January 13, 2014, by Teaching at Nottingham
Moodle Everywhere: a new lecturer’s angle
Simon Harrison: “How are you using Moodle this semester?
“As a new lecturer here, I’m experimenting in two different ways.
“For my undergraduate module, I post preparatory slides ahead of time that I design to either guide students through the assigned reading or to offer a preview of the slides I’ll use in class. After the class I then return to Moodle to supplement the resources based on a) how I feel the class went and b) specific requests from students. Some classes have led to an on-line forum, while others have led to follow up slides that clarify, nuance, or emphasise the main learning points of the class. Links to relevant articles, videos, and resources from ASC are also added in a fairly systematic way. For this class, Moodle is a sort of depository where students can go for resources to help them both prepare for and review the main points of each class.
“For my MA module, the students continually have access to an on-line classroom with forums, lectures, reading, and mini-assignments that I try to update throughout the week. This on-line classroom runs in parallel and feeds into the weekly face-to-face session two hours each week. Here, Moodle is not so much an appendix to the weekly class as an integral part of it.
“What are the pros and cons of these different formats for Moodle?
What different levels of investment do they require (both from me and the students)?
Would other formats be more effective?
How can we solicit feedback from students to evaluate the impact of our work on Moodle?
And importantly, is all the investment in Moodle rewarded with student engagement and evidence of learning?
“I hope to exchange with other teachers on some of these issues, so please email me for a chat if you are asking yourself similar questions (or have some answers to offer!).”
Simon Harrison
Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics School of English
UNNC
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