Moodle Newsletter Jan Feb 2012

7/29/2019 Moodle Newsletter Jan Feb 2012

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A Note from John S. Lucas

cial thanks to Evelyn Rodriguez from the IES Abroad Quito Center for submitting these photos!

January/February 2

Moodle Tip of the Month...

Guides and tutorials for the Moodle modules and blocks featured in

monthly newsletter can be found on the MoodleLearn website:

https://moodlelearn.muat.iesabroad.org

Use the following generic log in: User ID - iesstudent

Password - Student1

If you need to add HTML code within an HTML Block for icons, widgets

or embedded video, dont forget to click on the toggle HTML source

button which directs you to the HTML editor. The toggle button

allows you to switch between two editing modes: HTML source code

and text.

uador

Dear colleagues,

While Moodle allows faculty to bring together content and assessment, the success of a course s

depends crucially upon talented and experienced professors to guide students and to shape th

experience in class. With this in mind, we are now working to make our use of Moodle mo

interactive.

Interactive learning through Moodle can help to engage students, increase their eciency, a

ensure that they are ready to take full advantage of the class sessions you prepare. Interactive learn

means more than just reading material, viewing a video, or completing a quiz. It also means sharing information with you a

with each other through Moodle. It means engaging with the material through synthesis, analysis, evaluation, and respon

to the materials you have created. These are the higher orders of learning that we associate with critical thinking and wh

ndicate a more sophisticated level of academic achievement.

Over the next few months, you will see examples of excellent interactive teaching through Moodle in this newsletter,

webinars that we share with you from IES Abroad in Chicago, and from your Faculty Champions and Regional Educatio

Technology Specialists.

Finally, I am pleased to announce the Moodle Faculty Development and Incentive Program, a new series of initiatives design

to spark your creativity and encourage you to share your teaching techniques with your peers around the world. The awa

oered through this program include the following:

1. Greatest Growth in Educational Technology

2. Faculty Leadership Travel Award

3. Most Creative Interactive Moodle Activities

4. Best Use of Video

The descriptions of each award and deadlines for submission are located in MoodleLearn inside the Faculty Resources secti

You may also speak with your Center Director or your Program Dean about how to apply for any of these initiatives.

Happy Moodling!


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Featured Moodle Module - Wiki Activity

New Modules/BlocksHighlight Course Weeks/Topics as

Current Topics

The Hotpot Module:

The Hotpot Activity Module allows teachers to administer Ho

Potatoes quizzes through Moodle. These quizzes are created

on the teacher's computer and then uploaded to the Moodl

course. After students have attempted the quizzes, a numbe

of reports are available which show how individual question

were answered and various statistical trends in the scores.

A wiki activity is a collection of collaboratively autho

web documents. Basically, a wiki page is a web pa

everyone in your class can create together, in t

browser, without HTML experience. A wiki starts w

one front page. Each author can add other pages to t

wiki by simply creating a link to the page.

In edit mode, your course weeks/topics can be

moved, hidden from students, highlighted or turned

on using the section edit icons. This is useful if you

want to indicate (or highlight) the current

week/topic for your students. You can also hide

certain weeks/topics from student view.

Workshop Module:

The Workshop Module allows peer assessement of documen

and the teacher can manage and grade the assessment.

*Supports a wide range of possible grading scales

*Teachers can provide sample documents for students to

practice grading

This newsletter was sent to provide the latest information for IES Abroad Moodle.

IES Abroad Chicago

33 N. LaSalle Street, Chicago, IL 60602-2602Phone: 1.800.995.2300

In Moodle, wikis can be a powerful tool for collaborative work. The entire class can edit a document together, creating a cla

product/project, or each student can have their own wiki and work on it with the instructor and their classmates. It may

useful to think of a wiki's front page as a structured table of contents. Essentially, a wiki is organized by its links. In the w

settings you can allow binary content (images and/or attachments). You can also grant students certain administrati

privileges within the wiki pages such as writing/editing text, read-only, removing other pages and reverting back to

previous version of the wiki page. In the wiki activity there is a history tab that is used to display the details of each entry. Y

can view the author, version, date created and last modication date in the history tab. There is usually no central editor o

wiki, no single person who has nal editorial control. Instead, the community edits and develops its own content. Consens

views emerge from the work of many people on a document.

To create a label for a topic or section:

Click the Turn editing on button.

Go to any week/topic. Next to each week/topic, select one of the icons

in the list located on right side of the section:

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= Show only this week/topic.

= Highlight this week/topic as the current one.

= Show/hide this week/topic from students.

= Move week/topic down.

January/February 2


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Moodle Gradebook - Outcomes

Outcomes (also known as Competencies, Goals, Standards or Criteria) are specic descriptions of what a student

emonstrated and understood at the completion of an activity or course. Each outcome is rated by some sort of scale th

reated by the instructor. It is intimately connected to Grades but is optional to use. For example, an essay assignment mbe graded according to these three scales (together known as a Rubric):

Outcomes are similar to sub components of a grade. A grade is an assessment of overall performance that may include te

articipation, attendance and projects. Outcomes assess specic levels of knowledge through a series of statements, t

maybe coded with numbers or letters. Thus an overall grade can be given for a course, along with statements about spec

ompetencies in the form of outcomes.

Grammar - Poor, Fair, Good, Excelle Organization - Poor, Fair, Good, Excellent Content - Poor, Fair, Good, Excellent

ou can learn more details about Outcomes on the IES Abroad Moodle Learning website. Outcomes are included in the Moo

Gradebook tutorials. To access the IES Abroad Moodle Learning Website go to https://moodlelearn.muat.iesabroad.org.

International Technology Terms!

In this months IES Abroad Moodle Newsletter, well take at look at how technology terms

can be written in dierent languages!

Chinese French

navigateur

Arabic

Best Practices In Moodle Course Design

Michelle Moore, Chief Evangelist for Moodle at Remote-Learner.net, has 8 years experience in course design and with help

other teachers build better courses. She recently released a list of best suggested practices in Moodle course design and us

Here are some of her helpful tips and tricks below:

Courtesy of MoodleNews.org

Dont use more than three font styles

Dont use the course page only for content (use it as a launch pad)

Dont do all the work yourself (let students build content in glossaries, databases, discussion forums, etc.)

If you create links in labels, note that they will not be tracked in user activity reports (if youre going to put them onthe main page create them as a resource for better course tracking/management)

Beware the scroll of death! (You can add quick links to other pages and resources by using icons)

Align pictures: left/right alignment will wrap text/resources/activities around the images

Dont be afraid to branch out to other activities. Moodle has so many activities to offer! Experiment with them and

put them to use

Allow the students to particpate and collaborate (using group activities, forum discussions, etc.)

Use labels to help organize and guide students through your sections (week/topic format)

Use images to enhance your course

The technology term of the month is:

internet - The global communication network that allows almost

all computers worldwide to connect and exchange information.


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Faculty News - Creating a Wikipedia Entry Using Moodle

The goal of the assignment in EU course PO/HS 444 The Dynamics of Integration: From t

Marshall Plan to the Eastern Enlargement of the EU was simple: to create an entry th

would be accepted by Wikipedia.

The rst step for the instructor, Thomas Staub, was to nd a topic in Wikipedia that w

relevant to the course and not well covered. His choice: the Fouchet Plan, a plan propos

by President Charles de Gaulle of France in 1961 to form a new Union of States in Euro

In class discussion, the class divided itself according to tasks: content (rst & secon

drafts, De Gaulles role, Adenauers view, Benelux view), sources (links and literature) a

nal edits, with one student assigned to each task, two students assigned to the n

edits, and two project managers.

Students met virtually as groups using the Forum in Moodle to create content for each section of the project, an

the Project Managers put the nished pieces into a single document.

Thomas Staub

ES Abroad EU Faculty

Finally, the faculty member uploaded the document to Wikipedia, where it can be found

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fouchet_Plan. (Click View History in the upper right-hand corner to see the clas

contributions in October 2011.)

n this case, the faculty member elected to use the Forum functionality in Moodle because students were used

working with Forums to discuss questions. Wiki functionality could also be used.

This concept could be used at other Centers. The key would be to nd topics that need to be covered in Wikiped

This might include topics that need additional coverage from the host country perspective, in order to gi

students the possibility of looking at the local perspective on a topic.

Wikipedia Excerpt from the Fouchet Plan

Moodle Newsletter Jan Feb 2012

Documents

Transcript of Moodle Newsletter Jan Feb 2012