Moodle at Barking and Dagenham College: From Messy Repository to Quality Interaction and Engagement – Janina Dewtiz @eLearningTechie
A very polished presentation using Prezi to describe the frustrations of training and re-training or what Janina called ‘Wash, Rinse and Re-train” cycles.
She offered some good advice for Moodle training and practical tips aimed at Moodle administrators, trainers or advocates. Janina presented a three tier training model.
- Basic – 3 x 90 minute sessions
- Intermediate – 1hr, 1 resource / activity focused session
- Advanced – This was a personal journey, selected by the educator with support from Janine.
The training was then aligned to the course awards system. A Moodle block that awards bronze, silver and gold medals enabling educators to gain recognition for the quality of their course.
- Only respond through Moodle, discourage email.
- Direct staff to pre-made tutorials, screencasts to avoid the “could you show me” models of training.
- Reward staff innovation
Mastering the Moodle 2 Workshop Module – Michelle Moore, Remote Learner
Michelle offer a practical experience to Workshop 2.0 by providing delegates with access to a test Moodle site with both student and teacher roles.
As students we completed a very quick task before Michelle took us through an active Workshop 2.0 setup.
Remember the light bulbs, that’s the key.
Active participation is always welcomed.
Workshops Gotchas
- You can only work one phase at a time
- Phases do not switch automatically
- The introduction and rubric is not visible after the Workshop moves into the submission phase. (You may wish to copy the rubric and add as a resource.)
Wins
- Grades now get to the gradebook
- Manual and random allocation
- Phase transpacency for students
- Now compatiable with groups
Note to self, practical engagement was a definite positive!
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Thanks, Kristian, for your kind words about my Prezi, which is now available at http://is.gd/mwoDhP .
Just wanted to clarify the three tiers of eLearning training at BDC:
“Basics” is a collection of self-help materials for quick reference. Any user queries that come in by email and that can be solved with the resources in that collection will, in the first instance, be directed there.
“Essentials” is the 30x90min blended learning course about and around Moodle. Any queries arising from the course sessions will be dealt with through the course forum only to encourage other course users to respond to questions and also in order to build up a gradual knowledge base for reference.
The third tier is “Intensives”: one hour, one aspect, one task. This is available to anyone who has done Essentials. It is designed to train staff on an aspect of Moodle that they think is going to have the greatest impact on their current course(s). This is to build up their confidence in using a tool of their choice.
The awards system we use was initially developed by Southampton City College. We adapted the scripts to our own needs last summer. Implementing this system of course grading has probably had the biggest effect on Moodle take up that BDC has seen in its 7 years of being a Moodle institution. Highly recommended as a motivational element to get staff to engage with Moodle.
Find out more about the GSB block at http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=134212
Hope these pointers and links help and thanks again for highlighting my talk. Glad you enjoyed it.
Janina that is brilliant, thank you. The approach has intuitive real value. The medal block is often debated but at your institution, its size and Moodle capacity it clearly worked.
oops! “Essentials” isn’t 30x90mins – I would never get staff to commit to that! 😉
That should have been THREE x 90mins
(note to self: proofread before submit)