easily to their original Moodle course page.

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Acti

vities

An activity is a general name for a group of features in a Moodle course. Usually an activity is something that a student will do that interacts with other students and or the teacher.

There are 14 different types of activities in the standard Moodle that can be found on the "add an activity" drop down menu.

Assignments Enable teachers to grade and give comments on uploaded files and assignments created on and off line

Chat Allows participants to have a real-time synchronous discussion

Choice A teacher asks a question and specifies a choice of multiple responses

Database Enables participants to create, maintain and search a bank of record entries

External tool Allows participants to interact with LTI compliant learning resources and activities on other web sites.

Forum Allows participants to have asynchronous discussions

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Acti viti esGlossary Enables participants to create and maintain a list of definitions, like a dictionary

Lesson For delivering content in flexible ways

Quiz Allows the teacher to design and set quiz tests, which may be automatically marked and feedback and/or to correct answers shown

SCORM Enables SCORM packages to be included as course content

Survey For gathering data from students to help teachers learn about their class and reflect on their own teaching

Wiki A collection of web pages that anyone can add to or edit

Workshop Enables peer assessment

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Let’s create User AccountsUsers: The user is a person who makes use of the Online Learning Management System. There are a variety of ways a person use Moodle.

Roles: A role is a collection of permissions defined for the whole system that you can assign to specific users in specific context/

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ROLE ASSIGNMENTYou can determine the rights Users have by specifying their roles in the Allow Role Assignment settings.

To edit a role:Go to Administration > Site administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles.Click the edit icon opposite the role you want to edit. For example "student".On the editing role page, change permissions as required for each capability.Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the "Save changes" button.

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Adding New Users for your course:Select UsersChoose Add A New User

Important changes are in REDSupply the information and select Create User

How to add users?

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EnrollmentThis is the process of assigning students to take a course being taught.

1. Open the CourseSelect UsersChoose Enrolled Users

2. Choose Enrol UsersFrom the list of users in the system, choose the persons you wish to enrol and enrol them.Also, use the Plus Sign to assign additional roles if needs be.

3. Enrol users4. Add additional role only if the needs require that the Student must be a Teacher, Manager, etc.

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Assignment MarkingDemonstration will be done in the interest of time. Video will be developed and posted for teachers to benefit from using.

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