This week on Learn Moodle 3.5 Basics has felt even warmer than the warm welcome experienced last week, although that might partly be because Helen Foster and I were in 30 degrees C temperatures at MoodleMoot Spain in Barcelona #mootes18 where we ran a workshop on collaboration in Moodle:
Collaboration was a timely topic because this week in our MOOC, participants are submitting to a peer assessment workshop about their home region. While we do try to explain the various stages of the task, in particular that the completion tick is only available at the very end, some participants are still confused. This is less of an issue this time thanks to Hart Wilson’s infographics, available in various formats in the Any questions forums:
As mentioned before, we’re grateful to our experienced ‘regulars’ who like to collaborate by helping out. Another good example is John Bennett our ‘doorman’ in the Introduce yourself forum who ensures no post gets left unanswered. The Introduce yourself! forum has added interest this time, with Moodle 3.5, as participants can introduce themselves via video or audio with the new feature in the Atto editor:
This new feature was very popular at #mootes18 and prompted many questions after my presentation on the benefits to teachers of Moodle 3.5 Here’s the slideshow. The slides are in Spanish although I presented in English.
Coming up this week…. all participants (not just those in the ‘All at once’ group) will be invited to share their courses for feedback. This is a very important part of the MOOC and we’d love it if our regular Moodlers and any experienced Moodlers enrolled in as many courses as possible to offer constructive comments.
And also this week… another live Big Blue Button session. These are optional (because of timezone issues) but popular as they give participants a chance to ask questions in real time and to see and speak to one another via video and microphone. See (and hear) you soon 🙂
We’ve just completed the first week of our twice-yearly Learn Moodle Basics MOOC, this time covering Moodle 3.5 (And yes, there is still time to sign up!) From the (I confess, few) online courses I have participated in myself, I have learned that an early welcome by the facilitators and contact with other participants is very helpful in encouraging newcomers to continue. Our MOOC has an Introduce yourself! forum where participants must not only introduce themselves but also (and this is something many initially omit) respond to an introductory post by others. The aim is that no post should be left unanswered. With over three thousand participants so far, it is difficult for the facilitators to engage with every new participant, and we’re very grateful to our experienced regular MOOCers who help with this. (I’m deliberately not naming names because there are a few of them and I don’t want to miss anyone out but you know who you are and you’ll get your reward 🙂 )
If this is your first experience of a course with a large number of participants, a key piece of advice is: don’t feel obliged to read every post! Scroll down the list; find one with either a title you like or one which doesn’t yet have a response, and click on that. Perhaps someone is posting from your area? Perhaps someone has cleverly added a ‘teaser’ in their title? Would any of these attract your attention?
And the warm welcome is not only restricted to the Introduce yourself forum: the Any questions about Week 1? forum is monitored by helpful Moodlers who respond within minutes of a query being made. Do our helpful Moodlers have the forum in a tab on their computer and simply keep refreshing the page every five minutes (or is that just me? 🙂 ) Whatever – it’s great that assistance is so swiftly given. We even have participants providing tips for Newbies and infographics to help understand the peer assessment task (more next week)
As last time, participants can select to have the weekly activities displayed one week at a time (for a Step by Step approach) or all at once, if they are confident they won’t be overwhelmed. This works well but it is surprising (and a little disconcerting to see participants sharing their empty courses in the week 3 section “Show us your Moodle course”. The idea is to work on the course for two weeks minimum and only then share the course for feedback on its content. Hopefully these fast-trackers will get some participants willing to return to the course once content is added; I’m sure they will.
Another surprise with the All at Once group of participants, is the number of people who are completing the “Tell us what you’ve learned” forum after a mere twenty four hours in the course. Fast learners! But when you get feedback such as the below, it’s very encouraging:
Some facts and figures so far:
This last figure is interesting because although (at the moment) only 238 participants have classed themselves as “expert users here to help others”, there are still aspects to be learned, as this blog entry points out:
Week 2, starting on Monday 25th, brings an insight into Moodle’s interactive elements – and one of its most powerful features: a peer assessment tool called Workshop. Going to be fun!
Note: This blog is in two parts – the first about Moodle and Language teaching, the second only about Language teaching. So read one, both or neither, depending on your interests!
During the three days of the ITMO conference, I was delighted to attend, as a regular participants, sessions on ESP teaching. These were practical, active, hands-on, engaging sessions – exactly the kind of methods you’d like to think students would be experiencing! As with all good conferences, I couldn’t attend simultaneous sessions and so, sadly, had to choose some and miss out on others. I enjoyed Head of ITMO Foreign Languages dept Yulia V. Ryabukhina’s session on Project and Problem-based learning (two different things), particularly as we were constantly questioned, asked to reflect, to think, to predict what happened with her real-life example class. Yulia also chaired a panel discussion on the Role of Materials in Student Motivation during ESP classes. On the panel were representatives from three publishers and there was much talk of the huge preparation time needed to provide learners with interesting and relevant ESP materials. It occurred to me that Moodle users (and maybe non-Moodle users?) should have this problem alleviated with the advent of resource sharing in the new MoodleNet. It’s worth keeping an eye on the ongoing progress of this new, open, social media platform for educators.
Elena Belyaeva of St Petersburg State University (and formerly my son’s manager!) did an excellent and interactive workshop on authentic learning for students. I was particularly interested in this because I know the difficulty of providing authentic materials for foreign language learners. Elena’s take on this was that she didn’t only mean authentic paper materials – but an authentic experience. So she took us through a typical experience her students have where they first discuss the benefits and drawbacks of studying abroad, they then research possible scholarships (with differentiated tasks and more or less assistance depending on their needs) and eventually will produce a scholarship application. It’s authentic because, as graduate physics students they may well be doing this. Elena even thought to make our own workshop experience authentic by having us research teaching scholarships rather than Physics graduate ones. (Sadly for me, one of them required Russian nationality!) In undertaking these tasks we first reflected on our own, then with a partner, then with a different partner – I was reminded of ‘think/pair/share’.
This active, student-centred learning was very present in another workshop I attended – and unfortunately my poor photographic skills meant my pictures aren’t good enough to show. (Yes, they’re of even poorer quality than the ones I have chosen to show!!!) That’s a shame because the workshop was run by Aleksandra Shparberg and Maryam Reyhani (EMI co-ordinator) from ITMO University. (Maryam is from Perth Australia -home of Moodle!) The two delivered a masterful double act, from the first five minutes when we all had to get to know each other via paper aeroplanes to the last five minutes where we were each teaching the group about considerations in English as a Medium of Instruction. By the end I really, really wanted to be part of their department! I wanted to be a teacher again, to inspire and engage and all the things I had forgotten I’d enjoyed during my 28 years teaching.
The final keynote was delivered by Robert Cote of the University of Arizona. He’s visited before, several times and he intends to return. “Though our governments and presidents may not get along, the people certainly do.”
Robert’s presentation was full of interesting and entertaining facts and information along with many practical hints for getting the most out of your English language learning students.
I loved the TV news and weather reports, and was reminded that I did that years ago with my own students, at a much lower level, but with their enthusiasm nonetheless. He also encourages blogging and I realised that my own personal learning Russian blog, while useful as a self-disciplinary task, really ought to be written in Russian now my skills are improving. Or some of it at least. I’ll think about it 🙂
Big thanks to ITMO for allowing me to attend the conference. It was a pleasure both from a Moodle and a Languages point of view. And, of course, thanks for the lovely cakes!
Note: This blog is in two parts – the first about Moodle and Language teaching, the second only about Language teaching. So read one, both or neither, depending on your interests!
While British, Russian and American politicians engage in serious handbag flailing, ordinary people in each country are getting on with each other and with their lives. Thus it was that I arrived in St Petersburg last week to attend a conference on English for Specific Purposes at the prestigious ITMO university. Several of the English faculty completed our Learn Moodle Basics MOOC in January (Quick plug: sign up now for the June 3.5 MOOC!) and so I was invited to give an overview of Moodle and its possiblities for teaching English. Apart from a brief time during my student days, I have never actually taught English to non-native speakers, but I have taught foreign languages to native English speakers, and as I discovered, the skills are very transferable. So transferable in fact, that by the second day of the conference I began to think I’d taken the wrong career path thirty years ago – but it’s a bit late now!
I started by explaining the background to the Moodle open source software, as the conference participants ranged from those whose universities used it fully to those who’d never heard of it, from those who used it on their own within a higher education establishment to primary and secondary school teachers who saw its potential for their classes. This is where Moodle has real value: with technical knowledge you can install it and maintain it yourself, for free; as an individual teacher you can use MoodleCloud offerings where the hard work is done for you, or if you have money and specific needs you can engage a Moodle Partner. See all three options here.
I then went on to highlight the benefits of Moodle when teaching languages, be that ESP, as at the conference, or other Modern Foreign Languages, as in my own experience. For ease of explanation, I divided it up into four areas, and below is a summary. I chose to talk only of standard or free plugins, although I do know there are some very good paid options for language teaching with Moodle as well.
Some ideas for all subjects, not just English and other language teachers:
.. that leads neatly into a Competencies and Learning plans in ESP courses workshop I was fortunate enough to attend on the second day of the conference. This was run by John Kuti of ITMO and was in the style of a worldcafe, where we sit in groups at different tables, explore an issue, move around, and so on. We did it as a kind of Musical chairs with added Learning! (Hence the triangle…)
We looked at the Common European Framework Reference for Languages and how it could be enhanced for ESP teaching, and how such a competency framework would fit into a Moodle course. John helpfully had a sample learning plan and competencies set up in a course on his Moodle site for participants to explore. (Download the CEFR as a Moodle Competency framework from Moodle.net here.)
In Part 2 I’ll focus on the other sessions I attended, not directly Moodle -related, but putting me back into Languages Heaven 🙂
As the Learn Moodle 3.4 Basics MOOC draws to a close (last official day Sunday 4 Feb), participants are busy ensuring all the activity completion boxes are ticked so they can download either their completion certificate (35 activities including a peer assessment workshop) or achievement certificate (34 activities, without the workshop for those who didn’t organise themselves to meet the deadline) It’s often the manual completion boxes that get left until last and cause confusion – participants just need a quick reminder that they must tick them themselves, and they’re away! This final week also sees a flurry of participants starting new discussions multiple times in the Introduce yourself! forum to get the completion tick, sadly because they simply didn’t read the instructions.
On the other hand, it is thanks to the eagle eyes of our MOOC participants that bugs with Moodle features get noticed and fixed. Each run of our MOOC results in improvements to Moodle core and plugins for the community as a whole – an excellent benefit.
On another positive note, what has been particularly heartwarming this time has been the number of responses to participants posting their practice courses for review in the Show us your Moodle course! forum. With such a huge group of participants, it’ s difficult for everyone to get feedback, but it is encouraging that there are fewer courses with no replies. This is in part thanks to our regular MOOCers and thanks to experienced Moodlers who enrol in a lot of courses to offer suggestions. Ideally, everyone who shares their practice course should get at least one reply with feedback but we’re not there yet. I personally vow to engage more in this review activity next time.
Did I say next time? Yes! The next MOOC – Learn Moodle 3.5 Basics – will start on June 18 for four weeks until July 15. Sign up will be announced on our social media channels (and I will post on here too) nearer the time. Why not just enable sign-up now? Believe it or not, MOOC work doesn’t end when the MOOC ends 🙂 Behind the scenes, facilitators and administrators have to close down the current course and prepare for the new course. To give you an idea, here are a few of the jobs which must be done:
We have a checklist for such tasks and tick them off as we go along. In fact, ticking boxes was mentioned in one of the forum threads this week, and we’re very happy to read it: