Thursday, May 17, 2012 Moodle Researcher? This One's for You Posted by Brad at 11:00 AM


In case you haven't heard, the main Moodler himself, Martin Dougiamas recently announced the 1st ever Moodle Research Conference, a gathering that will become a major event for academics, researchers, experts and practitioners.

The conference, taking place September 14 - 15 in Heraklion, Crete-Greece, will focus on research and development (R&D) on teaching and learning carried out with Moodle.

According to Martin's recent post, many papers have already submitted for the conference. Submitted papers can range from in-depth case studies of how Moodle can be applied and used in various environments to interface design experiments and the development of whole new modules to introduce new techniques.

It's not too late to submit! Head over to the Moodle Research Conference site to submit a paper (now due May, 28th) and to find out more information about what promises to be a great event.

All the best,

- Brad
Tuesday, May 15, 2012 Best Practices: Three Tips for Making the Most of Moodle’s Question Bank Posted by Brad at 7:00 AM

Best Practices: Best Practices: Three Tips for Making the Most of Moodle’s Question Bank
By Janelle Gieseke, Moodlerooms Senior Trainer

Creating quizzes can be a time consuming task, but is most often a necessary one. Utilizing Moodle’s Question Bank to its fullest is the best way to get that “bang for your buck” we are all after. Using the Question Bank effectively will create organization, give you the ability to re-use questions, and save you time in the long run. Take a look at these three simple tips for making the most of the Moodle Question Bank in your courses!

Tip #1: Add Questions Directly to the Question Bank
Although you can create and add questions directly into a Quiz after you create the module and attend to all its settings, this is really not the best place to do so. Yes, it is tempting, but don’t do it! By adding questions directly into a Quiz, they are automatically stored in only that quiz. Therefore, they cannot be reused in any other quizzes in your course. The best place to add your questions is to the Moodle Question Bank. When you access the Question Bank (Settings > Course Administration > Question Bank), you will notice that there is a default Course Level category for your quiz questions to be placed in. The title of this category will be something like “Default for Music 101.” Note: If you are logged into the Question Bank with Site Administrator rights, you will see additional levels called Default for Category and Default for System. You do not want to use these, as they cannot be accessed by teachers. By adding questions to the Course Level, you can use and re-use them in multiple quizzes. This is where the importance of creating categories comes into play.



Tip #2: Use Categories to Organize Your Question Bank
Instead of keeping questions in one long list in your Question Bank, first create Categories (Settings > Course Administration > Question Bank > Categories) before creating questions. Try organizing your questions by topics, chapters, units, or any grouping that fits your course. To create a more defined grouping of questions, subcategories can also be created. As an example, you may have several top level question categories, and then subcategories under each of those.



Categories can easily be added by going to the Question Bank, then scrolling to the bottom of the page and entering the name and location you would like the category or subcategory. Category info can be added as well, however this information is for the instructor’s reference only and is not visible to students.



By organizing and categorizing quiz questions, they can be used in multiple exams; saving you time and allowing for students to take pre-tests, quizzes, and final exams with questions pulled from the same Question Bank. One key to make this work effectively is for you to ensure that each course topic contains a variety of good questions; allowing you to randomize questions, asking different questions to each student about the same topic(s).

Tip #3: Add Multiple Questions to a Quiz at a Time
Once questions have been added to the Categories and Subcategories in the Question Bank, you are ready to add questions to your quizzes. Questions can be added to quizzes in Moodle individually, in bulk, or randomly. By adding questions individually you are selecting a specific question that you want to be asked in the quiz. To add questions to your quiz individually, navigate to the Editing quiz area, show the question bank contents, select the category from which you would like to choose a question(s), and choose the question(s) to add by clicking the Select box next to them. When you have chosen all questions from that category, click the Add to quiz button. If you’ve organized your questions per topic, you can make use of the Select All check box, and move large numbers of questions into the Quiz in one fell swoop. If you want to add more questions from other categories, repeat the above steps after choosing the new category.


By adding questions randomly you can select a specific number of questions from a category that you would like to be pulled and added to a quiz. This will ensure that every student receives a varied list of questions, but by creating multiple questions that reference each course topic, you can ensure that they are being tested on everything that has been covered. To add randomized questions to your quiz, navigate to the Editing quiz area, show the question bank contents, select the category from which you would like to randomly pull questions, and choose the number of questions to randomly add to the quiz. Click the Add to quiz button.


Understanding how to utilize the Moodle Question Bank will save you time in quiz creation, and ensure well organized questions which are easy to find and use more than once. To learn more about implementing these strategies, enroll in our Advanced Course Building online course today!

-Janelle
Monday, May 14, 2012 The Moodle Recap: May 14th, 2012 Posted by Brad at 7:00 AM


Good morning! We hope everyone had a great weekend. Here's your weekly recap of some recent headlines in Moodle and e-Learning!

- Brad

From the Web:


From www.moodlenews.com:

Tuesday, May 8, 2012 Best Practices: “How To” Videos for Creating Moodle Rubrics Posted by Brad at 7:00 AM

Best Practices: “How To” Videos for Creating Moodle Rubrics
By Rebecca DeSantis, MSIT, Moodlerooms Instructional Designer

The much anticipated Moodle Core 2.2 rubrics will be available to Moodlerooms customers with the upcoming Summer 2012 release of joule. Rubrics are a great tool for evaluating performance in any classroom. With this new release, educators can quickly create a Moodle rubric with specific “criterion” and associated “levels” for evaluation. As of right now, rubrics are an advanced grading method for Assignment activities only.

In anticipation of this upcoming feature release, I created three videos on Moodle rubrics to jump start your transition from paper to online rubrics. You’ll be able to create rubrics from scratch or by using a predefined template, and you can grade within the rubric itself! In addition, site administrators, and those given permission, can save the various rubrics as global/public templates for all users to reuse.

Moodle 2: Creating a Rubric from Scratch



Moodle 2: Creating a Rubric from a Template



Moodle 2: Grading with Rubrics




These rubric videos are now available on our Learning Solutions: Training Videos on Moodle and joule playlist on our Moodlerooms YouTube channel. If you subscribe to our channel, you can opt to receive notifications when we release new videos. Videos include tutorials, webinars, and new feature releases.

Thanks for reading and watching!

~Rebecca
Monday, May 7, 2012 The Moodle Recap: May 7, 2012 Posted by Brad at 6:00 AM


Good morning! We hope everyone had a great weekend. Before we get to our weekly recap of some of the recent headlines in Moodle and e-Learning, we wanted to remind everyone that tickets for this year's Moodle Moot West Coast (July 31st - August 3rd in Woodland Hills, CA) are still available!

If you haven't had the chance to register, head over here to secure your spot!

And now, onto the news!

All the best,

- Brad

From the Web:

From www.moodlenews.com:
Wednesday, May 2, 2012 Best Practices: 4 Ways to Best Utilize joule Reports Posted by Brad at 7:00 AM

Best Practices: 4 Ways to Best Utilize joule Reports
By Marcelo Mendes, Moodlerooms Trainer

Moodlerooms created joule Reports to supplement Moodle reports. As you read in one of our previous posts, Moodle has great reporting functionality with its built-in reports to assist you during your daily facilitation tasks. However, Moodle reports are somewhat limited because there are only five types of course reports with restricted amounts of filters. Now, Moodlerooms has more than 50 joule Reports available for students, teachers, and site administrators.

joule Reports enable you to track individual student performance, specific learning activities, and course-wide trends. They are fast and easy to use because there is no need to refresh your page in between viewing the various reports. You can easily navigate from report to report and the information updates automatically, saving you precious time and clicks. To view these reports, click joule Reports in the Settings block within Course Administration.


The 4 Categories of joule Reports
Within each of the categories, you can use reports and filters that will assist you in finding the information you want to know. Here are the four categories of reports available to instructors:
  • Course Reports: Provide simple views of student engagement within course activities
  • Correlation Reports: Compare grades in the course to the level of engagement against activities
  • Exception Reports: Display information regarding students who are not interacting with the course activities
  • Learner View Reports: View information as if you are a student


4 Tips for Using joule Reports
I am sure at this point you are curious to explore these fantastic reports, but before you start using them let me share with you four tips for taking advantage of joule Reports:

  1. Apply sticky filters: When you select criteria for a filter (e.g., a certain date range), it will “stick” in all reports. This means that you don’t have to filter by the criteria when jumping from report to report. This will save you time when viewing different types of reports because there will be no need to select the data range again once you view another report. Don’t forget to update the filter and select new dates when you want to look for another date range.
  2. Use reports for grading: There are several ways to grade activities in joule, but in my opinion, the most efficient method is via the Needs Grading report, which is located in the Course Reports category. This report allows you to easily find activities that students have submitted, but have not yet been graded by you. The generated report provides a list with the name of the activity, the name of the participant, when the activity was submitted, and a link for grading the submission.
  3. See information in a graphical format: I am a firm believer that a picture is worth a thousand words, and when using the joule’s Correlation Reports, you cannot only see information in tables but also select them to be displayed in graphs. These graphs allow you to have a visual representation of how students are interacting with your course. For example, you can easily analyze the effectiveness of course activities by looking at a graph that plots student engagement versus activity grade.
  4. Message students instantly: joule allows you to contact one or multiple students directly from the Course and Exception Reports. As you get familiar generating these types of reports, you will find the need to communicate with students about their course behavior. It could be a positive reinforcement for completing a set of activities, or it can be a warning message saying they need to complete a quiz. No matter the reason, you will find this functionality useful because it allows you to contact students instantly.


If you are still curious to learn more about joule Reports, I recommend that you attend our webinar Making Moodle and joule Reports Work for You. This training offer has been designed to instruct instructors and administrators on how to use reports to gather data from their joule site. During the session, participants learn about Moodle and joule Reports and understand how they work by interacting with the different types of reports. In addition, they will learn how joule allows site administrators to create their own reports using SQL queries.

Sincerely,

~Marcelo

Monday, April 30, 2012 The Moodle Recap: April 30th, 2012 Posted by Brad at 1:00 PM


Top o' the afternoon! We hope everyone had a great weekend. Before we get to our weekly recap of some of the recent headlines in Moodle and e-Learning, we wanted to remind everyone that early bird registration for this year's Moodle Moot West Coast (July 31st - August 3rd in Woodland Hills, CA) ends tonight at midnight!

If you haven't had the chance to register, this is the last opportunity to take advantage of the reduced rate! Head over here to secure your spot!

And now, onto the news!

All the best,

- Brad

From the Web:

From www.moodlenews.com:
Tuesday, April 24, 2012 Best Practices: Using Moodle for Corporate Training Initiatives Posted by Brad at 8:00 AM


Using Moodle for Corporate Training Initiatives
By Rebecca DeSantis, Moodlerooms Instructional Designer


Moodle is frequently the LMS of choice for schools, but it is also a popular choice among corporations. These organizations may find themselves using Moodle quite differently than most schools. For example, courses might be primarily asynchronous and self-paced, with no instructor or facilitator. These organizations may use a variety of authoring tools and instructional strategies to reach their participants. In addition, the processes they use may vary because of the resources used to build these courses and the overall course design. In this post, I’m going to focus on ways corporate users can use Moodle.
 
Consider the following suggestions if you are a corporate Moodler:

  1. If your organization is new to E-Learning, you’ll first need to make sure that you are ready to go online. If you haven’t done so already, hire/consult with an instructional designer who has online course development experience. 
  2. Use the Lesson module to chunk your content, incorporate knowledge checks to reinforce key points, create branching scenarios/interactives, and award points to users. You can also use lesson to remediate users to previous content pages based on their response.
  3. Use the Quiz module for pre- and post-tests. You can weight quiz questions within the question bank, shuffle distracters and questions, and provide question specific and overall feedback. You’ll most likely want to use the deferred feedback option for post-tests, and no feedback for pre-tests.
  4. For Level 1 Evaluation, use the Feedback module. It allows you to create custom surveys to gain valuable information from your users.
  5. Set up courses to use completion tracking, and add the Course Completion status block to your course. 
  6. If your course design is to mandate users to progress through the course in a set/linear fashion, then use the restricted access settings found in the activity settings.
  7. Use the Certificate module. You can customize the look and feel of certificates to match your organization’s branding. Make sure you tell employees to file certificates and provide a copy to Human Resources.
  8. Use the SCORM module to upload content you create using other authoring tools (such as Articulate and Captivate) by publishing them as SCORM 1.2 conformant packages. Determine your best practices for displaying SCORM packages in your courses. 
  9. Use the Glossary module to add definitions for key terms into a course. Configure the course and activity filters to link to these terms throughout the course and activities as desired.
  10. Create a course template to reuse repeatedly for courses that will have the same general flow and layout. To create a template, create a new course. Then, create the overall flow and structure. When you are done, create a backup of that course. This backup will serve as the “template” for all new courses. To reuse, simply create a new course and restore the backup template.
  11. Organize courses into categories with similar content subjects.
  12. Create cohorts of users, based on job roles, to quickly enroll employees with the same job functionally into a course.
  13. Create a parent role to assign managers to their employees, allowing them to review progress and completion status.
  14. Use groups to customize training elements for different types of employees going through the same course.
  15. Use the blog feature as a way to push information to employees.
  16. Encourage managers to create a course with departmental onboarding information for new hires.
  17. Consider creating a course for various knowledge domains (Communities of Practice) to allow employees to collaborate with each other. For example, you could use the Forum and Wiki modules. Forums are a great way to keep the conversation going after face-to-face sessions.

To learn how to build courses using these features, take our Course Building online courses, available in both a facilitated and non-facilitated format.
 
Thanks for reading! 
~Rebecca
 

Monday, April 23, 2012 The Moodle Recap: April 23, 2012 Posted by Brad at 11:00 AM


Top o' the afternoon! We hope everyone had a great weekend. We're hard at work on the upcoming joule 2.4 release and making great progress. We're excited to share all of the release's exciting new features over the next few months, so stay tuned for those developments!

For now, here's a recap of some of the recent headlines in Moodle and e-Learning.

All the best,

- Brad

From the Web:

Here's some of the best posts of last week from moodlenews.com:
Wednesday, April 18, 2012 Staying True to the Mission Posted by Brad at 7:00 AM
The following is a post from Moodlerooms Chairman and CEO, Lou Pugliese.
-----------------------------------

Rather than jump into the social media fray following my current and new Blackboard colleagues, I made a deliberate decision to delay my reflections on what’s transpired with our recent merger over the past two weeks. In expressing my off script observations, I thought it essential to get perspectives from customers, the Moodle community, partners and the education business community at large. Amidst the market ruckus, hundreds of press and social media postings and conversations, my position from the beginning has always been, let’s let the market speak.

To set the context, at Moodlerooms, the opportunity that I brought to the management team and board was based on a set of gating questions:
  • Can a merger with Blackboard accelerate and better support the successful adoption of open source and offer something of greater value that can impact student outcomes more quickly and cost effectively?
  • Can Moodlerooms be better resourced to continue to innovate and more profoundly impact the education community using Blackboard’s global presence in the market?
  • Can we preserve our current relationships with customers and continue to offer our products and services at the same value, as an independent business?
  • Can Moodlerooms maintain its brand and add value to the Moodle community in ways we couldn't as a standalone business?
  • Can we more cost efficiently operate our business by leveraging resources in both technology and human capital in ways that allow us to continue to offer economic value?

Among other options, our decision weighed heavily on the post merger impact on achieving these objectives more quickly and effectively. In the final decision, if we can pass through these gating factors and can create new value for the market, the method doesn’t matter, the outcome does. Most importantly our new owners needed to understand that our value is not measured in currency, it's measured in character and what our company brings to the market. I’ll state emphatically that we, at Moodlerooms, will continue to bring the same value we have for years. Our mission remains unchanged: to be the predominant global open source eLearning software and services business, dedicated to making enterprise open source deployment successful for institutions worldwide. After a great deal of deliberation, we felt our company and the market would be better served with this combination than if operating independently as a small growth stage business.

Market reaction and common questions

I’ve spent a majority of my time since the merger having in-depth discussions with numerous stakeholder groups all of whom have expressed a wide variety of opinions, concerns and attitudes about this merger. Among the dialogue I’ve had with customers, prospects, business partners and a handful of industry luminaries, since the announcement, the constellation of issues revolve around four themes; strategy, innovation, service and economics.

Strategy- The overall strategy for this merger revolves around the changing needs of the market and following what is emerging as a vendor neutral trend. We see this in the transformation of large fortune 100 companies; IBM has moved from a singular hardware business play to a service model business, sometimes even selling and managing what once were competing products. Dell is migrating away from a pure hardware focus to cloud and cross-sector IT consulting services. In our own market we’ve seen this in the recent merger of Datatel and Sungard, now Ellucian. In a market where numerous legacy systems, new market entrants and the growth of open source options continue to evolve the market, we believe that customers will be best served by choice, options and services to back solutions. The modular architecture of Moodle and Moodlerooms provisioning, customization and configuration capabilities, and Blackboard’s assets beyond core LMS provide a powerful combination of options that, in the end, better serves the changing needs of the market. Adding Netspot to the mix gives the combined companies truly global focus on open source products, support and services.

In our ongoing interaction with our customers and prospects, we see a continuing trend in institutions maintaining multiple LMS systems across campuses. Many continually request integration with Blackboard components such as Collaborate, Connect, Transact, and other Blackboard applications and we’re now in a position to offer a wealth of choices that in the end can help create order out of what could be chaos. Some of our own innovations we’ve developed inside and outside the Moodle core can also be advantageous to Blackboard’s product roadmap.

From a strategic view, this merger also underscores Blackboard’s commitment to open systems and interoperability. As I’ve written in the past, the hype cycle continues to escalate with vendor claims of “open source” and “open architecture.” These two concepts are very different and often get intermingled and leveraged as marketing speak. Open source is source code level application development sharing, open architecture is about platforms designed to allow third parties to make products that plug into or interoperate with other systems. The result of this merger allows us, as one company, to provide both at scale. The ability for both of these concepts to coexist provides the necessary ingredients for a highly flexible, networked platform that can be more responsive to education institutions’ unique business requirements. In an exponentially growing market of open, we now have an opportunity to invite an extensive base of Blackboard customers and developers into the open source community.

Innovation- During the process of the merger, each company gets to know each other’s businesses intimately. We get a unique opportunity to stare into the eyes of a competitor to better understand what makes them tick, but also to determine if a relationship can be formed toward a better market outcome . The discovery process revealed that Moodlerooms’ fast and nimble approach to the market and industry leading talent was an extremely good match for Blackboard’s stable eLearning solutions and the people that create and support them. The combined organization will provide the necessary union of assets and human capital needed to pioneer new innovation in the market to fulfill the still latent promise of eLearning globally. A good example of the potential of this relationship is a recent two-day product overview between both companies. As the day ran on, our meetings emerged as product innovation “meeting of the minds.” Both days were electric with new exciting ideas and charged with amazing synergies. Our initial meetings exceeded our expectations on all fronts and I believe you’ll see great new ideas emerge between our collective teams. Keep your ears to the ground for great things to come.

Service - Over a year ago at Moodlerooms, we conceived, published and launched a company-wide initiative we titled “Gold Standard Manifesto” (GSM). GSM was a pledge, starting with our Services division, to define and uphold levels of performance standards for our customers. Knowing that large scale implementations of open source LMS are nascent in the market, we invested millions in creating professional services and training programs designed to make enterprise scale transitions from proprietary LMS to Moodlerooms joule an exceptional experience. These transitions require significant proficiency in:

  • Cloud hosting configuration management that results in a scalable, secure and cost efficient delivery of enterprise scale online course environments;
  • Integration with legacy system and third party applications and other complex systems
  • Configuration to unique, individual institution requirements with features, functions and single sign-on interoperability
  • Deployment of enterprise open source LMS with a replicable business processes that include launch planning, course conversion, technical and end user training, administrative and end user support
  • Training and education programs designed to support institution administration of open source LMS and drive broad based adoption among faculty and students

I know of no other new entrant in the market that has invested in professional services at the levels Moodlerooms has. This is the post contract “heavy lifting” we’ve been able to deploy in hundreds of institutions, all of this led by many of the same staff from ANGEL Learning who built its reputation on service and quality. One of the key values that Blackboard realized was our service component and the complex requirements to create an end-to-end successful partner experience. Our pledge to our current and future customers is that we will maintain, improve and build on our Client Services operation and the high levels of satisfaction we have been able to achieve. We value now, and will continue to value our relationships with customers of all sizes and scopes. We will continue to take our relationships very seriously-you are a customer, not a commission.

Economics- Perhaps the most frequent question I received was concern over our current agreements, pricing and any changes to our current business. We will honor all our current agreements with our customers with no change in pricing or contract terms. Looking forward, one advantage of the merger is cross leveraging assets and human capital in ways that can continue to provide substantial value as we have in the past and maintain levels of product innovation and service that Moodlerooms has provided for over five years. With the backing of Blackboard, we have the tools to run our business more effectively and cost efficiently, but still remain independent and true to our mission.

Will this merger be an ideal solution to the entire changing landscape of the market? Absolutely not. While this rationale on paper is a compelling value proposition, the value creation will need to be in the execution of the original mission. Both companies in the merger realize that we will need to prove our current and future customers of the combined companies. We’re asking that you allow us to do that.

Most important, we want to hear from you during the process. Now more than ever, we need to take our direction from you, our customers and the market, on whether or not we’re fulfilling our original purpose and the course corrections needed to stay true to the mission.

The future starts now, let’s reinvent it together.

- Lou

Tuesday, April 17, 2012 Best Practices: 7 Steps for Transitioning to Online Teaching Posted by Brad at 6:00 AM


By Laura Lea Rand, M.Ed., Moodlerooms Instructional Designer and Trainer

For many teachers, teaching in the online environment is not what they expected. They dreamed of spending days in brick and mortar classrooms full of learners, their eyes bright, and their minds focused on each and every word we said. Times have changed, learners have changed, and so – we teachers must change too. Just because there is a change in the location of the learning environment and the delivery of content, it doesn’t mean we should remove ourselves from the sound pedagogical methodologies we all know and use. In today’s blog, I’ve outlined seven steps to ease the transition to teaching in the online environment.

Step 1: Prepare the Learning Environment
Just as you would prepare the walls and setup of your face-to-face classroom, you must prepare your online “walls” too. Moodle and joule offer multiple course formats to meet the needs of all teachers and learners. You can add blocks to the course for providing navigational assistance, instructional content, and organization. Be careful not to clutter your online course with too many peripheral items. The goal is to strike a good balance between content area and helpful, but not overwhelming, tools. For more ideas on preparing the learning environment, enroll in our Course Building Fundamentals online course.

Step 2: Welcome Open Communication and Establish Relationships
As an early childhood educator, I stood at the door of my classroom every morning and greeted each and every learner with a smile as they entered our “world.” Learners should feel supported and encouraged in the online environment, and the starting point is with open communication. This isn’t meant to be communication between teacher and learner only, but between learners as well. Peer communication and learning are two of the Social Constructivist pedagogies that Moodle is based upon. If learners in the course (no matter what their role) have built strong relationships with one another, communication comes more freely. Using Moodle and joule modules like Chat, Forum, and Moodle’s Messaging system is a great way to encourage two-way communication about any conceivable topic. joule offers a tool called Synchronous that can be used to create real-time meetings, including screen, audio, and video sharing for a more personal meeting space. To learn how to use joule Synchronous, enroll in our joule Synchronous webinar.

Step 3: Encourage Engagement and Collaboration
As teachers, we do our best to create engaging and collaborative environments for our learners. In the traditional classroom, this might be accomplished by grouping desks together, or having group circle time. Even with these techniques, you need to encourage most learners to fully engage with the content and collaborate with their peers. As I mentioned above, using forums is a great way to facilitate communication – but don’t just leave it to your learners. Join in the forums with them, prompt them with questions and praise them for posts that promote more discussion. For more tips on improving in-class discussion, read the blog entry Improving In-Class Discussion with Moodle Tools. Moodle has several tools which promote collaboration – the two most popular probably being Groups and the Workshop module. Groups allow you to organize learners for working together in the course. They can be configured to see other groups, or work in an isolated environment (on a module by module basis). The Workshop module is highly interactive and collaborative, providing for self-, peer-, and teacher-assessment. To learn best practices for implementing the Workshop module, enroll in our Advanced Course Building online course.

Step 4: Facilitate Genuine Interaction
Most learners would agree that their “favorite” class times are when they step away from their seats and get their hands dirty. Science experiments, mathematical manipulatives, and other tactile interactions with learning concepts is a necessary part of any learning experience. Online teachers are responsible for providing learners with meaningful interactions, especially for those who learn by “doing.” Moodle gives you the ability to create interactions and simulations in the content creation program of your choice (like Captivate and Articulate), and import the learning module as a SCORM activity. Interactions and simulations give learners genuine, real life opportunities to apply the knowledge gained through course content. To learn more about using SCORM in your course, read the blog entry Best Practices: 10 Tips and Tricks for Adding SCORM into Moodle and joule.

Step 5: Create Consistency
As educators, one of the things we all know is that “Consistency is the key!” To create consistency in your online course, provide learners with a predictable pattern of learning. Provide a consistent topical or weekly structure (each topic has an overview and goals resource, a lesson conveying content, a forum for discussion, an interactive/hands-on experience, and an assessment), so that learners can get into a “groove.” Think of it like your “daily” classroom schedule, where you do the same types of activities at the same or near the same times each day. In Moodle, you can use Labels to create further consistency in the look and feel of each course area, provide direction, and chunk content into logical pieces. For more on creating consistency in the learning environment, enroll in our online course, Best Practices in E-Learning.

Step 6: Produce Information with Clarity
In the face-to-face classroom, teachers are not typically responsible for developing large amounts of content. Textbooks, workbooks, and other written resources are often provided, and it is up to the teacher to use the content which is relevant to the learners, and relates to the objectives of the course. Creating content with clarity is of the utmost importance when the job of content creation falls on the teachers’ shoulders. Moodle and joule allow you to create modules which provide learners with more than just static information. The Book module allows teachers to chunk large amounts of content, so that learners are not lost in scrolling pages of content. The Page module allows you to present small amounts of content on one screen. Both of these modules allow for more than just text though. You can use Moodle’s HTML editor to embed multimedia like graphics, images, and video. Remember that sometimes a video or image may present a concept with more clarity than text, so use them to your (and the learners) advantage. To learn more about creating pages, books, and using the HTML editor, take our Course Building Fundamentals online course.

Step 7: Align Assessments to Objectives
When creating course content, defining goals and objectives should be your starting point. As teachers in any environment, we must first ask ourselves “What should my learner be able to do?” at the conclusion or completion of the course content. Create resources that tell learners what they will be learning and what they will be able to do in order to provide them with insight into why they are learning certain concepts. Of course, Moodle and joule come with Quiz and Assignment modules, which can be used to assess learners’ learning. But on top of that, Moodle provides the Outcomes tool, to align course goals and objectives to both individual resources and activities, and the course overall. Making connections between learning modules and course outcomes makes learning more meaningful to learners. To learn more about using outcomes in Moodle, check out our gradebook webinar, Six Steps to Success with the Moodle Gradebook.

Not all of the modules and tools noted here will be ones that you will want to begin creating right away (if you are completely new to instructional design, online learning, or Moodle and joule in general, I encourage you to take it one step at a time). However, the eventual incorporation of these steps and tools into your learning environment will ease the transition from a traditional face-to-face classroom to the online classroom. For a comprehensive list of all Moodlerooms Learning Solutions training offerings, visit our Moodlerooms Training website!

- Laura Lea

Monday, April 16, 2012 The Moodle Recap: April 16th, 2012 Posted by Brad at 9:00 AM

Good morning!

Hope you all had an enjoyable weekend. We're back with the latest headlines in Moodle and e-Learning. As always, if want to suggest an article that we didn't include, feel free to send us a note at feedback@moodlerooms.com

Happy Moodling,

- Brad

From www.moodlenews.com:
Tuesday, April 10, 2012 Best Practices: IEPs for All - Ten Tips for Creating Individualized Instruction with Moodle and joule Posted by Brad at 9:00 AM


Best Practices: IEPs for All: Ten Tips for Creating Individualized Instruction with Moodle and joule
By: Janelle Gieseke, Senior Trainer

Although an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) is often thought of as a plan only for students with documented disabilities, all students have their own strengths and weaknesses. The on-line environment can aide in creating a learning atmosphere that is personalized to match each student’s ability levels. Moodle and joule both have modules and tools that can be configured to meet student’s needs instantaneously (without even knowing each student’s aptitude level beforehand).

1. My Home and My Moodle: My Home (in Moodle 2.x) and My Moodle (in Moodle 1.x) are customizable user spaces which allow for individualized information about courses, events, alerts, notifications, and more. This page adds a personal touch to the student’s experience by meeting their individual needs. Accommodations like navigational assistance, course and messaging organization, and specifications that are tailored to the end user can be made here. There are several blocks that can be added to this page, by either the administration team or the individual students, to make life on-line learning life easier altogether. The Course Overview block can assist with navigation of upcoming course activities. The Calendar block can be added to organize events and daily tasks; the joule Activity Stream block can be added to keep current on activities happening in each of the users courses; the My Private Files block can be used to organize course files and keep them in one on-line location so that the user can access them from any computer. For a deeper dive, enroll in our Basic Navigation and Introduction to Moodle webinar!

2. Profiles: Unique to each user is their personal Moodle profile. The user profile can be configured to allow for highly personalized preference settings concerning Moodle or joule’s interface. Forum subscriptions (e-mail copies of posts made to forums) and forum tracking (highlighting visually any un-read forum posts, per user, in the course context) can be set here for all forums for which a student is a part of. There is the ability to turn on capabilities to allow Moodle to work with a screen reader to aide individuals who learn aurally or need assistance reading or seeing. We live in a world of many cultures, and as such, languages. The on-line environment can embrace this on a personal basis as well, by allowing for pre-written text in Moodle to be converted to a user’s preferred language. For a deeper dive, enroll in our Basic Navigation and Introduction to Moodle webinar!

3. Moodle’s Calendar Block: Schedules and reminders added through the Calendar block help keep individual students up to date on course events, assignment due dates, and tasks they personally need to complete. Events can be added at the global (site), course, group, and user levels. The calendar functions so that all of these events are collected and displayed to the individual user as it makes sense for them (i.e. User a doesn’t need to see User B’s personal events). When creating events users can add text, images, and any other items to the notes section through the Moodle HTML editor. This aides them in individualizing their on-line Moodle experience. Images are assistive items that can help students with disabilities like Autism, audio impairments, and learning disabilities to easily navigate through calendar events and daily tasks. For a deeper dive, enroll in our Basic Navigation and Introduction to Moodle webinar, or our Course Building Fundamentals online course!

4. Differentiating Instruction: Instruction can be differentiated through the creation of resources and activities to fit the learning styles of individual students. With the duplicate feature in Moodle 2.x, modules can quickly and easily be multiplied. This allows the instructor to edit the settings for the individual module to fit the needs of a certain student or group of students by configuring the activity requirements and student accessibility. Since Moodle has a wide variety of activity types such as Assignment, Forum, Glossary, Quiz, Lesson, Chat, Choice, Database, and Wiki, course creators can build similar content in differing learning venues in order to meet the needs of visual, aural, logical, verbal and kinesthetic learners. For a deeper dive, enroll in our Course Building Fundamentals or Advanced Course Building online courses!

5. Groups and Groupings: Moodle allows you to organize students into sections that can then be associated with individual modules to ensure that the needs of the students are being met through the use of Groups and Groupings. Within each group, user roles can be added to assist the individuals within the groups. Depending on the defined role settings, these ”assistants” could have the ability to review student’s assignment submissions, forum posts, glossary entries, calendar events, grades, and more. Use of roles such as this should be used carefully, and in compliance with all privacy laws.

6. Restricted Access Settings: Through the use of restricted access settings (Moodle 2.x only), multiple modules and topics can be created and then only released to individuals or groups based on certain configured conditions. These condition settings can be based on dates, grade conditions, and completion conditions to ensure that students are working through the course content in the desired framework. This could be on either a schedule or course content organization. For a deeper dive, enroll in our Advanced Course Building online course!

7. Completion Tracking: Who doesn’t like a checklist? With completion tracking, users are given a visual cue that corresponds to the completion of course activities and resources. These visual check marks can be set up by the course creator to be either manually checked by the student, or marked complete when all conditions are met. There is also an ‘expect complete date’ setting that is visible to the instructor within the Completion Tracking report, which assists in monitoring the timely completion of modules by students. For a deeper dive, enroll in our Advanced Course Building online course!

8. joule’s Personalized Learning Designer: Groups, messaging, restricted access, and completion tracking can all work in cooperation with joule’s Personalized Learning Designer (PLD)(joule 2.x only) to create a highly customized Individualized Education Plan for every user. The PLD is like an automated agent that works on behalf of the teacher to send automated e-mail notifications, pop-up messages, direct and redirect students to specific course content, and more! It is an agent that works behind the scenes, based on event triggers, conditions, and actions which the teacher configures. It is one of the most powerful ways to differentiate learning within Moodlerooms’ joule platform. For a deeper dive, enroll in our Personalized Learning Designer webinar!

9. Individualized Feedback and Scalable Assessment: To students and teachers alike, “assessment” is sometimes an ugly word. However, Moodle and joule is making assessing, being assessed, and providing authentic feedback easier than ever with the built-in tools offered to users of the platform. Rubrics (already included in joule and coming in Moodle 2.2) are a great way to allow for flexible assessment, while delivering valuable assessment ranges so that the learner understands where and why they excelled, and how they can improve in the future. Need to assess a student using words, instead of numbers? No problem! Moodle allows for the creation of verbose scales with which students can be assessed. Need to rate students against outcomes? Again – Moodle has you covered. You can create outcomes to share with your entire site in order to rate students against certain objectives or learning goals. With use of the joule gradebook (joule 2.x only) instructors can easily send messages to students with incomplete assignments, or those students who scored within a specific grade range. With this individualized feedback via e-mail, students can be reminded to complete activities, be sent additional material for review, or receive praise for their accomplishments. For a deeper dive, enroll in our two-part Gradebook webinar!

10. Monitoring Student Progress: Grading on a timely basis and connecting with students on a need by need basis is highly important to a successful individualized learning plan. Through the use of both core Moodle Reports, and the enhanced joule Reports, instructors can observe activity inside of their courses, grade activities, send messages to students, and run statistics on the efficacy of their course content. Utilizing the Moodle and joule reports will not only make you a more effective teacher, but a more efficient one as well! For a deeper dive, enroll in our Making the Most of Moodle and joule Reporting webinar!

The perceived “burden” of creating an on-line environment that meets the needs of Individualized Education Plans can be greatly eased by utilizing these ten tips. To learn how to implement these tools in your on-line Moodle or joule courses by taking a deeper dive into their uses and functionalities, enroll in one of our Moodlerooms’ Learning Solutions offerings today!

- Janelle
Monday, April 9, 2012 The Moodle Recap: April 9th, 2012 Posted by Brad at 7:00 AM

Good morning!

Hope you all had an enjoyable holiday weekend. We're back with the latest headlines in Moodle and e-Learning. As always, if want to suggest an article that we didn't include, feel free to send us a note at feedback@moodlerooms.com

Happy Moodling,

- Brad

From the Web:
From www.moodlenews.com:
Wednesday, April 4, 2012 Best Practices: Five Tips for Making the Most of Moodle Reports Posted by Brad at 10:00 AM


Best Practices: Five Tips for Making the Most of Moodle Reports
By: Marcelo Mendes, Trainer

In Moodle, thousands of users can interact within a site all at the same time. At any point in time, you can have students, teachers, course builders, and site administrators all working in a particular course, or even a specific activity. Keeping tracking of all interactions can be time consuming if you aren’t aware of how to use the available tools and resources right within the system. Since Moodle and joule have so many options for reporting, this post is divided into two parts. First, we will share some best practices regarding core Moodle reports (which anyone using Moodle has access to), and later we will post another blog on how to take advantage of reports that are exclusive to Moodlerooms’ joule platform, the joule Reports.

All user interactions in Moodle are automatically logged by the system in its internal database; consequently, when teachers or administrators run reports, they are extracting information saved as course or site logs, which are called Reports. When facilitating, I utilize these reports frequently to understand and analyze how users are working in my courses. I run reports to identify course visits, new forum posts, submitted assignments, and more. In addition I use them as shortcuts to easily grade and provide feedback to my students. Below are some best practices on how to take advantage of Moodle course reports.

  • Tip #1: Use filters to find the logs that are relevant to you: The default settings of logs can display thousands of results depending on how long your course has been active and how many students you have. For this reason, it might take you a long time to find the information for which you’re looking. Use filters to narrow down data and get straight to the point. You can filter results by Course, Participant name, Date, Course activity name, and User action.

  • Tip #2: Narrow down actions to monitor collaborative activities: One of my favorite filters is the Action filter. Using this filter allows you to narrow down your search according to actions such as views, additions, updates, and deletions. As an example, selecting the option “Add” will allow you to see what elements have been added to your course. This is particularly helpful if you want to see new forum posts or glossary entries made by students. Just click in one of the links under the action column and Moodle will open a window that will allow you to read, reply, grade and even delete the selected entry.


  • Tip #3: Display information in different formats: Depending on the chosen filter selections, you might generate a report that has several pages. Moodle allows you to export logs and use other tools to analyze the results. Use the Display filter to download the information in text, ODS, or Excel format. Once in an editable file format, you can run your own statistics and analytics on the results.


  • Tip #4: Easily find out how students are interacting with the course: The Activity and Participation reports can assist you in the process of analyzing how students are interacting with a given course. The Activity report tells you which activities are the most popular by showing the number of views for each activity and resource. The Participation report will allow you to narrow down more specific details; it lets you filter student participation by each course activity, and once the results are shown it allows you to send messages by selecting the names displayed in the report.


  • Tip #5: Check activity completion in a glance: By enabling completion tracking within course activities (available only in Moodle 2.X installations), teachers can visually keep track of course completion by accessing the Activity completion report. This report is easy to use because each student has a box for each activity listed in the course. When you see a check mark in the box, it means the activity has been completed. If you hover your mouse over the checkmark, you can find out the when the activity was completed.



These are just few tips for ways to maximize the use of Moodle reports. As promised, we will talk more about the reports that are exclusive to joule in just a few weeks. If you are interested in learning more about using both Moodle and joule reports, I recommend that you visit our training site and enroll in our webinar, Making the Most of Moodle and joule Reporting.

-Marcelo

Tuesday, April 3, 2012 Improving In-Class Discussion using Moodle Tools – Part 2 Posted by Brad at 7:00 AM


Improving In-Class Discussion using Moodle Tools – Part 2
By: Tara Thompson, Instructional Designer and Trainer

Focusing on the principles of priming, integrating and reinforcing, this two part series introduces low threshold applications of Moodle and joule, taking your in-class discussions from ghost town to boomtown.

In last week’s post, Improving In-class Discussion using Moodle Tools – Part 1, we looked at techniques for priming students with Moodle tools. This week, I’ll spotlight ways in which some of those same tools can be used to encourage active involvement through integration and reinforcement.

Integrating
  • When exploring priming techniques we talked about using reading responses, submitted through the Assignment module, to help students prepare for class. You can also use these assignments as a way to initiate in-class conversations by introducing student responses into the discussion yourself. Consider this example:


  • You: Jerome, you had an interesting reaction to chapter sixteen. Will you elaborate on that for everyone?
  • Jerome: Response
  • You: Maggie, Jerome’s take was quite different than yours. How would you respond to his view?
  • Maggie: Response

  • If need be, you can continue to pull other students in to the discussion based on their submissions, by asking whether or not they agree with what has just been said or by asking someone to provide an example to support or contradict the point made. Voilà, instant discussion!
  • When a student asks a good question or makes a good point through the Messages block, share it with everyone during class. This public recognition encourages students to speak up in class. As an added bonus, it reinforces that the Messages block is a legitimate way to get in touch with you and can encourage students to ask you questions that they might not feel are worth the trouble of an office visit.
  • By having students participate in a Forum before the face-to-face class session, they will exchange much of the top-level discussion prior to class, leading to a deeper level of discussion during class. Not only can this help you cover more content, but often, these discussions are more engaging, drawing an increased number of students in to the conversation.
  • Pedagogically speaking, using a simple polling tool, like Choice, encourages learners to think about their existing knowledge on, and understanding of, a given topic. This has two benefits. First, it forces participants to engage with their choice and think about the context andconsequences of it. Secondly, this tools allows teachers (and students if you choose) to gain a better understanding of current student views and knowledge as they relate to the discussion topic.

Reinforcing
  • Students have busy lives. They work, carry heavy class loads and are involved in extracurricular activities, and sometimes they’re parents too. With fragmented schedules, even those students with the best of intentions may shelve thoughts relating to our course content when they walk out the door at the end of class. Technology creates continuity between class meetings and can leave students feeling more prepared for engagement. Consider using the News forum to send reminders that highlight upcoming discussion points. This allows students to prepare mentally for the upcoming conversation by focusing on key points.
  • The Quiz module can stimulate in-class discussion by reinforcing student understanding of the material. Again, it makes sense that the more a student knows about a subject, the more likely they are to share that knowledge with the rest of the class. To accomplish this, consider setting the quiz to show correct answers after a student has submitted their response. Knowing what they know about a subject inspires confidence that can encourage even shy students to seek out participation opportunities.

As I said last week, learning is not a spectator sport. Consider your classroom, your students and your teaching style when incorporating ideas into your teacher toolkit. Remember, technology is a tool, use it to build up your in-class discussion. Then hang on and enjoy the ride.

Happy Moodling!

- Tara
Monday, April 2, 2012 News from Moodlerooms. Day 12 Posted by Brad at 11:00 AM
The following passage was written by Moodlerooms' Co-founder and Chief Architect, Tom Murdock.
----------------------------

News from Moodlerooms. Day 12

I want to take a minute to reflect on a very busy few days and to express some appreciation.

On the evening of Wednesday, March 21st, I shared the news of our company's merger with Blackboard with Moodle's founder and leader, Martin Dougiamas. Caught entirely by surprise, Martin listened as we outlined what we saw as a great opportunity to increase Moodle adoption across the globe with a strategic partner. We had productive conversations about how this combined entity might best work with Moodle for the benefit of the community. While there is still a lot to figure out, we really appreciate his willingness to consider our story -- unexpected and strange as it must have seemed. Rest assured, we honor the independence of the Moodle project and we are entirely grateful for the permission to remain a Moodle Partner, a responsibility that requires a great deal of good citizenry with the community and partner network.

On the morning of Monday, March 26th at 11am, the Moodlerooms staff was informed about our merger with Blackboard. Until the announcement, the management team had not been able to share any information with our employees about the merger. This secrecy was difficult for us, as we are a very collaborative company and we are used to making decisions together. I'm incredibly appreciative of the professionalism of our teams, who -- with so much new information to process -- immediately began thinking about our clients and the things we could do to communicate and understand the news. Within three hours, our staff was creating and digesting FAQs, as well as connecting with clients. We were spreading the word that while we are the same people with the same jobs with the same contracts with the same name in the same locations with the same tasks with the same products in the same value bracket, we had also become (alongside our colleagues at NetSpot), a new division of Blackboard, dedicated to supporting open source Moodle products and services, and providing more choice, opportunity and expertise within the market.

By 4pm on the same day, we had launched a series of formal client notifications and press releases. Our staff, alongside some new colleagues from Blackboard, had the chance to describe the new opportunities to the clients, as well as to reassure them about the continuity of our current program. The press, who seemed giddy with the shock of the story, began crafting headlines and narratives about what these changes meant to a complicated market. Although we expected some skepticism from clients and reporters, we appreciate all of our colleagues who were intrigued by the new direction and were interested in understanding more about it.

At 1pm on Wednesday, March 28th, our CEO, Lou Pugliese, and Blackboard's CTO and President of Academic Platforms, Ray Henderson, participated in a client webinar on the ramifications of the merger, and what our clients could expect in coming months. Although the news is still very fresh for all our constituents, the nuts and bolts of the transaction have been shared and considered by many: although Moodlerooms has merged with a strategic partner, it retains its own staff, its own products, services and mojo. We see huge opportunities for our clients with increased product choice, as well as the potential for richer integrations between these products.

But beyond the days that are flying by since this adventure began, and beyond the nuts and bolts about what life looks like today and tomorrow for our clients and staff, we suspect that the world might still wonder why we thought merging with Blackboard was a really good move for Moodlerooms? The answer is surprisingly simple: as we have been evolving as a company, so have they.

When we founded Moodlerooms in 2005, open source offered a wonderful foil to the LMS market leaders. While they were embroiled with the proprietary, we were generating and sharing community code. While others negotiated contracts with CIOs, our product enjoyed the immense grassroots enthusiasm of teachers and students. Our drum beat reminded schools to consider open standards, even if they didn't use open source; we encouraged schools to use the power of their wallets to demand great services at the right prices.

And as time marched on, and our company matured into an organization of more than 80 staff, fulfilling complex migrations, implementations and training for big institutions, we noticed that Blackboard was evolving, too. By adopting IMS standards, they literally beat Moodlerooms to the market with some content openness. During the past three years, their service teams have received better and better satisfaction marks. At the moment, their clients report a higher satisfaction than Angel clients reported at their height. And, finally, because Blackboard has been focusing on selling the toolset around the LMS, Blackboard Learn itself has become more cost effective. Data freedom, services and affordability were the three things we told prospects to demand from their vendors. Schools did demand. And Blackboard has been working to meet the requests.

So, if Moodlerooms has helped to re-shape the way that schools do business with companies, then why are we stopping now? For me, the only answer to this is that we are not stopping at all. We have more work to do to evolve Blackboard and mature our own business, and we are appreciative that Blackboard has invested in our team's ability to influence those changes. We are being asked to be as innovative, disruptive, and open in our business tomorrow as we were yesterday. Except today, what used to be our fiercest competitor won't be fighting against us, they will be working alongside us.

It is Day 12 of a grand new dance between proprietary and open source learning systems. I'd like to thank our clients, our staff, the Moodle community, as well as our new partners at Blackboard for being open to the unexpected moves that we believe will best support the communities that we serve.

All the best,

- Tom


Tuesday, March 20, 2012 Best Practices: Improving In-Class Discussion using Moodle Tools – Part 1 Posted by Brad at 6:00 AM


Improving In-Class Discussion using Moodle Tools – Part 1
By: Tara Thompson, Instructional Designer and Trainer

Focusing on the principles of priming, integrating and reinforcing, this two part series will introduce you to some low threshold applications of Moodle and joule, taking your in-class discussions from ghost town to boomtown.

Today, we’re offering some tips and tricks on how to better prepare students to actively engage in discussions using five Moodle tools:
  • When you're trying to kick-off off a new discussion, such as a reading response, try using Moodle's Assignment module. This feature enables teachers to assign, collect, and review students' work. They can also provide feedback and grades on the assignment quickly and easily. This method accomplishes two major things. First, it encourages students to actually do the reading, something many instructors report struggling with. More importantly however, it helps students formulate thoughts about what they’ve read. This preliminary thinking can jump-start in-class discussion because students have already developed something to say.
  • The Forum module is an activity where students and teachers exchange ideas asynchronously by posting comments. While using an online discussion tool as a way to increase in-class participation may seem counter intuitive, it can actually be a valuable addition to your teacher toolkit. Use forums to prime for face-to-face discussion by assigning small specific tasks to quiet students. Using forums in this way sets the stage for participation by acknowledging the value of student contributions and empowering all students to find their voice.
  • It seems a safe bet that the more students know about a given subject, the more likely it is they will contribute to the conversation. Consider creating short online quizzes for each assigned reading set, encouraging students to delve into the reading, better preparing them for a discussion on the material. The assessment should outline discussion topics and flag important information for students, acting as a guide for the upcoming class session. Moodle’s Quiz feature allows you to design assessments using a variety of question types. To help balance the workload, consider those that are automatically graded for this LTA.
  • Stimulate student thinking prior to the in-class discussion with a quick polling activity. The Choice activity is very simple Moodle tool wherein the teacher asks a question and specifies a choice of multiple responses. A well-designed question can force students to reflect on their thoughts or take a position on a given topic, establishing a well thought out starting point for their in-class contributions.
  • Sometimes, drawing shy or quiet students into a conversation is as simple as letting them know they are not invisible and that their contributions are worthwhile. After the unit assessment, for example, you might message one of your less than engaged students to tell them that you enjoyed reading their essay, that you look forward to seeing what parallels they draw from that topic to the current one, and that you can’t wait to hear what they have to share during the upcoming discussion. Consider using the Messages block to send students these ego boosts.
Learning is not a spectator sport. As content consumers, I encourage you to own each learning opportunity. Ask questions. Consider your classroom, your students and your teaching style when incorporating ideas into your teacher toolkit. Remember, technology, in and of itself, does not make for a better learning environment. It is the way that instructors strategically employ the tool that can make for a more engaging teaching and learning experience.

Happy Moodling!

- Tara
Monday, March 19, 2012 The Moodle Recap: March 19, 2012 Posted by Brad at 7:00 AM

Good morning and a happy belated St. Patty's day to everyone!

We've been hard at work on the upcoming Moodle Moot US West Coast and we're excited to announce all of the great sessions in the upcoming weeks.

In the meantime, check out our weekly recap of the latest Moodle and e-Learning headlines. As always, if you think we missed anything, let us know by emailing feedback@moodlerooms.com.

- Brad

From the Web:

From www.moodlenews.com:
Wednesday, March 14, 2012 Announcing Moodle Moot West Coast 2012 Posted by Brad at 7:00 AM
Moot Banner

We're happy to announce Moodle Moot West Coast 2012. Taking place July 31st - August 3rd in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, the Moot offers a great opportunity to share ideas, collaborate with other users, and learn about what’s new with Moodle.

The keynote address will be delivered by Moodle founder and lead developer, Martin Dougiamas, on Tuesday, July 31st. Additional keynotes will be delivered on Wednesday, August 1st, by Dr. Richard Clark, Professor of Educational Psychology and Technology and Co-Director for the Center for Cognitive Technology at the University of Southern California; and Cable Green, Director of Global Learning at Creative Commons.

Concurrent sessions for the Moot are coming together nicely. Stay tuned to the Moot website for the full schedule at the end of March.

In the meantime, check out some of the great workshops that will be offered as a part of the Moot's pre-conference. Also, if you have something to share on Twitter, slap the Moot's official hash tag on your message: #mootusca12

For more information, or to register, check out the official Moot website: www.moot-us.com

See you in Los Angeles!

- Brad
Tuesday, March 13, 2012 Best Practices: 5 Design Strategies to Engage Your Students Posted by Brad at 8:00 AM


5 Design Strategies to Engage Your Students
By: Rebecca DeSantis, Instructional Designer

Engaging students in fresh and interesting ways can definitely be a challenge in the classroom, even more so in the online arena. Here are some design strategies that you can use in Moodle and joule to engage your students.

1. Incorporate videos to foster forum discussions. Videos can be a great way to engage many students with multiple learning styles and preferences. Try using videos as a way to generate online discussion. Post the video into the Forum Introduction area when creating the forum and instruct students to post their reactions. Make sure you are using relevant videos.

2. Give students’ permission to rate each other’s forum posts. If you are not yet using forums, try adding them into your courses. They spark discussion and interactivity within the classroom. If you’re already using forums, consider adding an additional level of interactivity by allowing students to rate the quality of each other’s work. To do this, first you’ll need to alter the activity’s permissions to allow students to rate each other’s responses. Then, establish your own grading scale that awards students points for anytime they rate another student’s post.

3. Create an interactive scenario based on a case study. Present students with a case study and pose questions to them in a Lesson activity. Create an interactive learning experience by branching to various learning paths based on the user’s selection. Alternatively, you could use the Essay question type to allow the student to type a response and then present them with an ideal response after submission.

4. Add a Workshop and require peer assessment. The Workshop activity allows students to create their own projects and allows for peer assessment (when enabled). Peer assessment is a great way to involve students in the evaluative process. It engages them in critical thinking and collaboration while enabling them to send/ receive constructive feedback to/from their peers.

5. Evaluate, evaluate, evaluate! There are so many different options in Moodle for evaluation. The Quiz activity is an obvious choice, but there are other activities available in Moodle that you should also consider. Try adding a Choice activity to poll students’ knowledge prior to a lesson or let students choose the focus of an upcoming class project. You can also use the Feedback block to create your own questions and gather input from your students to evaluate the success/engagement of course activities.

To learn how to create these activities, take the Advanced Course Building online course. The course is self-paced and is available in two formats.

Happy Moodling!

~Rebecca
Monday, March 12, 2012 The Moodle Recap: March 12, 2012 Posted by Brad at 9:00 AM

Good morning!

Hope everyone's weekend was great. We took a little break last week to catch up on some pressing items. There's a ton of cool stuff coming out within the next couple of months and we can't wait to share it with all of you!

Unfortunately, mum's the word right now... But in the meantime, check out our weekly recap of the latest Moodle and e-Learning headlines. As always, if you think we missed anything, let us know by emailing feedback at moodlerooms dot com.


Tuesday, February 28, 2012 Making an Impact with Moodle/joule Posted by Brad at 7:00 AM


Making an Impact with Moodle and joule
By: Tara Thompson, Instructional Designer and Trainer

Low Threshold Applications (LTAs) refer to the application of instructional technology that is reliable, easy to learn, and non-intimidating. Moodlerooms invites you to join us as we explore effective practices in online instruction in our free webinar series, LTAs with Big Impact. These short webinars will introduce participants to ways in which Moodle can create a big impact in teaching and learning.

Well-designed groups can make a world of difference in the quality of the learning climate. Tips for Effective Design and Use of Groups will help participants honor the process of team learning by exploring strategies for making groups work.

If your in-class discussion feels more like a ghost town than a boomtown, consider attending the Improving In-Class Discussion with Moodle Tools webinar to explore the application of Moodle in face-to-face instruction by focusing on the principles of priming, integrating, and reinforcing.

Discussion forums are the place where some of the most important learning happens in the student-centered online class. Strategies for Effective Utilization of Forums, presented at TCEA 2012, focuses on helping instructors find ways to support students in owning their learning experience. Part one of this series, Balancing the Workload, provides strategies for effective facilitation of online forums and shares tips on balancing the resulting increased interaction. Part two, Designing Engaging Forums, introduces common student struggles with online forums, as well as design strategies to increase student engagement.

Join us. For more information on our free webinars or to register, click here.
  • Tips for Effective Design and Use of Groups - Tuesday, March 13th, 11:30-12:00 EST
  • Improving In-Class Discussion with Moodle Tools - Wednesday, March 28th, 11:30-12:00 EST
  • Balancing the Workload – Strategies for Effective Utilization of Forums, Part I: Wednesday, April 11th, 11:30-12:00 EST
  • Designing Engaging Forums - Strategies for Effective Utilization of Online Forums Part II: Wednesday, April 25th, 11:30-12:00 EST
Please note: These sessions do not examine the how-tos of using the identified tools. Instead they discuss pedagogical ideas for implementation. For instruction on how to use specific Moodle features, we invite you to join us for one of our regularly-scheduled training webinars.

~ Tara
Monday, February 27, 2012 The Moodle Recap: February 27, 2012 Posted by Brad at 11:00 AM