Moodle Deep Dive - Course Design with the student in mind

Academic Staff College of VIT Vellore) | Vellore Institute of Technology

Outline of this talk

• About Moodle LMS.
• Course Design for formative/summative assessments.
• Strategies to effectively Use Moodle to teach, assess and communicate with your learners.

About Moodle LMS

• Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment (MOODLE)
• Helps Educator to create personalised learning environments using Moodle Activities and Resources.
• Approx. 213 million users worldwide. Recently MoodleUS was lauched. Source: https://stats.moodle.org/
• Moodle delivers a powerful set of learner-centric tools and collaborative learning environments that empower both teaching and learning. 
• Design and development of Moodle is guided by a “social constructionist pedagogy”.
• Free with no licensing fees - Moodle is provided freely as Open Source software, under the GNU General Public License. 

Formative Assessment/Evaluation

• The concept of “formative evaluation” was introduced by Scriven (1967) - ‘Scriven, M. (1967). The Methodology of Evaluation. In R. W. Tyler, R. M. Gagne, & M. Scriven (Eds.), Perspectives of Curriculum Evaluation Chicago (pp. 39-83)’

Formative VS Summative assessment

Good feedback practice:

• helps clarify what good performance is (goals, criteria, expected standards);
• facilitates the development of self-assessment (reflection) in learning;
• delivers high quality information to students about their learning;
• encourages teacher and peer dialogue around learning;
• encourages positive motivational beliefs and self-esteem;
• provides opportunities to close the gap between current and desired performance;
• provides information to teachers that can be used to help shape teaching.

Formative assessment of student Projects using Moodle Assignment activity

• Rubrics based evaluation: Sample activity: https://moovit.vit.ac.in/grade/grading/manage.php?areaid=2906
• Students create group as a activity (Using Moodle Group Self-Selection activity).
• Students choose time slot for review as specified by Faculty. (Moodle Scheduler plugin).
• Feedback to entire group and reopening submission if required.
• Link based submissions for Project demo with audio explanation. Sample activity: https://moovit.vit.ac.in/mod/assign/view.php?id=28808&rownum=0&action=grader&userid=93687

Encourage and facilitate online discussions with Moodle forums

• The Forum activity allows students and teachers to exchange ideas by posting comments as part of a ’thread'.
• Sample activity: https://moovit.vit.ac.in/mod/forum/view.php?id=22116

Peer learning using Moodle Database plugin

• The Database activity allows the teacher and/or students to build, display and search a bank of record entries about any conceivable topic.
• Sample Activity: https://moovit.vit.ac.in/mod/data/view.php?id=28033

Engage Learners with Gamification in Moodle

• Develop learning pathways - incentivise your learners to follow pre-defined learning routes to attain the knowledge or skills

• Sample Activity: https://moovit.vit.ac.in/blocks/xp/index.php/ladder/10572

Peer assessment using workshop activity

• Workshop is a powerful peer assessment activity. Students add submissions which are then distributed amongst their peers for assessment based on a grading scale specified by the teacher.
• Sample Activity: https://moovit.vit.ac.in/mod/workshop/view.php?id=30099

Faculty Resource and Support Page

• Faculty-only page which allows to Share, receive, and advise on the use of Moodle in teaching: https://moovit.vit.ac.in/course/view.php?id=10547
• Other learning resources: https://moodle.academy/
• Moodle community sites: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=7135

Questions?

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VIT Vellore’s Moodle Infrastructure