Technology Enhanced Learning Workshops

To date, most of the training sessions have been focussed around the technical aspects of how to do certain things in Moodle. Whilst there is an ongoing requirement for such training, many staff are ready to move beyond the basics and consider specific pedagogical approaches. For example, my recent blog post on 'The Flipped Classroom' (link) discusses an interesting approach to delivering the 'chalk and talk' elements online, freeing up time for more collaborative work in class.

To this end then, whilst some sessions will retain their 'procedural' elements, some will also be more thought provoking and attempt to apply theory and research to practice.
You can book your place on any of the sessions using the Eventbrite booking system below. If the dates are not convenient please let me know the sessions you would be interested in attending, and I would be happy to run them again. Also, if course teams are interesting in specific topics, I would love to help!

The next block of sessions include;

Basic Moodle Training - ideal for new staff or for those that just want to recap on the basic workings of Moodle. This session will reinforce some of the good practice elements we have looked at in other sessions.
When: 15th February, 12-1pm

Online Submission and Marking using Turnitin - many staff are keen to use Turnitin to create 'originality reports' for student assignments, but did you know you can use the Grademark features to actually leave feedback and grades online? This session will cover all of these aspects and will be of interest to any staff looking to implement online submission in their units.
When: 16th February, 12-1pm

Using Multimedia Resources in Teaching and Learning - Introducing multimedia resources can serve a number of objectives. Not only can it more suitably cater to different learning styles in the VARK spectrum, it can be used strategically to deliver instructive materials online, freeing up time in class (as discussed in the post about the Flipped Classroom). Furthermore, the use of video clips, screencasts and podcasts can provide a much-needed source for students to revisit in order to refresh and clarify understanding.
This session will discuss the various options available, including the services available openly on the web as well as those 'in-house', and provide the basis for specific one-to-one support to develop multimedia materials.
When: 21st February, 1-2pm

Introducing Online Social Constructivism using Discussion Forums -  the general accepted model of learning in contemporary education is based on social theories (Vygotsky), whereby the development of knowledge and understanding is most effective by reflecting on course content and personal experiences, and by sharing this and reflecting on the experience and understanding of others.
This session will consider how we can utilise discussion forums in Moodle to encourage student collaboration and cooperation in the online space.
When: 22nd February, 12-1pm


Using Quizzes for Formative and Summative Assessment - For some time, staff have been implementing online quizzes as both formative and summative assessment. This session is of interest to anybody looking to introduce these quizzes in their units, and will cover the basics of building a database of questions and randomly adding a number of questions to a quiz. We will also cover pre-requisites for setting up summative online quizzes.
When: 1st March, 12-1pm

Encouraging Reflection through the use of Blogs - reflecting upon topics is a great way for learners to personalise and 'internalise' concepts. Dedicated reflective activities using blogs can be a great development opportunity for learners and can even provide the basis for an ePortfolio.
This session will introduce models for reflective practice and introduce the technical aspects of creating a blog.
When: 7th March, 12-1pm

Introducing the concept of Open Education Resources - In recent years the HEA and JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) have funded a number of projects to stimulate participation in the Open Education 'movement'. Academic staff often share resources informally amongst colleagues, whether that be full powerpoint slides or a video of a procedure. The OER movement encourages staff to make these resources available openly for academics and learners across the world through specific repositories.
This session will introduce the concept of OER, and identify some of the leaders in the movement, such as the Open University and MIT, as well as websites/repositories for staff to find reusable content in their teaching.
When: 13th March, 1-2pm


Please note: all sessions will be held in room C1:01.

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This work by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

How can we use Moodle to allow Students to Sign-up to 'things'?

A while back I was asked by a lecturer if Moodle could be used to somehow allow students to sign up to specific tutorial time slots. To be honest, I had to go away, have a play about and ask other colleagues, as Moodle doesn't have a straight-forward 'sign up sheet' tool.

However, having discussed this with a few colleagues, we quickly realised that the Moodle 'Choice Activity' is the perfect solution. The tool simply enables you to create a number of 'choices', and allows you to restrict the number of responses to say, one.

Sounds interesting right?
Catherine Wasiuk, the eLearning Support Officer at Hollings has created a short (5 min) video on setting up a tutorial booking system using the Choice activity, however this tool could easily be used for many other purposes. One that springs to mind would be the management of student projects. The various options could be listed and students could simply sign up to the project they are interested in. As it can be locked down to just one response, it's a first-come first-served basis...

Have a look at the video below and use the comments to leave any other suggestions for how the Choice activity might be used. As always, if you want to discuss the use of any technology in your teaching (not just Moodle), feel free to give me a shout...



This work by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

60-Minute Makeovers

With the new term here many staff are keen to dust off their Moodle areas, tidy things up, and crack on with teaching. With this in mind, I have arranged a couple of sessions this month, entitled '60-Minute Makeovers' (admittedly I didn't come up with the title).

The sessions will encourage:

• Good practice in Moodle
• Help staff make their Moodle areas more visually appealing
• Enhance accessibility in unit areas.

Some of the tips and suggestions around good practice might be of particular interest, given the student feedback and NSS.

Please use the Eventbrite booking form below to reserve your place, however for those unable to make the sessions, you could take a peek at the following guides:

Using the MMU Moodle Template Effectively
Moodle Course Area Checklist

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This work by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

The WebCT Archive

As you will all know, WebCT was completely switched off in August, with no way of accessing any of the old content. However, colleagues in LRT along with our Moodle hosting providers ULCC, have worked to do something about this very problem.

Using a third-party tool, they managed to take a backup of WebCT (at the end of August) and convert it into something that Moodle understands. It is by no means a perfect translation and so not suitable for transferring courses from one system to another, however it does enable staff to dip back in and access content that they may not have had chance to backup.

The archive is available at webctarchive.mmu.ac.uk and the following short video demonstrates how you can log in (with your normal MMU details), access an old course and download files. For those members of staff that used quizzes in WebCT, it might be worthwhile checking to see if your questions have been translated effectively enough to reuse...




As you will have seen, the video recommends filtering the files to pick out only the most useful, to avoid clogging up disk space by transferring redundant files to Moodle. For this reason it is not recommended using the backup and restore functions, as this will inevitably cause problems, however the export option is particularly useful for transferring quiz questions.

Once you have downloaded files and filtered through them, the easiest way to make them available in Moodle is to upload a compressed zip folder to Moodle - you can either make the zip folder itself available, or make the contents of the folder available using the 'Display a Directory' option. The following video runs through these options.





As always, if you have any problems or questions, feel free to get in touch.

Peter
@reedyreedles


This work by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Moodle Grades (Part ii)

Further to last week's post about 'Returning Grades and Feedback through Moodle', we came across some confusing elements in how Moodle displays grades by default.

The problem...

Basically, if you have both formative and summative assessment work in Moodle, the Gradebook will automatically combine the different elements and provide a mean grade in the 'Course Total' column. This can obviously be a little confusing as students might take the overall grade as a real grade for their unit, when in actual fact it's not. In some cases, students have been allowed to retake practice quizzes so they achieve 100%, then achieve a much lower figure in the real test. This can display a massively skewed overall grade.

There are two solutions to overcome this problem:

1) Communication -  Explain to students that the 'overall grade' in Moodle combines formative work and actually not their 'real grade' for the unit - instead refer to the individual assessment for more accurate figures.
or
2) Fix it - Go into Grades and edit the weighting of each of the assessments in Moodle to ensure proper weighting is attributed, and an accurate overall grade is displayed. This can be done in about 2 minutes...

How do I do it?

If you like the sound of the latter option, the following screencast demonstrates how you can edit the weightings in Moodle Grades in just about 2 minutes.



If you have any further queries, don't hesitate to get in touch.



This work by Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License

Moodle Training in December

Although it is the season to be jolly, it is also the season where student engagement with the VLE increases - largely due to assessment periods. The training sessions in the run up to Christmas focus on three areas;

The use of level Forums in Programme Areas: this session has resulted from recent positive student feedback concerning Programme and Level forums in the 'Computing and Digital Technology Network' area. This session is primarily aimed at Programme/Network Leaders, Level Tutors and Heads of Departments (although other staff can still attend).
Dates: Tuesday 13th December & Tuesday 20th December

Options for Online Submission, Marking and Feedback: although we have run different sessions on Moodle assignments and Turnitin in the past, this session will take a broad approach and discuss the various options available for academic staff to manage the assessment and feedback process online.
Dates: Wednesday 14th December

Returning Feedback and Grades to Students Through Moodle: this session picks up on this blog post about returning feedback and grades to students through Moodle, even if the assessment did not take place online. Although the blog post covers the 'how to' elements, this is an opportunity for staff to come along, practice and ask questions while I'm in the room.
Dates: Thursday 15th December

As always, it would be great if you could confirm your attendance using the Eventbrite booking system below, and if you have any particular requests for training, feel free to get in touch.

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This work by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Returning Grades and Feedback through Moodle

Many units across the Faculty are using some of the native Moodle tools such as quizzes and assignment drop-boxes to enable assessment and provide a channel for feedback and grades. But how can we return grades and feedback electronically for those assessments that were not facilitated through Moodle?

Before we delve in to this topic further, it is worth highlighting the University position, in that grades must be entered into Agresso at the earliest convenience. Further to this, additional work (expected implementation in Jan) is attempting to pull out those grades from Agresso and feed them directly into the Assessments block in Moodle units.

Having said that, there are obvious benefits of providing detailed feedback to students through Moodle's Grades tool, and there are a range of methods that allow us to do this. Here I will pick up on two of the most straightforward approaches;

1) Offline Activity
The 'Offline Activity' is available from the 'Add an Activity' menu, and is really straightforward. It easily creates an extra Grades column to enable you to provide a grade and some basic feedback.

2) Advanced Uploading of Files 
Whilst you may or may not use this to manage online submission, this tool still enables staff to leave a grade and upload a detailed feedback file to students.

With both methods, a link to the assessment appears on the Moodle unit page. Students can click on the link to view their feedback and grades, as well as being able to check through the Grades link.

How to....

Both processes are reasonably straightforward to set up and use, but the following screencast runs through the steps anyway.





As always, please do leave a comment if you have any questions or to share how you are using electronic methods to aid the assessment and feedback processes.



This work by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Moodle Groups & Groupings

Over the past few months, academic staff have been getting to grips with a range of features within Moodle, and it is apparent that the Groups features are of particular interest. At the same time, the group tools can be a little confusing as they work slightly different to the WebCT equivalent.

So this post hopes to introduce you to the Moodle terminology: Groups and Groupings, as well as what can be achieved and how.

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What are Groups & Groupings? 

Firstly, it's important to clarify the difference between Groups and Groupings:

Group release applies to the options within the 'Add an Activity' drop down menu, such as Forums, Assignments and Quizzes, etc. When releasing an activity, for example a discussion forum, you have two options in the groups section:

• Separate Groups: each group has their own private forum 
• Visible Groups: each group has their own forum but they can still view other group's forums.

Groupings allow specific content to be hidden from particular students and released to others. Anything from within the 'Add a Resource' drop down menu can be released to a particular set of students within a grouping. For example, you might have a quiz that all students will complete, but you might want to release a separate quiz that is only visible to those students who are entitled to extra time. This is where Groupings come in handy.

The only confusing aspect related to Groupings is that you first have to create at least one group of students, and then add that group to the grouping (don't worry though, we'll run through the steps below)

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Creating Groups & Groupings

Now we have clarified what the Groups and Groupings tools can do, it's time to look at how we create them - luckily it's pretty straightforward, and the short video below runs through the steps involved.

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Putting Groups and Groupings into Practice 

So now we have created two groups and one grouping, it's now time to put them into practice. These two videos demonstrate releasing a forum to separate groups and releasing a quiz to a particular grouping.

Creating a Forum for Separate Groups



As a tutor you can easily see the different group forums, along with the number of replies, etc.

It's also possible to toggle between Separate Groups and Visible Groups from the course page in Moodle. When you hover over the silhouette, the tool-tip confirms which group mode you are currently in, and clicking on it allows you to change.

Releasing a Quiz to a Grouping

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For more information, the CeLT Moodle Training Guides page contains a guide on 'Creating and Managing Groups in Moodle', but of course if you are having difficulty implementing groups and/or groupings, feel free to get in touch.

Also, if you are doing anything interesting with the Groups/Groupings tools, why not share them in the comments....


This work by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Turnitin & Grademark

Ahead of the Turnitin Workshop this week, this post hopes to give a quick overview of some of the key features that are offered using Turnitin and it's lesser known companion, Grademark.

As most people will know, Turnitin has been the leading UK plagiarism detection service for a number of years. It can provide a great development opportunity and really help students develop their academic writing skills by enabling originality reports for draft assignments.

For me, the biggest strength of the service lies in the paperless marking capabilities offered through Grademark. In short, managing online submissions through Turnitin allows academic staff to take advantage of the built-in marking features, including QuickMark comments; a feature allowing markers to build a database of comments they commonly leave on student papers. They can then drag and drop these quickmarks onto the paper, potentially saving bags of time from retyping the same things! Also, as you build up your personal QuickMark comments, you can export and re-import them into other units.

Furthermore, this completely online process of submission, marking and feedback impacts upon two huge areas of current interest;

• Student Feedback, which suggests students want the freedom to submit work online to avoid the time and financial costs of printing and travelling to campus to submit work, as well as receiving more timely feedback that is in a legible format (compared with handwritten feedback).
• The University's Green Impact Campaign, an innovative program that inspires staff and students to collectively 'green' MMU.
  SUSTEIT suggests the major environmental impacts are related to paper, and that reducing paper consumption is “perhaps the most important feature of a sustainable printing strategy” (James & Hopkinson, 2009). Previous work that I have been involved in with Turnitin & Grademark has saved significant amounts of paper - online submission across just six first-year units saved around 7500 sheets, totalling 15 reams of paper. Imagine if this was scaled larger!

So, come along on Thursday (12-1pm. C1:01) to learn more and get some practical experience in using some of the tools offered by Turnitin & Grademark. If you can't make it, there are some materials available within the Staff Resource Area's 'Moodle Training Guides' page.



This work by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. N.B all images in this post are taken from www.turnitin.com and may be restricted by further copyright licenses.

Training: Assessment Month

November is as good a month as any to turn our attention towards tools to assist in the formative and summative assessment, available through Moodle. 

To this end, the following workshops focus on three of the most common assessment tools:

• Moodle Assignment tool: to enable electronic submission of coursework files.
  Tuesday 8th November, 12-2pm: JD C1.03
• Quizzes: can automatically mark answers to multiple choice and drag and drop questions (amongst others).
  Wednesday 9th November, 1-3pm: JD C1.01
• Turnitin & Grademark: which can be used to manage the entire assessment process from assignment submission, online marking and feedback.
  Wednesday 16th November, 1-2.30pm: JD C1.01

You can use the eventbrite booking system below to register your place on any of the workshops, and if you have any particular interests or questions ahead of the sessions, please do let me know.

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This work by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Moodle Course Area Checklist

With the big changes around the University, and the increasing impetus to engage with blended and online learning, I thought it would be a good idea to develop a Checklist that would guide Unit Leaders in the development of their Moodle areas. What's great, is that it's licensed with Creative Commons!

It was important to keep the checklist as short and simple as possible, but still highlight key points to ensure a smooth and consistent student experience with the VLE. Hopefully this will help ensure a minimum standard within and across Unit areas.

I teamed up colleagues from CeLT: Rod Cullen who is well known to the Faculty, played a huge part in bringing this together and brought excellent understanding of the legal requirements around accessibility, as did Neil Ringan and Christopher Meadows.

The checklist is available from the Moodle Training Guides page of the Staff Resource Area in Moodle, and can also be accessed from from my public Dropbox.


This work by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Moodle Training Sessions

So, the bathing suits are back in storage and September is here, and no doubt staff will have all hands to the pump preparing for the start of term. WebCT has now been switched off and Moodle is here!

To help staff ready Moodle areas, there are some mop-up sessions to introduce and run through some of the basic workings of Moodle. There are three sessions booked in over the next couple of weeks:

Wednesday 7th September: C1.01: 10.00-11.30am
Wednesday 14th September: C1.01: 10.00-11.30am
Thursday 15th September: C1.01: 10.00-11.30am

Please use the booking options below to reserve your place.

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There will be various other awareness raising and training opportunities throughout the year, but if you have any specific requests, feel free to contact me: P.Reed@mmu.ac.uk.



This work by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Moodle Tool Guide

A while ago I came across this excellent resource - Moodle Tool Guide.
The guide uses a traffic light metaphor to highlight the suitability of various Moodle tools alongside a range of pedagogical objectives.

What's great, is that the author Joyce Seitzinger, has licensed the guide with a Creative Commons license (BY-NC-SA)
You can access Joyce's Tool Guide here and from the Links menu on the right hand side.



This work by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Upcoming Moodle Training

I know we are getting to that time of year, but given the WebCT Vista shut-off deadline (31st August), I thought it would be useful to cram in some extra sessions over the coming weeks.

Three basic sessions (to introduce Moodle, orientation and essential building features), along with two more specific 'Migration training' sessions (focussing on backing up files and quizzes from WebCT and importing them into Moodle), are available from Tuesday 12th July through Thursday 21st July.

All of the sessions are held from 10.00am - 11.30am, and you can sign up below or using this link - http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1871139629

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If you have any specific training requests, feel free to contact me directly or via the comments....