This week I built my first ever “unit” in Moodle. I have to admit, it was a very large learning curve (not as straight forward as I thought it would be) and now I can see how and why my professors in years past have gotten so irritated with it. If you are to just learn everything there is to know about Moodle all by yourself and try to build something from scratch solo, it could take many hours. I am lucky enough to have a preset unit to work with so that made life a lot easier. I also really enjoyed learning about Moodle in a jigsaw fashion and having video tutorials made up by my colleagues to watch and go along with instead of just static readings. Finally, the help of a peer to critique and give me suggestions along the way was something that I am sure not many other teachers get the opportunity to have in other situations. Although Moodle is a very complex LMS, I now see a lot of benefits to it and I am excited to start using it with my own courses and students.
There were many things that I did not even know were possible with Moodle until the presentations by my colleagues and now that I am more aware I am actually quite excited to start preparing and not nearly as
scared as I was before entering this experience. It was suggested that database would be a great way to complete novel studies and since my students are expected to complete a few a year, I am sure this is one of the first things that I will be setting up in my course. Another thing that I found very helpful was choice; it seems like a great way to help students select a novel and as a teacher I can make sure not everyone is doing the same book but rather they are evenly spread out throughout the term so each time a novel study is being done, the students have other peers to discuss with. Quiz is something else that I think I will be using as much as possible because I find it is hard to get students to physically mail me a test but if I can put them all online and their marks and answers are submitted automatically it saves me the stress of trying to track down tests and the family the stress of trying to get it to me through scanning or snail mail.
Something that I am not too sure that I will be using with Moodle would be the grades function. I am more of an excel spreadsheet where I can see all of my student’s marks for different assignments and from there do my own calculations instead of worrying about putting in the correct values in the Moodle sections. I can see the value of using grades in Moodle but I also don’t think that I would ever be able to fully rely on it. Something else that I don’t think it worth trying to set up with Moodle would be math type questions in quizzes. The calculated questions I found were really hard to work with and needed to be typed in such a particular way that it really wasn’t worth trying to work with. Another reason I do not see value in trying to figure out the calculated questions is that math is something that has to be written out because if there is a mistake along the way at least partial marks can be given up until the mistake occurs and if you are only giving the students a chance to put in the answer they are unable to show their thought process to get there.
All in all I am very glad to have gone through the experience of learning Moodle and I am now very excited to personalize it (or another program similar to it such as Edmodo) for my students to use in the years to come!
There were many things that I did not even know were possible with Moodle until the presentations by my colleagues and now that I am more aware I am actually quite excited to start preparing and not nearly as
scared as I was before entering this experience. It was suggested that database would be a great way to complete novel studies and since my students are expected to complete a few a year, I am sure this is one of the first things that I will be setting up in my course. Another thing that I found very helpful was choice; it seems like a great way to help students select a novel and as a teacher I can make sure not everyone is doing the same book but rather they are evenly spread out throughout the term so each time a novel study is being done, the students have other peers to discuss with. Quiz is something else that I think I will be using as much as possible because I find it is hard to get students to physically mail me a test but if I can put them all online and their marks and answers are submitted automatically it saves me the stress of trying to track down tests and the family the stress of trying to get it to me through scanning or snail mail.
Something that I am not too sure that I will be using with Moodle would be the grades function. I am more of an excel spreadsheet where I can see all of my student’s marks for different assignments and from there do my own calculations instead of worrying about putting in the correct values in the Moodle sections. I can see the value of using grades in Moodle but I also don’t think that I would ever be able to fully rely on it. Something else that I don’t think it worth trying to set up with Moodle would be math type questions in quizzes. The calculated questions I found were really hard to work with and needed to be typed in such a particular way that it really wasn’t worth trying to work with. Another reason I do not see value in trying to figure out the calculated questions is that math is something that has to be written out because if there is a mistake along the way at least partial marks can be given up until the mistake occurs and if you are only giving the students a chance to put in the answer they are unable to show their thought process to get there.
All in all I am very glad to have gone through the experience of learning Moodle and I am now very excited to personalize it (or another program similar to it such as Edmodo) for my students to use in the years to come!
Screenshot from my LMS Moodle build
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