This is an online workshop resource I have put together, both as support/review material for attendees at a recent PD session I did at Gordon TAFE but also for people completely fresh to the notion of DIPA(CT) who might like to utilize the tutorials below for some personal professional development or just exploration of ideas.
DIPA(CT) is a personal and rather simple approach to teaching and learning, and while the examples provided here are meant for a vocational education context I daresay that the basic principles are at least reasonably relevant to almost all subjects and teaching/learning contexts.
For the sake of convenience, I have broken the workshop into separate parts, in order (though of course you may like to pay more attention to some over others).
PART 1: Introduction and Warm Up
PART 2: DIPA(CT) Defined and Explained
PART 3: DIPA(CT) in Action - Manufacturing Technology
PART 4: DIPA(CT) in Action - Applied Literacy
PART 5: DIPA(CT) in Action - Carpentry
PART 6: Wrap Up and Final Reflections
The two references at the end there are to this actual blog post and the extensive step-by-step tutorial I made some time back for screencasting - available here.
Hope DIPA(CT) gave you a few things to think about... thanks for watching (and thinking), if you did! And don't be shy in dropping any feedback or impressions in the comments section below.
In a previous post I demonstrated how to set up basic groups within Moodle courses, and mentioned that one of the advantages of this set up was that it becomes easier to check or track grades and activity according to specific groups (for example, individual classes of learners) rather than having to wade through the results of an entire cohort.
When you go to check grades or progress, two of the most common routes are via the grader report or user report. Here's how you can check results for designated groups for both of those report settings:
Just note that if you're having trouble seeing those group options in the reports (drop down menus), you may need to go back and do a tiny bit of tinkering with your overall course settings:
Settings > Edit Settings > Groups > Group Mode > Visible Groups
Trust me, when you're doing a lot of checking and tracking across a number of different classes, having them set up in groups and accessing the grader or user reports in this way can save you a lot of time.
Hope you found this useful, and if you're after more Moodle tutorials the entire bank is here.
If you have a course with a lot of users enrolled, you might like to consider setting up groups within the course. You could do this to designate class groupings, levels or other groupings according to your needs.
There can be a lot of benefits of having groups within the course; key among them to my thinking are (1) the capacity to monitor and check grades by group rather than entire cohort, (2) allocating specific tasks or content to particular groups (facilitating customisation), and (3) setting up collaborative tasks or projects to be handled in designated groups.
Here are the basics involved in sorting your enrolled users into specific groups in Moodle:
In a follow up tutorial I'll be demonstrating how to quickly check grades and activity by group rather than whole cohort, and other practical uses for group settings will be added in due course.
You can see all of my Moodle tutorials at the central resource page here.
You've entered your Moodle page for the first time, and managed to put a basic header image at the top of the course...
Now, what to do with all those blank unit/topic blocks?
There are plenty of ways you might go about utilising these topic blocks to organise, sequence and present your course content and activities. It depends a lot on the nature of the course and what is involved, but here are a couple of examples and options that might help you at the initial stage:
These examples are fairly basic for now, so don't be afraid to experiment and play around with how you utilise the unit/topic blocks.
Check out my Moodle Tutorials page for other demonstrations on what you can do with unit/topic blocks, like adding content and 'decorating' them to look more appealing on the course page.
I think one of the important things to come to grips with when it comes to Moodle is that it is an LMS -- a Learning Management System, and not (by default) limited to being only a system for online tasks and grades for those tasks.
As we all know, not all learning happens (or needs to happen) in front of a computer. But that doesn't mean Moodle can't be your central gathering place for all task work and assessments, irrespective of the context or objectives they involve.
You can, for example, use the Moodle LMS as a place to feature introductions and instructions for offline, more hands-on or F2F interactive tasks, as well as incorporate assessment for those tasks in the one central Moodle gradebook.
One way to do that simply and conveniently is to set up a section in your gradebook for 'offline' tasks (named however it suits your course -- for example: fitness tasks, class discussions, onsite work tasks, etc.) and utilise the 'offline assignment' tool:
See a larger, higher definition version of this video here.
That's all fine and dandy, but you might like to go a bit further than that...
Even though a task happens offline, there are ways we can facilitate reflection and deeper awareness of those tasks here in the Moodle interface (encouraging more integration of LLN, for example), AND provide crucial evidence of those offline, F2F, practical, action-based tasks.
To do that, the 'offline assignment' activity tool probably isn't our best option, because (based on the format of that tool) the learners can't contribute any sort of follow up work to the task and we can't attach any files of our own.
Using the 'upload a file' assignment activity, we can document and work around offline tasks to include valuable follow up and consolidation for the learners and provide specific evidence of task performance or completion via photographs, audio or video.
Here's one way this can be done in Moodle:
See a larger, higher definition version of this video here.
Basically, using Moodle task and assessment tools, you can still create a sort of 'one stop shop' for all the important documentation and assessment information, but do so in ways that allow you to document and track a huge range of both online and offline tasks.
Great for centralised tracking... whether you're a learner, a teacher, a program manager, or an auditor.
Using Moodle to complete coursework isn't always a walk in the park for a lot of learners, depending on the course content, design and relative online learning experience of your students.
One way to facilitate understanding of where to go, what to do (and how) for your learners is to create a unit walk through resource for each Moodle unit/topic block. You could do this with text and images, but I've found that an audio-visual resource like a screencast gets things across in the most dynamic and effective way.
Here is an example unit walk through video I've just finished as part of a new Moodle course:
That's fine, and perhaps that's all the learners will need. We could create a link to this video at the start of the unit it applies to, perhaps supported via a direct email with the same link.
However, I've generally found it's better to go a bit further than just showing an instructional video. I feature my unit walk through as an introductory 'assignment' that learners need to complete before engaging with the main unit materials. They need to take notes about the video to help them pay more specific attention to it, and to show me just what each learner has understood about what they need to do in the unit.
This process can help answer a lot of questions or misunderstandings before learners get into their coursework, and it helps me target the students who need more specific or hands on assistance.
Here's how I do that in Moodle using the Lesson -> Essay Question function (basically, access to the unit walk through an embedded video and some prompts in 'essay mode' for the learners to take notes or ask questions in response to:
If you're curious about the screencast angle here, I've got an extensive tutorial on how to make screencastselsewhere on this blog.
Good luck with it!
;-)
All of my Moodle tutorials are available in an ongoing bank of resources featured here.
Our Year 11 Applied Learning students have completed their intensive foundation literacy course in Term 1 (mainly geared around some literacy basics and integrated with tool and workplace safety considerations) and next week many of them will commence the next (Intermediate VCAL) level.
Based on a revision of what we did with students last year, and bearing in mind we teach 16-17 year old learners preparing for trades, here's what we have in store for them...
The learners read a complex text written by a teacher, talking about a particular skill or attribute he has. The text explores where the skill might have developed from (in childhood experience), how it helps in professional life now, and how it might be developed further for different future applications.
Following a range of comprehension tasks targeting purpose, main ideas, supporting ideas and effectiveness of the text, students then compare this text with one they did themselves last term listing their own skills and attributes (with the comparison being more about how the texts are organised and presented).
Students then write their own 'in the know' texts, talking about a particular skill or attribute of their own.
The learners work their way through an assignment that helps them identify all sorts of important information about their given trade and regulations governing apprenticeships. It features everything from trade-specific union details to government regulations and minimum wages for different years of an apprenticeship.
Based on what they find and read, the learners compile a detailed report to present the important information.
The learners read an advisory/instructional text from one of the country's most popular recruitment websites explaining what should go into resumes for school leavers. After demonstrating a comprehension of the text, they compare it to an actual resume made for an apprentice electrician and see how and where the resume applies the specific advice from the article.
Of course, from there the learners go ahead and create their own work resume.
The learners read two very different texts that both present information about they key (pun intended) tools for locksmithing. They complete comprehension questions and a detailed comparison of the two texts (particularly in terms of which would be more useful for a beginner level locksmith apprentice).
Following that the learners create their own 'tools of the trade' texts, targeting 4-6 of the most important tools they think new apprentices need to know about for their own trades and emulating the more informative of the two texts they read about locksmithing tools.
The learners read two different texts explaining how to do or build something. They demonstrate comprehension of both texts and compare them in detail, commenting on their effectiveness.
Based on the text they found to be clearest or most useful, the students then create their own how to texts, based on a process or outcome common to their personal interest or work experience to date.
The learners compose work journals based on a period of work placement, integrated with material they already put together for their Work Related Skills modules.
Following this they then look at two fellow students' work journals and complete some comprehension and comparison/effectiveness notes. This, in addition to comprising reading comprehension outcomes, becomes a feedback process for students to adapt and improve their own initial work journal drafts.
The learners read an extensive comment made on a forum about the topic of bullying apprentices at work (in this case an older experienced tradesperson reflecting on his own experiences and lambasting some of the comments from younger people on the forum claiming that bullying is just fun and games). They then compare this with a recent report on a news website explaining new laws and punishments for workplace bullying in the wake of the suicide of a young person who was bullied mercilessly at work.
Based on what they have read and explored, the learners are asked to respond to the question: Should workplace bullies be sent to jail? They have the option of completing an argumentative or discursive piece on the topic.
Students read a text from a newspaper about the issue of Lewis Hamilton being fined for 'hooning' and having his car impounded while in Melbourne for the Grand Prix a couple of years ago. In the same article, Mark Webber is quoted as saying that his own state (Victoria) has become a 'nanny state'.
This text is explored and compared to two other texts: one about a journalist who lost his own brother at a young age from a road accident (in response to Mark Webber's comment and quoting all sorts of statistics based on Victoria's TAC campaigns), and an obituary article written by our school's own principal following the horrific road accident death of one of our own students (weeks after he obtained his license) a couple of years ago.
Based on these readings, learners are then invited to respond to the question: Do we in fact live in a 'nanny state' in Victoria, when it comes to road rules?
All of this material is facilitated through our Moodle LMS, with both in-class and distance mode options available. And of course, in support of the 'emergent' curriculum, learners are free to replace any or all of these units with ones of their own design -- so long as they can show that they are meeting the VCAL Literacy outcomes at Intermediate level.
Later I'll present Part 2 of this applied literacy curriculum business and try to demonstrate how we do things at Year 12 level. Very different!
This is a bit of a Moodle tutorial 'by request'... As part of a kind comment on the post and tutorial I featured about making navigation menus to avoid the so-called 'scroll of death' in Moodle (available here), Julie asked me how I managed to format background colours for individual table cells as opposed to having the whole table change to one background colour.
The solution/process is demonstrated below, Julie!
I made this tutorial some time ago and for some reason neglected to upload it here on the blog. It covers some of the important basics for someone new to Moodle in terms of just working with topic/unit blocks to start featuring and organising content and assignments within a given course unit or focus. In many ways this draws together a number of other targeted tutorials I've already made (you'll see the relevant links below), but in this case the whole process of creating a unit is built and presented in one sequence.
What you will see here includes:
Making a simple name or title for a unit/topic block
Adding different learning resources to that particular unit (in this case a video file and a worksheet in MS Word format) -> Also demonstrated here
Including an assignment upload requirement -> Also shown here
Demonstration of how students can go about uploading their assignments
Finding the uploaded assignments students have submitted -> Shown in detail here
'Dressing up' the unit/topic block with a picture/icon and some introductory information (this is also featured in a targeted tutorial located here)
All of my Moodle tutorials are now gathered in one place here, so hope you find something useful there!
Here are a couple of new Moodle tutorials I've just finished putting together for colleagues. They cover some of the basics of setting up and organising gradebook items -- including some of the confusion and mistakes you may need to deal with -- for a Moodle course (Part 1), and then how to upload assignments that can align with your gradebook categories, or create independent grade items not linked to specific uploads or tasks on the course page (Part 2).
Part 1:
Part 2:
For more of my Moodle tutorials, check out the posts here.
My Year 12 students are moving along to this outcome now in their VCAL Senior Literacy coursework, and I thought I would share the outcome overview video I have prepared for them as part of their Moodle course.
Based on the video, my students need to prepare a detailed report explaining, in a logical and concise way, what writing for practical purposes involves.
Sort of like writing about writing for practical purposes, for practical purposes...
One of the great things about being a literacy teacher in a vocational/applied learning program is the regular opportunity to integrate literacy tasks with real world applications, but also to use literacy to reinforce knowledge or awareness about important considerations students really need take on board.
The example above shows how we have taken our students' Practical Placement Invoice Book -- a really crucial piece of documentation for our students' workplace experience blocks -- and reinforced students' awareness of it via an applied literacy task.
Leesa, our eminently talented ILO (Industry Liaison Officer), made good use of our GTEC team PD sessions last December (on how to make screencasts) to produce this very clear and professional screencast demonstrating how to complete the practical placement invoices and why various sections were really important:
[Note: Personal details in the screencast version of the form are purely fictional examples!]
This follows up from in-class demonstrations and instructions and one-on-one checking and follow up, but the aural as well as visual approach is really important in making crucial information accessible to the students in our particular cohort. And yet, there are still many individuals who forget things or don't pay attention when they really should...
... which is why a literacy task applying the video and asking students to write an email to a classmate explaining all the ins and outs of the invoice book can be just the ticket to check and make sure every student has really been paying attention.
Literacy gets a VCAL Foundation Writing for Practical Purposes outcome task out of it, learners get a real world application, and Leesa gets some reassurance that students are actually watching the video and paying attention to it.
Well, perhaps that's not strictly true: anyone who knows me much at all knows that I hardly know the first thing about manufacturing technology, much less how to teach it effectively.
So how, then, can we account for the spot-on work a group of Year 11 students--newcomers to CAD--produced in the morning class I took in place of Frank, our gifted CAD/MTech teacher?
Frank was sick today and Gavin and Robin (our other MTech teachers) were full up with other classes and duties to take care of. I had a break first up and slotted in for Frank. The usual process in this situation is that I--as a Literacy teacher--would deliver an extra Literacy class in place of the scheduled MTech class.
Not today. The group in question already had a Literacy lesson scheduled for later in the day. First lesson, as per their schedules, they did MTech. And they did it very well indeed.
This very pleasant little miracle came about as a result of careful planning and the production of top-class screencasts targeting specific CAD skills prepared well in advance. The results are extremely exciting in terms of the potential for flexible teaching arrangements, independent learning and blended classroom-based online lessons informing the viability for a course to become more distance-based.
Here's how it basically went down...
I started the class and asked them to open their MTech course pages in Moodle. I pointed them to an early/beginner unit and asked them to download the worksheet presented there. The worksheet is one of my own design which applies what I call the 'DIPA' instructional model (Discover-Instruct-Practice-Apply), and it began by asking them to predict--based on the assignment/unit title--what they were about to learn or be shown.
Here's a student sample response for this section:
Once the students have made an effort to predict what the lesson is going to be about, they then watch the screencast tutorial (Task B), in this case:
Based on this video tutorial, the learners complete Task C, which is a summary of important information, processes, or techniques explained or demonstrated in the tutorial. Somewhat unsurprisingly, this requires most students to re-watch the video, pause at intervals and in some cases replay information in order to catch it effectively.
The result is a summary that looks like this:
So far, so good.
Task D in the worksheet sequence then asks students to apply some critical thinking and propose some conclusions about how and why the information in the tutorial might be important or useful. The example below hasn't been done as well as it might have been, but it's a positive start:
Next comes the 'hands on' stage. In Task E the learners are asked to apply the skills/techniques from the tutorial themselves and create and insert a screenshot to show what they've managed to come up with:
Excellent... students have managed to use the AutoDesk Inventor software to replicate the shape in the drawing so that it matches the one produced by the teacher in the video tutorial.
A few students struggled here and there with the summary of instructions and the actual Inventor work...so how did I--the non-MTech teacher--help them out?
I looked over the instructions and directions they'd documented and informed them whether they were useful and logical to me, as someone as new to Inventor as they are. When they were applying Inventor and got stuck, I encouraged them to brainstorm, try things out and assist each other as a group.
Everybody got there without too much fuss, and the result was a handy little two-sided assignment sheet which they uploaded for Frank or one of the other MTech teachers to check, grade and respond to in the MTech Moodle course page:
Each at their own pace, they all then went on to try out the next worksheet and screencast in the tutorial sequence on Moodle, which built on the one already completed here and extended their skills in some way.
What really fascinates and excites me about this is that Gavin was in two places at once during this lesson. He was out in the corridor, getting new students organised and making calendar and schedule adjustments for students whose work placements or trade school arrangements were causing the usual start of week headaches.
He was also in my classroom, teaching my students MTech skills.
Likewise, Frank was at home not feeling very well, but MTech work was facilitated and completed for him, uploaded into a repository from where he can view and respond to it later, and he was then the teacher presenting new skills in the very next screencast tutorial.
And me?
Well I was a facilitator and classroom manager. I wasn't the MTech teacher, but I was a teacher in the MTech classroom.
I don't for a second want to imply that pre-bottling your curriculum in the form of screencasts can completely replace the specialist teacher here-and-now in the classroom.
But gosh it can help, and make potentially chaotic rainy Monday mornings run as smooth as clockwork, irrespective of who happens to be available to host a classroom learning space.
I also think this is a foundation and a positive process for developing blended distance programs for applied learning that might actually work.
You've set your assignment on the course page as an upload option (for tips and demonstrations on how to do this, click here), students have completed and uploaded them... so what do you do now?
This tutorial shows two different ways to get to the submitted assignments and a couple of options for grading and responding to them.
(To get a larger and higher resolution version of this screencast, click on the YouTube link at the bottom of the video and select one of the larger viewing modes).
Of all the great things we experience as teachers, I think trying out new things and stumbling upon new revelations about what works and what doesn't would have to be right up there. In my field (literacy) with my learners ('disengaged' students aged 16-18 preparing for work in the 'hard trades' area), the challenges can be steep and the rewards quite remarkable.
Three weeks into a new term in a new year, I've really been enjoying VCAL Senior Literacy. The curriculum I inherited part way through the second term last year (when I commenced) ticked all of the boxes when it comes to overall VCAL cross-curricular integration, but it had been built from a teaching and teaching team perspective with very little input from (or scope for negotiation with) the actual students. The result was a constant struggle for traction on a track the learners found themselves slipping and sliding all over (if not off completely, with the muffled sound of crashing amongst trees in the wilderness), in the end made to happen/work through the painstaking building of rapport and trust with the teacher.
Let me just point out that these sorts of programs are not inherently poor. A lot of painstaking work and sincere effort goes into them. They occasionally feature real gems and meet audit requirements admirably. They just don't always work all that well, and sometimes--based on over reliance on and misplaced faith in design and documentation features--it is the learners who get the automatic blame if they don't perform all that well within certain parameters.
This year has been very different.
The first formal outcome listed for Senior VCAL Literacy is Writing for Self Expression. This can be a hard one to pitch to lads who are disengaged from the broader high school landscape and want to qualify themselves to become tradesmen. Builders don't generally want to 'write about me' and young plumbers and mechanics generally don't want to engage in any sort of storytelling that isn't strictly audio-visual and available on YouTube.
Despite those challenges, writing for self expression is actually working this year, and here's how it has gone so far...
1. Starting with and focussing on the outcome
In a move that some teachers might find themselves instinctively disagreeing with, this year I have avoided an attempt at subtle 'embedding' or 'naturalisation' of the outcome. I've approached the learners from the same perspective I find myself approaching courses I've recently done or am currently doing -- qualification stuff that doesn't always passionately interest me but has to be done if I am going to get through and advance my prospects.
Basically, that means explaining the outcome in formal and logical terms somewhat similar to the way it is presented and documented in the official VCAL curriculum guide. To successfully pass this outcome, you need to do a, b and c (etc.).
So we start with a short screencast explaining the outcome...
... which is followed up by an interactive quiz in their Moodle coursework page to check what they've understood and how they think the outcome might be applied.
So far so good. My learners always respond well to screencast tutorials, and they seem to appreciate having the learning requirements spelled out for them. I'm not hearing (as many) complaints about having to do tasks as part of this outcome, and this is very different from the cacophony of objections I heard last year about having to write a work journal entry or respond to an 'expressive' newspaper article nailed down and pre-embedded in the curriculum.
Which brings me to the next consideration...
2. Learner-selected topics for self expression
As nice as it can be to have a limited number of ready-to-use writing topics and tasks that address the outcome and help to tick off outcomes in other parts of the overall VCAL curriculum (and as convenient as it can be to look at and grade learners according to consistent topics across the whole cohort), I've done away with this completely and let the learners choose and negotiate their own topics.
Of course, this can result in the blank stare and despair of not having a clue what to write about, so what I have done is create an extensive list of thematically grouped writing topics which they can pick and choose from and adapt and negotiate with me.
As you can see, this goes beyond a simple list of writing topic suggestions. It includes a range of suggestions covering things like titles, audience(s), purpose(s) and text types.
It also includes links to my own writing in response to some of these topics. Learners who really need samples to work through and emulate in terms of style and topical focus appreciate this, and I think most all of the learners appreciate the fact that the teacher is willing to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.
So far, no complaints about not having a topic to write about (or not knowing what to write about in response to a topic), and that's a welcome change.
3. An emphasis on literary devices
Before the learners choose and write in response to topics, their Moodle course page includes an interactive tutorial about a small range of literary devices that can help make creative/expressive writing more interesting and effective. These cover, as a base, things like point of view, similes, effective use of adjectives and what I like to call 'expressive action words' (for example, saying a nailgun spat a nail into some wood, or a song roared out of the living room).
Extensive examples are given for each literary device, including ones from my own writing attempts (mentioned above) to help showcase them in the context of full length texts. The learners then need to create their own sentences applying each literary device via controlled practice and then an overall review incorporating them all.
Some of them have grumbled a bit about this, but most have had fun with it. The building and construction student who turned 'the hammer is old' into the hammer is as old as my grandpa's balls showed how creativity and vivid imagery aren't lost in/on trade students, but also sparked a useful conversation about the notions of audience, purpose and appropriacy...
Following first drafts I now ask students to point out the literary devices they've used. Some have had go back to the tutorial again to re-examine the devices and then make them the focus of an improved second draft. Most, however, are already using them quite readily in the first draft and can point them out to me on the page without hesitation.
Generally speaking, this emphasis on literary devices has resulted in far more creative and expressive writing right from the start (compared to what I saw last year).
4. Multiple text types and points of view
Given the outcome requires two or more complete writing pieces, I've asked the learners to ensure that each one applies a different text type and point of view (as in, writing 'voice' from the first, second or third person).
In essence, what the learners see and are expected to choose and plan their different pieces according to is:
So to meet the outcome, we need at least one of each text type, and one of each point of view.
To some degree the identification of text types in topic suggestions (see point 2 above) has helped the learners here, as has the emphasis and controlled practice with points of view (see point 3 above), but this has been a real revelation in terms of getting the learners to widen their writing experience and express themselves in different ways from different angles.
As an example, the plumbing student I have who always claims to 'HATE writing stories' found it was a bit of a different prospect to write one from the second person point of view. The challenge of writing the story 'to' a reader ended up capturing his interest and moving him away from his automatic dislike for story writing.
Another student discovered how much more freedom there was in writing an 'expressive' piece from a third person point of view (rather than the first), as well as protection (he could make it not look or feel like a 'this is me' piece). A couple of other students have written some quite fascinating stories based on (or 'inside') songs and video clips, with different points of view resulting in very different effects.
Some are struggling slightly with the two angles to consider, but the result has been a lot of questions and requests for confirmation in response to attempts to angle a piece of writing this way or that way -- not automatic or outright negativity.
I see more width and depth developing in these kids' writing (as well as overall critical thinking and empathy) based on different text types and points of view, and it makes my spirit soar.
5. Published pieces of writing in an e-Portfolio
Last year completed writing work was printed and stuffed away into a folder. This year it gets published on the Internet in an e-Portfolio platform provided by Mahara, which allows them to integrate their writing with images and video clips.
First person narrative fiction...
Third person expressive/narrative based on music clip (featured alongside)
I've written about these e-Portfolio developments elsewhere and it's a bit of an ongoing project I have going this year. Let's just say these notions of using technology and the cloud, applying multiple forms of media and actually 'publishing' finished writing are having a majorly positive impact on most of my students.
So all up, VCAL Senior Literacy and Writing for Self Expression have progressed wonderfully for us so far this year.
More to live and learn in this process, of course, but I suspect a lot more to enjoy as well.
Another quick tutorial here for relative newcomers to Moodle design: this one demonstrates how to use a nice image icon and introductory spiel for your unit/topic blocks.
More for the appearance and aesthetics side of things, but generally speaking I think attractive presentation should always be a priority in online course work.
For more Moodle tutorials, check out the Moodle category on this blog...
If you're building course work through the Moodle LMS, one method of gathering content you might like to explore is the book module.
I've found this a very useful way of presenting a sequence of content in Moodle, with easy navigation via a sidebar menu (removing a lot of the potential clutter that can appear in regular course pages) and the possibility of linking to specific pages in the book from various quizzes or assignments.
The book module is not a place for interactive elements (like quizzes or essay submissions, for example), but is a great way to gather together the content-rich elements of your course unit or units and keep it from cluttering up your topic blocks or becoming scattered via various individual files or pages.
Having built book modules into a couple of my courses, I created a series of three screencasts for a colleague looking to find a better way to gather together the video tutorial content he has been making for his own course.
1. How (and why) to set up the 'book module' in Moodle
2. Adding content/chapters to a book module
3. Linking to specific parts of the book module from other areas/resources
Hope those put the book module into some sort of perspective and provide some solid tips on how to implement it.
I'm helping the team of teachers I work with to build their own courses in Moodle and gathering screencast tutorials as I go...
Here are some tutorials for teachers at the 'starter' end of things, covering some basics concerning the building of downloadable work files (in a variety of different formats) and creating an assignment upload option.
In essence, this allows you to feature content or work files (for reading, viewing or writing) which the learners download and complete. They can then upload it for the teacher to view and grade via the upload option.
I've generally found that this is a good starting layer for teachers who want to allocate and collect task work on Moodle. There are other (more advanced) options, of course, but these skills are pretty easy to master and facilitate teachers getting a course happening without too much of a steep learning curve or big investment of their time (and hair pulling).
Another (major) advantage with the file download/assignment upload approach is that learners can save work files to their computer and not necessarily need an Internet connection or continuous access to Moodle in order to do their work.
Trust me... after a week that included major Internet access and operating system problems, I can assure you that this can be REALLY handy!
Just made these screencast tutorials for the team I'm working with as eLearning coordinator and thought I would pass them along here on the blog for those in my PLN who are starting out with Moodle and want some tips and tricks...
The idea here is to create a simple menu at the top of your Moodle course page that allows your learners to click and have only the relevant unit or cluster appear on the page. Essentially, this removes the 'scroll of death' issue if you find your learners are having to wade down through dozens of units to find something.
If you've found a better way to do/present this, please, by all means let me know (and even better: screencast how/why to do it!).
Entry/menu page for VCAL Foundation Literacy Course ready to go...
A little over a week from now, I'll be back in the classroom and doing my best to keep on my feet on a pitching deck full of new Year 11 VCAL students.
In addition to my Literacy teaching role, in 2012 I've taken on our Skills Centre eLearning Coordinator role at about the same time the organisation I work for (The Gordon Institute of TAFE) begins a pretty massive transition from Blackboard to Moodle for its LMS.
Hence from mid-December last year, on top of preparing for my own courses, I've needed to come to grips with this Moodle thing in a pretty big way, and fast, so that I can help facilitate eLearning for approximately 10 other teachers as well.
It's certainly been a rapid and steep learning curve, but a very satisfying one as well. What I thought might take myself and the teaching team anywhere from 6-12 months to come to grips with has actually become something we're well on top of before the first term even begins.
And that led me to thinking a little more... about what facilitates effective adoption of learning technologies. Here are some reflections at this point in time.
1. 'Faffing about' with edtech is SO important
Moodle, like a lot of other platforms and tools out there, doesn't exactly come easily -- particularly when you are looking to put together something that works well administratively from the 'back/teacher end' but is also practical and attractive from the 'front/student end.' It takes a lot of time to figure things out.
At a rough estimate I would say since the start of December last year I've put in about 100-200 hours of solid, occasionally hair-pulling work wrestling the Moodle Beast to the ground and subduing it to the point that it does what I want it to do. Getting the gradebook to work with our particular outcomes, using a specialised scale I built and embedded, took up an entire weekend alone. I'm also big on professional design and layout at the other end of the beast, so the hours have certainly slipped away on that front as well as I try and re-try all sorts of different applications and combinations.
This is the all-important 'faffing about' that you just can't avoid if you really want to understand a tech system and what it can do (and how it may misbehave). There's no gratuitous flick of a switch, nothing served up on a platter. You've got to be willing to put in the hard yards at the beginning, do a lot of playing about and experimenting, and even deliberately see how much you can 'break' stuff.
But to effectively faff about with edtech, you need a couple of other facilitative factors as well, and the most obvious of those is time.
2. Edtech development requires sufficient time
Prior to this position with this organisation, all of the other edtech tools and courses I've developed happened in contexts where time was either (1) just not available (think 50 week work years in places like North East Asia), and/or (2) not paid for (the organisation I worked for prior to this one in Australia wanted to pay me $21 per teaching hour, with a couple of hours for prep each week thrown in and no paid annual leave). Basically, I developed online courses and tools for institutes in my own time and out of my own pocket.
Here (at GTEC at The Gordon) things are very different. I've had close to 6 weeks of paid non-instruction time to get my head around and grapple with learning materials and Moodle. Splitting that period in half was close to three weeks of paid annual leave where I actually did go on holidays and not think about work. My colleagues are on the same basic wicket.
Time to recharge the batteries and time to really faff about with the edtech, without having to forfeit regular income. What a peculiar notion that feels like, after what I've experienced in the 10-12 years prior to that (but hey: I'm certainly not complaining!).
But consider also the results. In less than two months we have full courses ready to go on Moodle. Everyone on the teaching team has learned how to create screencasts, and a couple are now already starting to take ownership of the Moodle pages I set up for them.
GTEC's Manufacturing Technology course homepage on Moodle, already handed over to teacher Frank Priveti, who has commenced an absolutely brilliant series of screencasts on how to access and use the Autodesk Inventor (CAD) tool...
Our eLearning output and capacity has increased exponentially from one year to the next.
Why? Because the organisation and Skills Centre concerned were willing to invest one of the most absolutely crucial ingredients. Time. And time at the right time (if you get my drift).
But that idea of one person building and teaching and handing over to other teachers reminds me of the third essential thing that has struck me on this front...
3. Edtech development requires a person on the scene as part of the team
In a team of 10 teachers, we now have one teacher who is also the eLearning Coordinator, with one full day per week to develop and build up our edtech (a bit of a combination of building stuff for teachers and helping them to then go ahead and build it on their own). That person is also a member of the teaching team, doing for four days a week what everyone else has to regularly do: cope with the pressures and demands of a challenging teaching role.
This is far different from having, say, one teacher walk across to the other side of the campus once a week or fortnight for an hour or two to get specialised assistance with edtech development. And it is worlds away from going to the occasional half or full day 'edtech professional development' day, followed up by frustrated messages left on voicemail pleading for help on how to just open a new lesson activity (for those teachers who actually get motivated or brave enough to try on some edtech clothes as a result of the once-off seminar).
Teaching teams braving the complicated waters of edtech uptake need someone in the same office or just down the corridor, someone they know and who knows what they do and how and why. In some ways, I might even go so far as to say that until the edtech initiative gets a regular and accessible (known, trusted, empathetic) human face, it's always going to suffer from a relative tyranny of distance.
However, this is not to say that the expert in the distant office doesn't have a crucial role to play...
4. Edtech requires effective leadership and administration
To put it simply, one of the reasons we are forging ahead so quickly and well with our edtech development is that we have good support from 'higher up the food chain' (in a manner of speaking). Even as I work to help the teachers on my team, there are copiously competent people in various layers above me in the organisation that I have ready access to if and when I need it. They get back to me the same morning or the same day. They respond well to problems. They get things fixed or improved. They seem to have the attitude that they have as much to learn from us as we do from them. They remind us that what we are doing is valuable and great.
The larger the teaching/learning organisation, the more crucial this sort of support and access becomes (mainly because organisations necessarily apply rules that can sometimes result in boxes it becomes hard to do your particular dance routine inside). Luckily for me and my team, we have that support in spades.
So yes, I guess thanks to the faffing about factor, sufficient time to faff about, the team-embedded (or team-emergent?) eLearning person and effective assistance and leadership from higher up (or further across?), we are indeed Moodling along quite nicely indeed.
And 2012, from an eLearning perspective, is looking like turning out (to use local parlance) to be an absolute crackerjack.
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