How to schedule announcements in Moodle

Did you know you can schedule announcements in Moodle to be sent out at a time you specify? Useful if you want to make sure the message drops in inboxes at a particular time, when you might not be around (or if you’re me, might not remember!)  It works for other forum posts as well.  …

Designing for Engagement in a Learning Community – course starts Wed 19 April

Time and again, we hear that students are not engaging with their learning. Being engaged benefits students in so many ways. It can make learning more enjoyable as well as boosting achievement. So what can we do to promote more engagement in our classes? The course “Designing for Engagement in a Learning Community” looks at …

New resource: Digital Learning Frequently Asked Questions for staff

I’ve been asking around my colleagues in Learning Technology in order to find out the questions that have been most repeatedly asked over the years. We’ve then created a Digital Learning Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for Staff resource to help members of staff to find the answers quickly.  Perhaps one of our top questions at …

Using Moodle Choice for engaging students

We’ve been running webinars recently on different tools to use for engaging students with polls, questions and feedback. The series of  iTeach webinars on Engaging students with… continue through February and March. You can find out more information and links to book the next webinars. Ostensibly a simple multiple-choice poll, and deceptively simple for students …

Using the ChatGPT AI to create an escape game to support student learning

One way to engage students in their learning – in the sense of motivating them by providing varied and enjoyable activities – is to create an escape game. This can consolidate learning as well as providing a way to check learning as a kind of formative assessment.  Providing puzzles that rely on applying the knowledge …

Optimising your Moodle module for tracking learners’ interaction with the material

One of the aspects of measuring student “engagement” (see previous post What does learner “engagement” really mean?) is to see if students have actually accessed anything in Moodle, and often to ascertain the last time that they accessed it all, or accessed it in a meaningful way. This often means taking advantage of Moodle’s in-built logs. …

Monitoring student engagement via analytics: the problem with Moodle folders

Files, such as Word documents, can easily be added to Moodle as File resources. Some teachers prefer to upload a number of files into a folder instead of keeping them separate. However, there are generally more advantages to adding the files individually. You can do very much more with individual files that is not possible …

What does learner “engagement” really mean?

I notice that there are a number of ways in which the word “engagement” is being used in the context of talking about learners and learner engagement. It is a word that is even in some people’s job descriptions. I sometimes wonder whether, when we use it or discuss it, we are talking about the …

Webinars relating to digital learning: Advent Calendar #20

One benefit of the pandemic is that webinars became a routine part of professional development. I particularly like series of webinars which cover a variety of topics in learning technology and Higher Education. Here are some series of webinars that others might find useful. The University of Kent’s Digitally Enhanced Education webinars With contributors from …

Reflection prompts toolkit: Advent Calendar #19

I like to use prompts whenever I am reflecting on my practice, whether it’s a piece of work I’ve done, a new teaching session I’ve designed or delivered, or a project I’m engaged in.  I thought that others might find a short list of prompts for various occasions useful, so here they are. They can …