Teachers & Moodle

Bob the Builder

Moodle is a facility which allows for online classroom learning to take place. a teacher may upload notes or create quizzes with the students, and only the students of their class can see the notes, and quizzes and links to online resources.

Information about Moodle can be found here

Demo can be found here

Just wondering what are teachers' views on this is general. I am a current third year student, and I'm currently implementing it at our school, as a facility for the IT literate teachers to use to share notes with their students who are mostly all It Literate.

What concerns would you have for this. Would anyone have any major objections, or would you even use it at all if it was to be put in your 2nd level school. all opinions welcome.

Thanks very much
NevF

spurious

We're bringing it in for our kids in September. I'm sure not all teachers on the staff will use it, but those that will are looking forward to it.

I'm particularly looking forward to using it with my IT LCA class, who already send and receive their assignments through email.

Ostrom

I dont know if this is relevant, I teach at NUI Maynooth where we have been using it for the past three years, the uni standard ones now seem to be either moodle or blackboard as both are integrated with turnitin.com which we use for plagiarism detection (I dont know if this is needed for yourselves).

Its interesting that you are implementing it at second level. Usage of moodle is fairly high amongst students (90% I would say - it gives listed stats for each resigtered user), from a slow start due to lack of page creation by academic staff (everyone on every faculty was trained in it). The past few years it has taken off. Most departments post specific pages for modules with lecture summaries in .doc, .pps of the class if there is one, links to pages photos, the usual...

Our only complaint would be that people tend to over rely on it - if a subject reading is posted they are unlikely to source an alternative from outside set reading lists. Some people think turnitin is a bit too much (but it makes our job a lot easier). Have you browsed any active pages? PM me, ill try get you a look at our one if you want?

Tom Dunne

Like efla, I use it at third level.

I find it invaluable, it's a central source for all course related information. I actually encourage students to use the discussion forum also. I even tried the live chat with one class - that was a bit of a disaster.

I suppose at second level you would have to be very conscious of the fact that not all students would have access to a PC and broadband at home, putting these students at an even greater disadvantage.

Ostrom

Our English department ended tutorials last year and tried an all moodle discussion and assignment approach; it was a disaster. A number mature students couldnt come to terms with the technology straight away, and many straight out of school first years lost out on essential face time with tutors. There was some sort of student campaign this year to bring back classroom sessions. Moodle is great but it cant compensate for discussion.

The discussion forums are a great support, people throw ideas around, recommend readings, give advice - way beyond what a tutor or lecturer could hope to get through. I am hoping our department goes for all electronic submission soon, the return grades and comments option is excellent and it would make our job much easier (we could archive assignments for years, compile stats and eliminate tonnes of paper)

Tom Dunne

efla wrote: »

and many straight out of school first years lost out on essential face time with tutors. There was some sort of student campaign this year to bring back classroom sessions. Moodle is great but it cant compensate for discussion.

And that is a key point - no matter what anyone says, there is simply no substitute for good old fashioned face to face teaching/lecturing. No electronic medium can replace a real live instructor. It's something I think institutions have to realise when delivering classes - you can't simply put up a website and hope students will learn.

efla wrote: »

The discussion forums are a great support, people throw ideas around, recommend readings, give advice - way beyond what a tutor or lecturer could hope to get through. I am hoping our department goes for all electronic submission soon, the return grades and comments option is excellent and it would make our job much easier (we could archive assignments for years, compile stats and eliminate tonnes of paper)

I always encourage use of the discussion fora on Moodle. Especially when I have a large percentage of non-national students. I believe it makes it easier for them to get into a discussion they would otherwise not have.

Electronic submission is possibly the best feature of Moodle. In my classes, there is no more "Oh, I'll drop it into you later today" or "I left it at home". There's a cutoff time, if you don't make it, you get zero, simple as that.

I have a surprisingly high number of assignments submitted on time.

TheDriver

we use it in our secondary school, as Tom says it doesn't replace teaching but good place to put notes etc and stops the kids coming in constantly asking for sheets they have lost. Also good forum for students to interact.

Ostrom

Tom Dunne wrote: »

And that is a key point - no matter what anyone says, there is simply no substitute for good old fashioned face to face teaching/lecturing. No electronic medium can replace a real live instructor. It's something I think institutions have to realise when delivering classes - you can't simply put up a website and hope students will learn.

I always encourage use of the discussion fora on Moodle. Especially when I have a large percentage of non-national students. I believe it makes it easier for them to get into a discussion they would otherwise not have.

Electronic submission is possibly the best feature of Moodle. In my classes, there is no more "Oh, I'll drop it into you later today" or "I left it at home". There's a cutoff time, if you don't make it, you get zero, simple as that.

I have a surprisingly high number of assignments submitted on time.

Unfortunately our president doesnt see it as such, the department were praised initially for shaving thousands from their budget. Our professor to his absolute credit, held out for more and allocated more money to support teaching for us. Its all part of a worrying trend - bigger lecture halls, less face to face discussion, commercialization consultants for science phd's. Our uni has a full time staff member devoted to moodle support, unfortunately they dont treat it as the valuable support tool it should be. Most departments allocate 40%+ of their yearly budgets to support teaching, and moodle seems to be the ideal replacement in mind - as many students in as large a room with less interaction outside the lecture hall.

We dont currently accept online submission and our on-time submission rate is bad (about 20% submit in the 2 week 10%-overdue-penalty period), and we catch a lot of plagiarized papers which is my biggest problem. It takes 10 minutes to mark a paper, and half an hour to chase someone who couldnt be bothered doing proper research.

I hope we move to electronic submission next year, the amount of paper we waste each year retaining paper essays for externs is huge (about a truckload goes to shred at the end of every year)

Do you ever use the online quiz function? I would like to next year, we award marks for participation in tutorials and I think an online comprehension based on the weeks class would be the way to go to make allocation easier, and fairer.

Bob the Builder

Apologies, only got a chance to log on there. Thanks for all the replies. I have been confronted with a lot of things to watch out for when I'm implementing it.

spurious wrote:

I'm sure not all teachers on the staff will use it, but those that will are looking forward to it.

I'm particularly looking forward to using it with my IT LCA class, who already send and receive their assignments through email.

Same here. Lots of positive reaction, but will the teachers follow up on it. There's one teacher(english & history), who is widely respected by the students, and although it was my idea, he's propelling it, and he is willing to share the notes for his two subjects with the other teachers. Other than him, a religion/english teacher has showed a large interest in it, and there's few who will use it in dribs and drabs.

Our school had a new extension recently, and the new room will be an LCA room with computers in it, so that will be a good resource. Also, for LCVP students, Moodle should be handy.

efla wrote:

Our only complaint would be that people tend to over rely on it - if a subject reading is posted they are unlikely to source an alternative from outside set reading lists. Some people think turnitin is a bit too much (but it makes our job a lot easier). Have you browsed any active pages? PM me, ill try get you a look at our one if you want?

@efla, until students have 100% broadband penetration/internet access, it will be my recommendation and my presumption that the school will require that no compulsory homework be distributed online. Teachers will merely upload the resources, and the option will be there for a student to either hand up their homework in paper format, or in certain cases, digitally. They may also get their homework online if they're absent. This all happens at the teacher's discretion.

Thank you for the offer efla. I appreciate it. My brother is currently in Sligo IT and when I was looking at his one once, thats when the idea sparked with me. Until there are fully IT literate teachers, and students with full internet access, I don't foresee an overreliance on Moodle.

Tom Dunne wrote:

Like efla, I use it at third level.

I find it invaluable, it's a central source for all course related information. I actually encourage students to use the discussion forum also. I even tried the live chat with one class - that was a bit of a disaster.

I suppose at second level you would have to be very conscious of the fact that not all students would have access to a PC and broadband at home, putting these students at an even greater disadvantage.

The discussion forums, I wouldn't have previously thought to be a large part of Moodle, but when I dug deep into it, I saw Discussions were a large part of it.

As for 'live chat', if the option pops up, I might have it there for use in certain courses, at certain times only, but I don't think the option currently exists so I'm not going there.

It's a brilliant aid to teaching, but until everyone feels comfortable with it, it's going to be a difficult journey. Once again, lack of internet access, and lack of enough computers to go around, is a problem(currently approx. 10 students to 1 computer)

efla wrote:

Our English department ended tutorials last year and tried an all moodle discussion and assignment approach; it was a disaster. A number mature students couldnt come to terms with the technology straight away, and many straight out of school first years lost out on essential face time with tutors. There was some sort of student campaign this year to bring back classroom sessions. Moodle is great but it cant compensate for discussion.

Nah, I see what you mean. It's also important to note that technology has it's limits, and shoudl be an aid to the classroom environment rather than a substitute.

@ Tom Dunne - If you succeed in reading down this far, how do you feel non-national students react to Moodle in comparison with national students, baring in mind language difficulties?

TheDriver wrote:

we use it in our secondary school, as Tom says it doesn't replace teaching but good place to put notes etc and stops the kids coming in constantly asking for sheets they have lost. Also good forum for students to interact.

Thats it's aim and if it succeeds in doing this, I'd be very satisfied. And for the majority of students, those with internet access, it prevents excuses. Also, many teachers will be dlighted that they can set a strict deadline for "electronic submission".

efla wrote:

Unfortunately our president doesnt see it as such, the department were praised initially for shaving thousands from their budget. Our professor to his absolute credit, held out for more and allocated more money to support teaching for us. Its all part of a worrying trend - bigger lecture halls, less face to face discussion, commercialization consultants for science phd's. Our uni has a full time staff member devoted to moodle support

Well, being a public, 2nd level school, already runs on a tight budget. I'll keep what you just said there in the back of my mind, because I want to retain all the funding we can get, and we can spend it on other things we need. Paper is something else in our school that people want to see it's use being reduced and one teacher I spoke to said "I have a laptop and I'd bring it in, but I haven't got any more room under my arm I have so many useless tests here, and I'd prefer to use the laptop to correct them".

Thanks for all the replies, and hope you all enjoy the summer holidays!

rcly123

I've also being using Moodle at 3rd level for about 3 years. Very good, especially for submission of assigned work as said already.

One recommendation if your just about to roll it out in your school:

Typically, each teacher is given a subject page (so the student would see English, Maths, etc...as "courses" they are attending). Each page (per teacher) can then be broken into sections (1, 2, ...etc); sometimes people use week1, week2...etc.

One negative I've found is from the students perspective:

each page grows to become overly complex. Each page can often have a number of forums, a number of project submission points, a number of sections with different resources in each. From a student perspective, I have witnessed many students becoming "lost" within moodle and confused, often confusing one subject with another.

I would recommend that you try to sit down and design your moodle access, such that each year has one "course", and a teacher be given access to one section only (not sure if that's a tech difficulty, but it's easily found out).

So as a student in year 2 say, I click on my year page, and each section on the page reflects a different subject. (It would be good then if you made the order of sections uniform from one year to the next for consistency).

Ok, don't want to get too detailed, but let me know if you find that useful.

Tom Dunne

nevf wrote: »

@ Tom Dunne - If you succeed in reading down this far, how do you feel non-national students react to Moodle in comparison with national students, baring in mind language difficulties?

To be honest, I haven't had a lot of feedback from non-national students.

However, one thing I have noticed is that they are more likely to ask questions or participate online than in the classroom environment, so that alone is a benefit as far as I can see.

ntlbell

TheDriver wrote: »

we use it in our secondary school, as Tom says it doesn't replace teaching but good place to put notes etc and stops the kids coming in constantly asking for sheets they have lost. Also good forum for students to interact.

who looks after the admin of the machine etc in the secondary school?

is it students or teachers?

Bob the Builder

rcly123 wrote: »

I've also being using Moodle at 3rd level for about 3 years. Very good, especially for submission of assigned work as said already.

One recommendation if your just about to roll it out in your school:

Typically, each teacher is given a subject page (so the student would see English, Maths, etc...as "courses" they are attending). Each page (per teacher) can then be broken into sections (1, 2, ...etc); sometimes people use week1, week2...etc.

One negative I've found is from the students perspective:

each page grows to become overly complex. Each page can often have a number of forums, a number of project submission points, a number of sections with different resources in each. From a student perspective, I have witnessed many students becoming "lost" within moodle and confused, often confusing one subject with another.

I would recommend that you try to sit down and design your moodle access, such that each year has one "course", and a teacher be given access to one section only (not sure if that's a tech difficulty, but it's easily found out).

So as a student in year 2 say, I click on my year page, and each section on the page reflects a different subject. (It would be good then if you made the order of sections uniform from one year to the next for consistency).

Ok, don't want to get too detailed, but let me know if you find that useful.

Thanks very much rcly123. i will keep that in mind. It's not something I thought too detailed about, and thanks for bringing that to my attention.

TomDunne wrote:

However, one thing I have noticed is that they are more likely to ask questions or participate online than in the classroom environment, so that alone is a benefit as far as I can see.

yes, if they participate and it improves their english, then that would be a good thing. Might offer Moodle in a variety of languages, so as users can switch languages for the interface, but once again, that raises it's own problems so we'll have to get around that.

who looks after the admin of the machine etc in the secondary school?

is it students or teachers?

Glad you asked that as I'd appreciate feedback on that also. Moodle is based on a philosophy called "social constructionist pedagogy", in other words "the student follows the teacher". The easiest way to describe this is that it will be the exact same as a normal classroom (ie. Principle --> Teacher + IT admins --> Learning Support --> Students.) These are listed in order of the amount of control they will have.

I'll post a diagram later hopefully. Not arsed studying for Geog tomorrow!