Teaching with Moodle – books, glossaries and so much more

Week 2 of Teaching with Moodle has been looking at activities – using a glossary, wiki, forum, the weekly quiz, a survey and a choice.

What I have gained from this week (and Week 1) is not how to set up an activity but the actual thought put into the wording and structure of the activities. For example, the book that goes through all of the activities isn’t titled with “How to create activities in Moodle”, it is titled with “Book: How can I help my learners learn?”. Some people might think ‘Well, so what?’ but for me it says a lot!

Firstly, clearly starting what the activity is to a experienced (or even not so experienced moodler) might seem pointless but I can think of a number of people at school where that small bit of information would be really important. It clearly identities what the activity is and points to what all teachers want to do – help their learners learn. So, I guess it is a way of getting people to look inside the book. I can see how this approach could be very effective with making an engaging course.

And it may seem such a simple thing to people but for me I have been focused on learning about everything how works in Moodle over the last couple of years and haven’t stopped to think about the structure of courses from a learning focus. I am starting this now (better late than never!).

The other activity that got me thinking was the glossary. This year we have created a online Staff Portal to disseminate information. We are also using it as a course to show staff different ways of using Moodle and when I saw the “Glossary: Terms using in Teaching” in Week 2, a light went off! What a great way to show all the terms used within our WGC4me (Moodle) site (we have it set up so that staff and students can also access numerous other software and applications).

So, I have already started creating a book on how to add Moodle resources and activities (Book: adding resources & activities to WGC4me (Moodle)) and a glossary (Glossary: Terms used in WGC4me). I can see other useful books being on how to use Google Apps and the other resources.

Stuff that hasn’t grabbed me in Week 2 – the wiki didn’t get my attention and I posted in the Teach the Group forum (although probably not the right kind of post) but no one else has. Potentially one of the downsides of a MOOC with thousands of students, or with a lot of students being experienced on how to use Moodle. And the survey was really long!!

Week 2 has been good. Wasn’t really expecting to get too much from this course but how wrong was I. The way that it is structured is great and I still have so much to learn.

Here are a couple of questions for anyone that reads this, where can I go to get help with structuring Moodle courses to engage learners? And is trying to become a MCCC worth it?