I have been working with Moodle gradebook for the past half term. The process of moving students over to online submission has not been without its issues. I include a summary of the challenges I have encountered and the measures I presented to win the students over, the improvements I have made to my assignments ready for next year.
Year 7s (11-12 year olds)
The first barrier for tour youngest students was logging on, even though their login details for the VLE are the same as for the school network, these students need frequent attempts to login.
Even once they had logged in, submitted homework, they forget for the next assignment. More often than not, those stumped had forgetten their personalised password and it had to be reset! For next September, instructions will be posted on the VLE front page and I have ask for Year 7 ICT lessons to include a requirement to log onto the VLE every lesson through to the end of half term.
Year 7s could not find the assignment tasks. Yes, I displayed it in class, yes it was on the calendar, yes the assignment was posted in the Upcoming Events. But a few students still could not find it. Just be patient and help each student, one at a time. Remind yourself, no matter how simple, BIG SCHOOL is daunting and this is just one cog in their day. Deadlines? Well that is up to you. I set a deadline but allowed late submission. I was more concerned with encouraging extended study than setting deadlines.
Next year I plan to start the extended learning tasks with either simple choice activities or offline assignments.
Which school have your joined us from or ? Choice activity.
Log onto the VLE and access the Year 7 English Course? Using the activity logs to grade this extended learning task is relatively easy to do.
Later on in the term I used Offline Assignments to record spelling test results, with students entering their own grades. Again, helping students to get familiar with using the VLE and according to the students it avoids ‘shouting out their scores.’
Next I would suggest moving onto a Online Text Assignments and sticking with these two assignment types for quite some time. When I attempted to get students to upload a file, the assignment submissions fell by nearly 50%. Lesson learnt. I learnt that it is worthwhile taking your time and keeping the tasks simple, short, but frequent. Even twice a week but no more than the proscribed time, in our case 30 mins.
Year 10s (14-15 year olds)
The older students were more vocal in their frustrations. Why do we have to this? Why do we have to do that? We still experienced logging in issues, this time due to pilot error, but they persisted, as they teenagers do, that it was not their fault. It took nearly a whole half term before they started to respond by collated feedback, instant feedback in quizzes and access to a range of useful resources.
In the short term, quizzes were far more successful than assignments. My recommendation is to get students into the VLE groove again by posting frequent, quickfire quizzes. IMHO allowing students to re-attempt the quiz and improve their scores promotes self-improvement but I also recommend intervals between quiz attempts. Afterall, we want to quiz what the students have learnt and not what they can recall.
My next recommendation is to use the Quiz Results block to share the results with the group. As soon as I did this, competition motivation drove performance improvement home. For a class of 29 I only displayed the top 10, with 3 quiz attempt available, there was plenty of manoevering and even the high scoring students retook the quiz.
If you really want to recognise self improvement and performance set a Certificate based on a series of benchmark quiz scores. In this instance I had 3 mandatory quizzes and 3 open quizzes. The Certificate I set required increasing more demanding benchmarks – with students receiving the accolade of quiz royalty, those students who achieve this status always leave our classroom first. Simple privileges but one that say ‘We respect you.’
As for assignments for English teachers. I think that the Online Text assignment is very useful and it certainly avoids some of the issues of Upload a File Assignments; no WORD processor, uploading files with veryyyyyy longggg file names, incompatiable file types and bizarre IT gremlins. Perhaps the lack of spelling and grammar check, encourages students to be more skillful themselves?
Class rank has also been an interesting factor in student motivation. Whilst there are weekly proscribe extended learning tasks, I also provide nearly as many extended learning opportunities. All are scored and in the gradebook. It is my attempt to unlock discretionary learning. 20/29 students have attempted at least one of three tasks, with 14/29 attempting at least two.
Next, give yourself time to design your gradebook, keep the your categories relevatively short. This allow students to compete regularly for top spot in each category, providing more opportunities for students to share the limelight. You can keep the Overall Grade for the end of year celebration / awards.
Finally, display the gradebook regularly in class, I do this almost every lesson highlighting deadlines and students who have yet to submit their work. Reward student openly in your feedback (I regularly award merits in my written comments and request the students remind me in class) and if student improve work, improve their grade if appropriate.
With online submission now embedded in our practice, well the Year 7s need a little more time, I am looking forward to next term. Does it work? Three students were set after school detentions, so 83/87 extended learning tasks have been completed, the final 4 tasks whilst in detention.
All compulsory quizzes have been attempted by all students, numerous times, with the six quizzes accruing a total of 230 attempts.
You decide.