Submitted By Richard Dias
Selecting and organizing the material
If you're like most instructors, you love your subject and the
idea of sharing information gives you great satisfaction. However, you have
probably noticed that it's easy to overload your students, or to give them
materials in a way that tends to confuse them. How can you avoid overloading
and confusing your students?
One of the most effective ways to do so is to make sure that you
base your selections of instructional
materials on course outcomes and on the learning objectives for each unit. Keep in mind what you'd like your students to be able to do after they complete the course. What is the basic, enduring knowledge they will take with them after the course is over? What kind of fundamental change do you want to occur in terms of the student's abilities? What kind of new skills will they be able to perform?
materials on course outcomes and on the learning objectives for each unit. Keep in mind what you'd like your students to be able to do after they complete the course. What is the basic, enduring knowledge they will take with them after the course is over? What kind of fundamental change do you want to occur in terms of the student's abilities? What kind of new skills will they be able to perform?
Once you answer these questions, you will have a list of
learning outcomes. Keep them in mind as you select the instructional material
you wish to use in your course.
It is often convenient to develop a map or a diagram that
connects your learning outcomes with the course materials and the assessments
you will use. Consider what you want your students to learn, and how you'd like
them to perform. Also, you shape the sequence you will build and how you'll
present the materials.
It is often convenient to develop a map or a diagram that connects
your learning outcomes with the course materials and the assessments you will
use. Consider what you want your students to learn, and how you'd like them to
perform. Also, you shape the sequence you will build and how you'll present the
materials.
Using forums to present your material
We'll start with an approach that is very easy to implement,
which is ideal if you're just getting started and need a solution that would be
good for all kinds of e-learning, including mobile learning and guided
independent study.
Basically, we'll use the Forum tool to organize all the
instructional content. In Moodle, the Forum is the key tool and you'll use it
often. Later, as you feel more comfortable, you can add more tools (Book, Chat,
Assignment, Choice, and so on). For now, however, we will focus on getting you
operational as quickly and easily as possible.
Using the Forum tool to structure your course and to organize
your content is conceptually very elegant. Students simply move from forum to
forum, and they access the material they need. Any comments they have, writing
assignments, or discussion items can be completed in the appropriate thread.
When you use the Forum tool, you will use the Moodle text editor
to create messages. Keep in mind that your messages can contain text, graphics,
audio, video, presentations, and more, which allows you flexibility and ease of
use.
As you plan your course, it's always good to have a certain
number of forums dedicated to student success and support. This is where you
can post welcome messages, timelines and course calendars, lists of
assignments, syllabus, links to useful resources, and a place for students to
ask questions and share their experiences.
A key student success forum is one that clearly states what you
hope to achieve in the course. By listing course outcomes in a separate forum,
you'll shape the students' approach to the course content, and they will have a
better idea of how to organize the information they will encounter.
After you've developed your "student success and
support" forums, you start creating a separate forum for each unit, which
begins to identify the learning objectives, and the resources you'll put in
each one to create a learning environment. It is often a good idea to create a
separate forum for each graded assessment. Having a separate forum for each
assessment will make your job easier if you have changes to make, or if you
want to replace it with an assignment tool.
In fact, by populating your course with a series of separate
forums, you are creating a flexible template that can be easily modified by
replacing a forum with another, or with a different type of tool (Choice,
Assignment, Chat, Database, Book, Journal, or more).
It is often helpful to create a course map wherein you draw all
the elements you'll have in your course. List the course outcomes, and then map
each one to the instructional material, activities, and assessments that go
with each one. This will help you as you start building your forums.
Here is an example of how you can put together a course in which
you organize the content around forums:
- Forum 1: Welcome and Course Overview and Objectives
- Forum 2: Meet Your Instructor
- Forum 3: Introduce Yourself
- Forum 4: Questions for the Instructor
- Forum 5: Syllabus and Timeline
- Forum 6: Unit 1: Unit Learning Objectives, Instructional Materials, and Discussion Questions
- Forum 7: Unit 1: Review for Quiz
- Forum 8: Unit 1: Quiz
- Forum 9: Unit 1: Instructional Materials and Discussion Questions
As you can see, the structure is very straightforward and avoids
the complexity of multiple tools. Keep in mind that more complex tools can
always be added later to replace a forum structure.
Creating a separate group for each student
Start by selecting the activity tool, Forum, and opening a page
that requires you to indicate the settings for the forum you wish to add.
Remember that each group will consist of only a single student.
So, in this process, when we discuss groups, we're really talking about
individuals.
The following steps illustrate how to create a separate forum
for each group in your course:
1.
From the Add
an activity… drop-down list, select Forum, as shown in the
following screenshot:
2.
Enter a Forum
name and Forum
type for the forum. In the following example, I'm using A single simple discussion
to create a single-topic forum, where all the postings will be displayed on the
same page. This makes the history of the student-teacher discussion very easy
to see. This type of forum is most useful for short, focused discussions.
3.
By selecting Yes,
forever for Force
everyone to be subscribed? as shown in the following
screenshot, you ensure that all students are subscribed automatically, even
students that enroll at a later time.
4.
The key setting here is Group
mode. When we select Separate
groups, we create a separate forum for each group in the class.
In the next section, we will create a group for each student. The result is a
separate forum for each student, available only to that student and the
teacher, where they can hold private conversation.
5.
Save the forum settings and continue.
Enrolling students
If you have not already enrolled students in the course, you
should do so before creating the groups. If the students are already enrolled,
move to Create a Group for
Each Student in the next section.
The following steps illustrate how to manually enroll students
in your course:
1.
Open the course into which you want to enroll the students.
Then, from the Administration
drop-down box, select Assign
roles as shown in the following screenshot:
2.
On the Assign
roles page select Student,
as shown in the following screenshot:
3.
Ensure the Role
to assign drop-down list is set to Student. Then from the
list of potential users on the right, select one user. Click the left-facing
arrow to enrol that user in your course (refer to the following screenshot):
4.
Repeat this for each student. If you want to remove a student
from the course, select the student from the list on the left, and click the
right-facing arrow.
5.
To exit this page, select the course name from the navigation
breadcrumbs at the top of the page. This will put you back into your course's
home page, and then you can continue with creating a group for each student.
Creating a group for each student
After all of your students are enrolled, go into the course and
create a group for each student.
The following steps illustrate how to create groups and assign
students to them:
1.
From the Administration
block select Groups,
as shown in the following screenshot:
2.
From the Current
role drop-down list as shown in the following screenshot,
select Student.
This ensures that you are seeing only users who are enrolled as students in
this course. Then, in the field above the Add new group button, enter the name of
the first group. Name the group after the student for whom you created it. In
this example, I created a group for Moodle
Student1 called Student1,
and I am about to create a group for Moodle
Student2 called Student2.
·
Select the group. In the preceding example, you can see the user
is about to select the group Student2.
·
Select the student to add to the group.
·
Click the Add
selected to group button.
·
Repeat as needed.
To assign a student to a
group:
4.
To exit this page, select the course name from the navigation
breadcrumbs at the top of the page. This will put you back into your course's
home page.
The student's private forum will look like any other Moodle
forum. However, only the student and teacher will have access to it.
Moodle 1.9 Teaching Techniques
Creative
ways to build powerful and effective online courses
|
Guiding and motivating students
The best online courses create learning communities in which all
learners have a sense that they are part of a friendly, supportive group. They
eagerly post in the forums, and they respond to each other quickly in a
positive and productive way. They share their thoughts, impressions, and one
starts to feel as though people are really getting to know each other. Learning
is fun, even exhilarating. Some students can't wait to log on and participate.
Creating the learning environment
There are a few tried and tested ways to optimize the
interactive forum experience. Here is a brief list:
- Provide timely feedback and make sure that you maintain a positive and productive tone
- Be sure to provide positive, encouraging suggestions
- Post questions that are engaging and which tie to learning objectives
- Encourage individuals to connect the course material to personal experience, and then post about it
- Make participation in the forums a part of the students' grades
- Model positive forum behavior by showing open-mindedness
Asking permission and setting a policy
Some activities in Moodle are almost always individual. When
students complete these activities, they have a reasonable expectation that
their work will not be shared with the class. For example, when a student
answers a quiz question, he/she reasonably expects that what he/she wrote will
not be shared with the entire class. Other activities do not carry this
expectation of privacy. For example, when a student posts to a forum, he/she
expects that posting to be read by the rest of the class.
Students feel good when they see their work acknowledged. They
also feel confident when they know what is expected. We can use the forum to
answer students' questions, but there are other ways to use the forums to
acknowledge work and to help the students develop an "I can do it"
attitude.
One good way is to build a forum that includes samples of
successful student work. The students can see how other students—often students
in the past—approached their work. They can get a good idea of how to get
started, and they can feel less intimidated by fear of the unknown.
Let's create a forum named "sample work". Before
posting work from a student in the sample work forum, consider if the student
can reasonably expect that work to be private. If so, ask the student's
permission before posting it. In any case, be sure to remove identifying names
and labels. That is, remove anything from the work that would indicate which
student created it. This might make the student more comfortable with having
the work posted in the sample work forum.
If you expect to use a sample work forum in a class, you should
clearly indicate that in the course syllabus and introduction. The idea that
they have guidelines and live documents as instructional material and models
can be a big relief to students. However, if any student is uncomfortable with
having his/her work posted (even if it has been anonymized), please be sure to
let them know you respect their wishes. The forum should be a friendly and
supportive place.
Type of forum
In Moodle, you can create several types of forums. Each type can
be used in a different way to get the best out of it. The types of forums are:
Type of forum
|
Description
|
Single simple discussion
|
The entire forum appears on one
page. The first posting, at the top of the page, is the topic for the forum.
This topic is usually created by the teacher. The students then post replies
under this topic. A single-topic forum is most useful for short,
highly-focused discussions.
|
Standard
|
In a standard forum, anyone can
start a new topic. Teachers and students can create new topics and reply to
existing postings.
|
Each person posts one discussion
|
Each student can create one and
only one new topic. Everyone can reply to every topic.
|
Q and A
|
This is like a single-topic forum,
in that the teacher creates the topic for the forum. Students then reply to
that topic. However, a student cannot see anyone else's reply until he/she
has posted a reply. The topic is usually a question posed by the teacher, and
the students' replies are usually answers to that question.
|
Each of these forum types can be used to create a different kind
of sample work forum. The subsections coming up cover the use of each forum
type.
You select the forum type while creating the forum, on the Editing Forum page:
Single simple discussion forum
The next screenshot is an example of a single-topic forum. The
forum consists of one topic at the top of the page, and everything else on that
page is a reply from the students. Readers can reply to the topic, but not create
new ones.
This is especially useful if you want to select the best work as
an example for each topic or week in your course. You can always end each topic
of week with the best work as an example so that discussion can take place on
it.
Standard forum
In a standard forum, the default setting allows students to
create new topics and post replies to the topics. This makes it an open forum,
which would be useful if you want your students to be able to post their own
work or if you want to post examples or models that you could label
"sample work". Following is an example of a multitopic forum. Each
piece of work is a new topic.
One way to keep the sample work forum organized is to allow only
the teacher to create new topics. Each topic is an example of student work,
posted by the teacher. Students discuss each example by replying to the topic.
To accomplish this, you'll need to disable the students' ability to create new
topics.
By default, the Student role in Moodle enables students to
create new topics in a standard forum. You can disable this by referring to the
following steps:
1.
Select the forum in which you want to disable the students'
ability to create new topics.
2.
Select Update
this Forum.
3.
Select the Roles
tab, and then the Override
roles subtab, as shown in the following screenshot:
4.
Select Student.
This brings up the Overrides
page.
5.
For the setting Start
new discussions, select Prevent.
6.
Click the Save
changes button.
In Moodle, permissions at a lower context override permissions
at a higher context. For example, by default the role Student has the
permission for Start new
discussions set to Allow.
However, you could set this to Prevent
for a specific course because a course is a lower context than the entire site;
for that course the permission Prevent
will override the site's wide setting of Allow.
A single activity, such as this forum, is the lowest context in Moodle.
Overriding permission in a single activity will not affect anything else; it
affects only that activity.
Moodle's online help has a good discussion about the differences
between Inherit, Allow, Prevent, and Prohibit. It also
describes how conflicts between permissions are solved by the software. If
you're going to use Override roles elsewhere in Moodle, read this section of
the help.
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