ECEL Conference and Poster: A learner-centred induction to Moodle

February 27, 2013 by 1 Comment

Groningen

The “teaching pod” in the University of Groningen’s main hall

Back in October 2012 I attended the 11th European Conference on E-Learning (ECEL) held in Groningen, the Netherlands. This was the first time I’d attended this conference. I presented a poster on our work with the Department of Psychology on their induction programme for the BSc course in September.

The conference was interesting, mostly because it gave some insight into how City’s educational technology perspective is much more teaching-and-learning focused than many other universities’. Many of the presentations I attended were very technology-orientated and I heard people commenting that they would have preferred them to be more so!

I attended some useful sessions: methods for sending students notifications on Moodle updates via Facebook and Twitter; the changing role of the academic in the Web 2.0 world; and an interesting case study on use of blogging for portfolio development.

My poster summarised the word I had done with the BSc Psychology Director of Undergraduate Studies Marie Poirier, to redesign elements of the induction programme for undergraduate Psychology students. There was agreement between the department and our team that induction would be improved by being more learner-centred, less “information overload”, and by giving students more opportunities to get to know staff and each other. Accordingly, we redesigned many of the activities the students take part in during the week. My involvement was mainly in the first day “orientation activities” and in the Moodle induction on the fourth and final day.

Throughout the whole induction week the main principles for the activities were:

  1. To reduce information overload
  2. To manage students’ expectations and help them understand what is expected of them
  3. To start building a sense of cohort community
  4. To build a sense of subject-specific identity

The students’ first task on their first day at university in September was to get into their tutorial groups and meet the other students who had been allocated the same personal tutor as them. After a welcome and a brief introductory talk from Marie they were divided into small groups of four or five. Each group was loaned an iPad which they used to go off and make short videos about each other and about their personal tutor. Many of the students were quite excited and impressed to be given these devices to work with on their first day – however, the main reason we used the iPads was because they allow quick and easy shooting, editing and uploading of video (via iMovie and pre-created private Vimeo accounts), and because students can also use them to research their personal tutor. We had run a similar activity the previous year with Flip cameras and laptops: the iPads made the whole process quicker and easier.

The approach we took with the Moodle induction was to redesign it as a task-based fact-finding activity requiring students to work in the same groups as they had been in on the first day. The groups were given access to a tailor-made induction module which contained activities such as quizzes, choices, questionnaires and practice assignment submission points. (They could also watch the videos they had shot on Monday). The idea behind this approach was to have students simultaneously learn about and use Moodle: to learn how to use its tools and functionality by finding out something about it. We also wanted to address many of the concerns and questions students have about their new course by giving them the chance to find out the answers to some common questions (How do I find out my timetable? How do I submit my assignments? How do I connect to the wifi?). Finally, we wanted the induction activity to be clearly and explicitly tailored for Psychology students: we included links to commonly used Psychology resources and included contact details for key members of staff in the department. Without too much work, similar approaches could be taken for other departments in the School.

For details of how the project was evaluated, click on the link below to view a copy of the poster. If, as a member of staff in the School of Arts and Social Sciences, you’d like to try something similar for your induction, please get in touch.

Poster Final

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Moving module choice online

January 30, 2013 by Leave a comment

Over the summer I worked on helping the administrative team move first year student elective module choice online. The data had previously been collected manually via a paper form given to students. The data then had to be transferred manually by administrative staff onto an excel spreadsheet before the students were enrolled on our student record system, SITS. This was a cumbersome process usually completed at the beginning of the academic year, what was already a busy time for administrative staff. We decided to look at a quick and easy way of moving this process online. I worked with the administrators to find out the type of data they wanted to collect and how they wanted it to display in excel. I then made up a few test forms using googleform for them to check over. Once they had agreed that it would work for them I trained the administrators in how to create googleforms and how to download the data in excel format. This is a very easy process and took very little time for them to learn.

We chose googleforms because it is free, all the administrators could easily get an account, the forms could be distributed via a link sent out by email or on the virtual learning environment (Moodle) and they could also be embedded in Moodle.

I asked the Undergraduate Sociology programme administrator for her feedback on how the change went.

How was the module choice done before moving it online?

The module choice process was previously done on paper. A module choice session was organized between March and May to choose modules that would be studies the following September. Module choice handbooks and forms were distributed at this session as well as information given by tutors about their specific modules.

Why did you decide to move module choice online?

We decided to move the module choice online for first years (2nd and 3rd years had already chosen modules) after the idea was suggested to us by Anna Campbell. The paper forms were a bit cumbersome, so moving to the online method seemed the best thing to do.

How easy/difficult do you find using googleforms for module choice?

I found the process of moving to the online form very smooth, and although I may ask for a little help in setting up the forms for 2nd and 3rd years, I think that using googleforms has improved the process very much.

How did it go?

Because the students were taken through the process during their moodle induction there were very few problems. I have not had very much feedback from them, but usually this can be interpreted as a good thing!

What would you do differently next time?

I think I would label the categories slightly differently for the purpose of sorting, but I would not change anything on a large scale.

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Constructing effective online assessment

December 3, 2012 by Leave a comment

I have worked alongside my academic colleagues Isabelle Marcoul and Svenja Erich of the Centre for Language Studies at City University London for the last two years to help develop effective online assessment. This project has now been written up for the recently published Learning at City Journal Vol 2 (2). You can download a full copy of our article here for free.

I’m providing a summary of the article here, focusing on the way the technology was used and how we measured the effectiveness of a multiple choice Moodle quiz.

Background

City University London runs a programme of language modules, some for course credit, some are extra curriculum. The languages taught are French, Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic and German. Before they can join a class the students need to be assessed and assigned to the language course appropriate to their level of linguistic competence, ranging from beginner to advanced levels. In 2011 more than 1000 students took a diagnostic test.

Prior to 2011, the language tests were handed out in a printed format and marked by language lecturers. The administrative burden for this was heavy with very tight marking deadlines, a lot of administrative work to assign students to the correct course, communicate this to students etc. It was concluded that an online system would help automate this, ensure the students received immediate feedback about which level and class was appropriate to them and would speed up the administrative process.

Practicalities

Each year the university runs a Language Fair during Freshers week. Traditionally this was when students took the written test and completed questionnaire (to gather basic information e.g. degree course etc). In September 2011 this assessment was done via multiple choice quiz on Moodle, the questionnaire was also online in a googleform. This meant that

  • a computer room was needed for the language fair
  • an audio/visual component was deemed to be difficult to manage as a large number of headphones would be required so listening was not part of the test

Design of the test

The languages team wanted to assess different types of language ability while being restricted to using a multiple choice online system. Each language had a test comprising of 100 questions. Please see the article for a full description of the choice of question type and what was assessed.

As a learning technologist I was very interested in how the languages department wrote their multiple choice questions in order to assess different types of language ability. For example, students were asked to read a generic text in the source language and were given comprehension questions to see how much they had understood. Some of the questions also asked that the students not only understand the words but also the cultural context and concept in order to get the answer right.

e.g.

What would you like as a main course?
A sorbet with strawberries
Six oysters
Steak and kidney pie with chips

To answer this question students needed to demonstrate understanding of it and the choices and to pick the correct answer from their own knowledge.

In the article Isabelle writes about how we construct language and how we can assess higher order thinking skills using online assessment methods so please do access the article if you are interested in this.

Use of Moodle and googleforms

City University London uses Moodle as it’s virtual learning environment. This was seen to be the perfect platform for the language testing. I met with the lecturers that would be preparing the questions for the test and explained how the Moodle quiz tool worked. This was to help them understand the types of question that would and would not be appropriate.

Once the questions had been written we had a two hour hands-on training session where the staff were trained in using Moodle quiz and then used it to add their questions with my support. I would recommend this approach. It meant that I could immediately troubleshoot any problems and the staff involved have been successfully using Moodle quiz ever since.

We also needed to collect some personal data from the students e.g. name, degree course etc. We used a googleform for this as they are very easy to set up and the data can be exported in excel format which the administrator requested.

Effectiveness of the language diagnostic multiple choice test

Effectiveness of the test was measured by the number of students that stayed in the group/level they were identified as during testing i.e. the language level of the course matched the language level that the student tested at. We were very pleased to see that the test proved very accurate in determining level for French, German and Spanish (small numbers of students took Mandarin and Arabic so the data was not conclusive).

This shows that an online test can effectively measure language ability in the majority of cases with very little movement of students between levels.

You can download a copy of the full article here

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Presentations from the Learning @ City Conference

July 23, 2012 by 1 Comment

As Anna mentioned in a previous post, the entire team recently presented at the Learning Development Centre‘s Learning @ City Conference. Anna’s presentation with Isabelle Marcoul and Svenja Erich from the Centre for Language Studies won the prize for best paper.

My presentation, which was appropriately about lecture capture, was recorded using our Echo360 Personal Capture system. Click on the link below to watch it:

.

Kate co-presented with Gunter Saunders from the University of Westminster on the FeedForward project, which we have piloted in Social Sciences as part of the JISC Making Assessment Count project. They gave a similar presentation at the Cass Teaching and Learning Showcase in May, which you can watch here:

MPG session from City University on Vimeo

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Creating interactive conference posters

June 29, 2012 by Leave a comment

I was pleased to have a poster accepted at the EDEN (European Distance and E-Learning Network) conference in Porto, Portugal this year. I have written a blog post about the content of the poster which you can find here.

Being in Education Technology I did feel the need to add a bit extra to the poster! So, alongside a QR code that links to the blog post I also used layar, an augmented reality app. On the poster there was a screenshot from a youtube video of my colleague and co-author Evelyn Reisinger speaking about setting up the course on Moodle (seen at the bottom left of the above image). To view it you needed the layar app on an apple or android device. My colleague Farzana Latif has been doing some work with augmented reality and set this up for me, so thanks Farzana!

By scanning the screenshot using the layar app the video of Evelyn started to play. It went down very well at the conference so I would recommend it. It’s great to be able to make a one dimensional poster more interactive.

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EDEN conference poster presentation

May 30, 2012 by 1 Comment

We have a poster presentation at the EDEN conference in Porto, Portugal next week. The conference theme is ‘Closing the gap from Generation Y to the mature lifelong learner’. Our poster is a case study of a distance learning course, the PGCert in the Principles and Practices of Translation. The vast majority of courses at City University are blended learning courses (using a mix of face to face and online resources) so we were interested to see how the students on a distance learning course utilsed the tools made available to them in Moodle. The poster outlines how mature students from two cohorts on this course, with different levels of technical experience, have utilised the online resources, focussing on the use of discussion forums and Adobe Connect.

Discussion forums

Evelyn Reisinger, Course Director, set up a news forum and discussion forums in Moodle. These were designed to encourage the students to raise and discuss their own issues as they felt appropriate with minimal interference from university staff. I was interested in whether the students utilised these discussion forums to create a community of practice (or communities of practice as there are a number of language combinations available within the programme). This draws from the work of Etienne Wenger (2006).

I completed a content analysis of the discussion forum postings for each year group. I did this by reading through each post and categorising it in terms of its content.

The contributions on the discussion forums specifically relate to some of the criteria for communities of practice as outlined by Wenger (2006). These include problem solving, requests for information, coordination and synergy and discussing developments (see the percentage interaction for each cohort below).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adobe Connect

The academic staff were keen to have some face to face tutorial time with the students. This was done using Adobe Connect (AC) web conference software already in use at the university. The sessions were specifically designed to answer student questions just after they had received assessment feedback. The students sent in their questions before the session and the course lecturers answered them in text form on Moodle and through AC.

Results

  • AC live sessions were not well attended
  • Some students suggested that the time of the session wasn’t convenient
  • Some students are studying from different countries so the time zone may have been a factor
  • The sessions were held in the afternoons when many of the distance learning students may have been at work or had childcare issues
  • Students that didn’t attend did access and view the tutorial recordings so the sessions were perceived as worthwhile

Conclusions

From analysis of the usage of the tools, feedback from students, lecturers and the administrator we concluded that
  • Students did use the discussion forums to communicate on many levels and did create communities of practice. In 2009/10 they were focused on the course but in 2011/12 a German to English mothers forum was set up and this includes personal interactions about their lives and similarities. The staff on the course are actively encouraging use of the discussion forums in this way
  • Students were willing to use the online resources made available to them. They had signed up for a distance learning course and were made aware that resources were shared online so this could have led to a self selected IT-confident group
  • Students used discussion forums for a number of different interactions, mostly related to the course but including some personal interaction
  • Age of student was no predictor of their use of the technology
  • Adobe Connect recorded tutorials were accessed if students could not virtually attend at the time of the tutorial so proved a valuable resource type

Interview with Course Director Evelyn Reisinger on using Moodle (recorded during the first year of the programme)

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Language diagnostic testing moved to Moodle

March 22, 2012 by 3 Comments

Background
The Centre for Languages here at City University London runs a large scale language diagnostics programme every September in order to assess the levels of students wishing to study a language. The languages that we offer are Arabic, French, German, Mandarin and Spanish. Students can take a language as an optional module or as part of their course in some cases. Previously students have taken the test on paper, the paper has been marked and passed on to administration for them to assign the student their level and send out their timetable. This was a time consuming process for academics and administrators alike and caused delay in assigning students to the correct language level. Isabelle Marcoul, Head of the Centre for Language Studies at City University London, contacted me to see how this process could be enhanced through the use of Moodle. After numerous meetings and discussion with those involved it was agreed that the current tests would be put online as a Moodle quiz. This meant that students could get their result immediately and know which level they were and which class they could attend. Students also completed an online form (which had been set up using googleforms) to collect the information that was needed by administration.
This process was implemented for the first time in September 2011. Below are the thoughts of the Exams and Assessment Coordinator, the School Registrar and myself from Educational Technology, about how the project went and improvements we will make for next year.

Svenja Erich, Exams and assessment Coordinator for Centre for Language Studies, City University

This year you used Moodle’s quiz function to run your language diagnostic tests. Why did you decide to do this?
We decided to use it because the previous system seemed out-dated, ineffective, required a lot of resources and storage space. Also, it was hard work in terms of marking, administration and organisation.

How did you administer the tests in previous years?

We had an A3 (folded into A4, so there were four pages) paper-based test with multiple choice questions (two pages) and a writing section (one page). Student’s details (name, email address, studies etc.) had to be filled in on the front page of the test.
Tests were given out to students in Fresher’s Week – at the annual Languages Fair for the Languages for General Purposes (LGP) students and at orientation meetings at CASS and SoA/ SoSS for the Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) students. The multiple choice section could to be marked using transparencies, whereas the writing section had to be looked at by a lecturer of the target language.
The marked tests were passed on to the administration and the students’ details were entered manually onto the registers. Once this had been done, students were sent an email with the course information.

What are the advantages of running the tests in Moodle?

Example of questions from French diagnostic test

We don’t have to mark the test anymore, the mark is calculated automatically. This saves a lot of time. Staff at the Languages Fair can concentrate on giving advice regarding the courses rather than marking piles of tests. The result of the test comes up immediately once it has been completed. If students are briefed properly, they know straight after taking the test if they a have been admitted to a course and which class they should to go to.

Screenshot of googleform students complete when taking the diagnostic test

From an administrative point of view, running the test on Moodle is a lot more effective and less time-consuming. Students enter their details onto Moodle which can be easily exported, no need to enter data manually. Also, data are accessible to anyone in the languages team and test results/ students’ details can be looked up easily without having to communicate with the administrator.

In principle students can do the assessment test at home or anywhere at the university, without having to pick a copy up/ drop it off at the CfLS. Students who were not able to attend the Language Fair are now sent the details on Moodle along with an advice sheet. This makes it a lot easier for latecomers to take the test and enrol on the course which had a positive impact on enrolment numbers.

Overall, the new system is a lot more reliable and effective than what we had before.

Are there any disadvantages? How did you solve these?

The only downside really is that we need rooms equipped with computers at the Language Fair and we depend on IT services doing their job properly.  For peak times at the Language Fair, we had booked several computer labs across the university. We had to make sure that one support person was present in each of these rooms and that plenty of advice sheets on how to access the test were available. This was important because students are not necessarily as confident with the technology as one assumes.

Have you had any feedback from staff or students?

Our staff was extremely happy with the change. Apart from all the positive factors mentioned above, there is also the feeling that we have arrived in the 21st century with our assessment methods. The paper-based copy had become a little embarrassing.  Students appreciated the flexibility of the test as you can start completing it and resume later.  The only problem we had, had nothing to do with the technical side but concerned the content of the French test and can easily be corrected.

Will you use the Moodle quiz again next year? If so, what changes would you make?

Yes, we certainly will use it again. It would actually be a nightmare to go back to the paper-based copy. The only change we will make is that we will ask LGP students to self-enrol (through Moodle) on the course. This will even further simplify the administrative process.

I am extremely grateful to Anna Campbell who made the project possible. Anna understood all our needs and made sure that they were met in the best possible fashion. Moreover, she had extremely useful ideas and suggestions we had not thought of before. She made the technology accessible to us and offered excellent training to the lecturers designing the tests. All those who were less confident with the technology received individual support from her through email/ over the phone after the training. It was very easy to communicate with her. She also offered hands-on support for the Language Fair which was very re-assuring for me on the day.

Simon Barton, School registrar, School of Arts

How did the change in process impact on administration?
Moodle revolutionised the way we administered the language placement tests. It made what was a 3-4 day job (over the weekend!) a single days work (not on a weekend!). No more data entry or marking tests by hand, Moodle sorted all that out for us and left me the much more manageable task of filtering the spreadsheets and emailing students with their group allocations.

What will you do differently next year?
Next year, I would want to move the parts that go on Google docs to excel spreadsheets downloaded from Moodle as not all of the team working on the data had access to this information or necessarily felt comfortable with Google docs. And where we’ve got two documents that collect the information, I would aim to make it just a single downloadable spreadsheet. In addition to these small changes I would also introduce passwords on the free LGP courses to enable tutors to give these out in class so students are able to register themselves.

Anna Campbell, Educational Technologist for the Schools of Arts and Social Sciences

How do you feel the project went?
I’m really pleased with the way the project went this September. It was great to be able to see a tangible benefit to using Moodle in this way for all involved. I also am pleased that the staff teaching the various languages really got to grips with using Moodle quiz and therefore started to see the further benefits of using Moodle.

Any technical Moodle issues?
We had to set up the Moodle module that the tests were in as self enrol. We don’t tend to do that at City, we normally enrol students onto modules via SITS but in this case the whole of the university and staff could take the tests and that was not feasible.

What improvements will you make?
I think that Simon and Svenja have covered them. There is an issue of the Moodle quiz result in the gradebook and being able to match it up with the personal information on the form. I haven’t figured out an easy way to match those two up (apart from getting students to enter the grade they got in their test onto the googleform which is not foolproof). I’m still thinking about that!

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Top tips – designing out plagiarism

March 6, 2012 by Leave a comment

Plagiarism is a hot issue in education. Rather than just detecting it, there are ways to design your assessment so that it is difficult for students to plagiarise. Here are some ideas (mostly from other people so I hope I reference them correctly!)

1. Consider a change to the format of your assessment. Dr Liza Schuster from City University London has experimented with using individual wikis (using OU wiki on Moodle) for each student. Liza asked each student to write 300 words each week on the topic for that week under the following headings

Screen shot from Global Migration course

Screen shot from the wiki on the Global Migration course

Liza then went into the wiki weekly to look at a selection of student work to comment on. She reported that this meant that she was quick to identify any problems with student understanding, bad referencing and plagiarism.
The students had to put together a 3000 word essay from the weekly work in the wiki. Liza reported that the referencing and writing in the final submissions was of a better standard than when the assignment had purely been a 3000 word essay at the end of the course. The students reported that they preferred this approach as they were more confident they were on the right track and didn’t have a deadline that was the same for all their submissions.

2. Avoid using the same assignment title each year. I know, I know. As a teacher myself I know how much easier it is to mark the second and third year of using the same essay title. If you are loathe to make a big change, perhaps change the focus. Ask students to use the theories to explain a recent case study, for example. In this way, the structure of the marking remains the same but it is much harder for students to plagiarise.
(adapted from Culwin and Lancaster, 2001)

3. Ask students to make a brief presentation to the class based on their written assignments. This doesn’t have to be assessed but would help identify those that don’t understand what they’ve written or, worse, those that have bought their assignment from an essay bank
(adapted from Gibelman, Gelman and Fast, 1999)

4. The best way to design plagiarism out of a course is to teach students about good referencing in their first term of study. Don’t presume that students know how to do this effectively, even at Masters level. If you use a text matching tool e.g. turnitin, consider showing an example of a plagiarised script at the beginning of the course and show how turnitin picks it up. It may scare them into referencing properly if nothing else!

5. Come along to our designing out plagiarism workshop (if you work for the Schools of Arts and Social Sciences for City University London that is!). Click here to find our current workshop dates

References

Culwin, F. & Lancaster, T. (2001). Plagiarism, Prevention, Deterrence & Detection. Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, South Bank University, U.K. http://www.ilt.ac.uk/resources/Culwin-Lancaster.htm

Gibelman, M., Gelman, S. R., and Fast, J. (1999). The downside of cyberspace: Cheating made easy. Journal of Social Work Education 35 (3).

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A Case Study – Using Adobe Connect in the Centre for Comparative Social Surveys

February 23, 2012 by Leave a comment

Lorna Ryan is a Research Manager at the Centre for Comparative Social Surveys at City University London. She also teaches on various modules in the Department of Sociology. I met her in the Social Sciences café to discuss her use of Adobe Connect. Here’s the full text of the interview.

 

MP: First of all, what is Adobe Connect?

LR: Adobe Connect is an online tool for virtually connecting with someone face-to-face. You have to have a webcam to use it and you also have to connect to the Internet. Through it you can have meetings, which are effectively face-to-face mediated meetings, or you can have a meeting in which you don’t see (but do hear) the other person when you show them what’s on your desktop. Most usefully, I think, you can go through PowerPoint slides and they can hear your voice over them.

How long have you been using it, and can you describe a situation in which you used it?

I’ve been using it for the last year and a half, and I’ve successfully used it in the development of a research collaboration with a colleague in Norway, who I had never met, who contacted me. We had an email exchange and then we went into the virtual meeting. That turned out to be extraordinarily successful in terms of being able to build a relationship with somebody, to be able to physically see them, and talk through the issues, as well as having the back up of a more formal email communication. I’ve also used it as part of the co-ordination activities of the European Social Survey, in particular with colleagues in institutions across Europe.

And why would you use Connect in these situations rather than meet face-to-face?

Cost! First of all, first and foremost it’s cheaper than travelling to meet the people, so that’s an enormous consideration. To go to, for example, Mannheim for a two-hour meeting you have to take two days out of your schedule. In terms of other platforms, this is the University’s supported platform, so you have an online help crew available, which is really helpful. And I have done the TEAP [Technology-Enabled Academic Practice] course and the TEAP use Presenter and Connect.

What about the other way round; when you’re working with someone you know and who you work with face-to-face, and then meet with them on Connect – is there anything you have to do differently?

No, I think that works brilliantly. I think that once you know people, it’s that surprise that you can see them – this is if you’re not very technically involved – but I think that it’s particularly successful when you know the people. You can have great detailed conversations.

So there’s nothing that you have to change about the way that you talk or discuss when you’re online?

You do… with more than one person you have to implement – for want of a better term – and agree ways of communication. So people have to learn to stop, to ask questions, or to allow questions to be answered, and I think one way of trying to develop that now, is that I use the toolbar on the side to raise my hand when I want to ask a question. But you’re reliant then on the person looking at the screen. But I do think people have to learn the cues to know when to be silent and when to allow people to talk. My preferred way of behaving is to allow everyone Presenter status so that you don’t block out their microphone. So you can then agree to speak, but we say that if you’re speaking you give your name.

But that occurs in initial meetings, [later on] you can relax. It’s more the initial meetings when people are not familiar with the technology, or with interacting in a virtual space.

You’ve obviously become adept with Connect; is there anything you do to coach colleagues or give any support to people who haven’t used the system before?

Yes, the big thing is turning your camera on and turning your microphone off when you’re in a group situation, and not using the hands-free. That’s the biggest problem, that people just haven’t turned on their camera or haven’t turned on their mic – and that’s why you can’t hear them. Generally the problem has been with the institutions we’re working with, not on our side. So I keep on saying to people, “Just leave and come back”. That’s the best advice actually, when it doesn’t work just leave and come back, and try again!

You could be talking and working with people on the other side of the planet, or it could be much closer. You mentioned that you’ve had meetings with people who are all in the same building.

We’ve had meetings with our colleagues in Norway, and we have sat each at our own desks. It means that all of our pictures are up, rather than having one small webcam trying to capture our faces.

And then you’ve got access to all of the things in your office, all of your papers and files and things.

I find it really useful when I want to present my ideas using PowerPoint, very quickly, to bring people through the presentation, and then click back onto the faces. I’m sold on it – I’m a convert.

Is there anything that you’d like to be able to do with Connect, that you can’t do?

I think I accept the limitations. It’s really useful, as I say, for the purposes of saving time, and saving money, and being able to quickly have informal discussions. Perhaps if they’re sensitive discussions you do have to have face-to-face contact, but more generally, it hasn’t been a problem.

In terms of limitations, you’re not in the same room as someone, so is it possible to miss body language or miss visual clues that you get when you’re talking face to face with someone?

I think again this depends on what you’re talking about. If you’re talking about lack of understanding, then you’ve got to develop things like “does everyone understand this?” So maybe it’s more of a teaching issue [i.e. this could be more of an issue when using Connect for teaching]. In terms of developing research, for decisions that need to be made, well presumably people are able to express [their thoughts].

But it goes back to what you were saying about developing a chairing role. Rather than relying on body language, everything becomes much more explicit.

Yes, and you say to somebody, “Would you like to speak?” or they raise their hand and say, “I would like to speak.” I think the fact that you can have a chat function, as well, is really handy, so that you’ve got ongoing communication between the participants, and you can signal if you’re concerned about some issue.

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Moodle tips – module organisation

February 16, 2012 by Leave a comment

We’re starting a series of Moodle tips for staff (for Moodle 1.9 for those reading this outside of City University London).
The first is a basic one to do with layout of the module. I have noticed that some modules have all the documents/ weblinks/assignments etc together in a long list. This can be difficult for students to navigate. So we recommend a structure similar to this

Screen shot of Moodle module page

Labelling the topics or weeks

It is a good idea to split your content up into sections. For some courses that is done by week, for others it is done by topic. You could also consider having a general information and assessment section at the top or bottom of the module. To label the week sections

Turn the editing on

Click the hand icon (see below)

Type the name of the week or topic in the box. You can change the font size/bold the text etc

Click save changes

To move items around

You can move items (documents/weblinks/assignments etc) with drag and drop

Click on the icon to the right of the document name that looks like a compass and hold the mouse button down while you drag the document/weblink etc to the correct place. A grey line appears when you are hovered in the correct place. Release the mouse button and it should drop into place. Please note, drag and drop doesn’t always work with all browsers (Internet Explorer especially) so we recommend that you use Firefox when accessing Moodle

Item names

Please check that the name you have given a document/weblink/assessment etc is clear and easy for the student to understand. If you feel you would like to rename it you can click on the hand icon to the right of the current name

Change the name by typing the new name into the ‘name’ box

Click save and return to course (found at the bottom of the page)

Header image

Every module has a header image at the top of the page. Usually this is one that we have assigned to you. If you have a more appropriate header image please do email it to esthelp@city.ac.uk with your module code. Please note that images that need to be approximately 800 x 200 pixels and available under creative commons licence.  Alternatively you could send us a photo that you took.

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