Moodle Introduction - Develop Your Own Online Course Today.

Online Educa Berlin 3 December 2008

Preconference Moodle Introduction: Develop Your
Own Online Course Today

Trainers: Pieter van der Hijden & Hans de Zwart.

2008 - Pieter van der Hijden (pvdh@sofos.nl) - This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Online Educa Berlin 2008
Preconference Moodle Introduction www.ned-moove.nl

Contents

10:00-11:30 - Session-1 .................................................................................3
Introduction ...........................................................................................3
Organisation ........................................................................................3
Trainers .............................................................................................3
Exercise .............................................................................................4
Overview ...............................................................................................5
The original course(s) .............................................................................5
This preconference ................................................................................5
Virtual Learning Environment ....................................................................6
Definition phase.......................................................................................8
Synopsis .............................................................................................8
Meta data ...........................................................................................8
Exercise .............................................................................................9
11:30-11:45 - Short break ............................................................................ 11
11:45-13:15 - Session-2 ............................................................................... 11
Design phase - global ............................................................................... 11
Synopsis ........................................................................................... 11
Exercise ........................................................................................... 11
Design phase - detail ............................................................................... 15
Detail design ...................................................................................... 15
Exercise ........................................................................................... 22
Review................................................................................................ 22
Exercise ........................................................................................... 22
13:15-14:15 - Lunch break............................................................................ 23
14:15-15:45 - Session-3 ............................................................................... 23
Realisation phase 1/3 .............................................................................. 23
Synopsis ........................................................................................... 23
Exercise ........................................................................................... 23
Assets .............................................................................................. 23
Sources ............................................................................................ 24
Exercise ........................................................................................... 26
15:45-16:00 - Short break ............................................................................ 30
16:00-18:00 - Session-4 ............................................................................... 30
Implementation phase 1/2 ........................................................................ 30
Synopsis ........................................................................................... 30
Course testing .................................................................................... 30
Exercise ........................................................................................... 32
Implementation phase 2/2 ........................................................................ 32
Scales .............................................................................................. 32
Review................................................................................................ 32
Evaluation & Follow-up ............................................................................ 33
Evaluation ......................................................................................... 33
Follow-up ......................................................................................... 33

2-12-2008 2


10:00-11:30 - Session-1
Introduction
Organisation

Ned-Moove

This preconference is brought to you by Ned-Moove, the Dutch Moodle Association. This
association has members and organises events and other activities in The Netherlands,
Flandres (Belgium) and Suriname.
Your trainers Pieter van der Hijden and Hans de Zwart both are members of the Ned-Moove
board.
Website: www.ned-moove.nl
Contact: info@ned-moove.nl

Moodle

Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package
designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online
learning communities. You can download and use it on any computer you have handy
(including webhosts), yet it can scale from a single-teacher site to a University with
200,000 students.
Website: moodle.org
Contact: Moodle partners, Moodle community, Ned-Moove

Trainers

Pieter van der Hijden
• Management consultant on organisation and ICTs with Sofos Consultancy
(www.sofos.nl), working in The Netherlands and Suriname
• Secretary of the Ned-Moove board (www.ned-moove.nl)
• Contact: pvdh@sofos.nl

Hans de Zwart
• E-Learning consultant with Stoas Learning (www.stoas.nl)
• Chairman of the Ned-Moove board (www.ned-moove.nl)
• Contact : hans@hansdezwart.info

2-12-2008 3


Exercise

Login and change your password
• We created an account for you on http://www.ned-moove.nl.
• The facilitators will give you a 2-digit number, e.g. 12. This implies that your login
name is: oeb12, your firstname is firstname12, your lastname is lastname12 and your
e-mail address is email12@ned-moove.nl. In any case your password is changeme.
• Log in on http://www.ned-moove.nl, use the appropriate login name and password.
• The system will ask you to change your password. You may use the new password you
prefer. The system keeps it secret and stores it in a scrambled way. Even the system
administrator cannot decypher it.

Update your profile
• Once you have logged in, click on your fullname at the upper right corner of the
screen.
• The system displays your personal profile.
• Click on Edit Profile; the system willl display a form you can update.
• Replace the firstname, lastname and e-mail address by your real firstname, lastname
and e- mail address.
• Fill in your City and your Country.
• Fill in the Description field. Give a on line description of yourself, e.g. your position.
Note, that this information might be public.
• Upload a picture of yourself, if you have one at hand.
• Click the Update Profile button.

Offered and Wanted
• At http://www.ned-moove.nl we created a course to support this OEB Moodle Intro
preconference.
• Once you have logged in and have updated your profile, click on the OEB Moodle Intro
course.
• The system displays the home page of the course. Note, that it consists of three
columns. The centre column is subdivided into sections. It starts with a general section
(without number) and continues with a series of numbered sections. Go to the first
section: Introduction and click on the offered/wanted forum.
• The offered/wanted forum contains two questions. Click on one of them, answer the
question by composing and sending a reply. Do the same for the other question.
• Once you have answered both questions, you may browse this forum to read the
responses by the other participants. If you want to comment, feel free to give a Reply
to a Reply.

2-12-2008 4


Overview
The original course(s)

This preconference
See the frontpage of this handout.

2-12-2008 5


Virtual Learning Environment

Education Production Process

Supporting Software Systems

Moodle
User Interface

2-12-2008 6


Course Components

2-12-2008 7


Definition phase
Synopsis
The first phase of the course development process is the definition phase. At the end of
this phase it must be clear which quot;problemquot; this development process is going to solve and
in which direction a quot;solutionquot; will be created.
During this phase, the educational requirements for the course are specified. Which is the
learning challenge the course is focused on? Which are the characteristics of the learners?
How much support should the online course offer to the participants? Is it really a distance
course or not?
Further, the course developer has to explore the organisational context of the online
support. What is more appropriate, synchronous or asynchronous activities?
In fact, the definition phase leads to the first draft of the metadata of your course.

Meta data
Sooner or later, educational institutes will have hundreds of courses online. To use them in
an efficient and effective way, descriptions of the online courses will find their way to
search engines, catalogues and a variety of listings. These metadata, data on data, have
been standardised. One such a standard is the IMS Learning Resource Meta-Data
Information Model, an open standard published by the IMS Global Learning Consortium. In
our training we use a subset of the IMS Meta-Data model.
Here is a limited subset of that model.
Title:
Topic:
Language:
Aggregation level: (choose one) single component / supporting materials / complete
distance course
Version:
Contributors:
Role Entity (name / organization) Date

Format: Moodle v 1.9 course
Intended user role: Student
Context:
Difficulty:
Typical learning time:
Copyright and other restrictions:

2-12-2008 8


Exercise

Update the settings of your course
• We created an empty course for you. It is called quot;Moodle Intro - Empty Course nnquot;
where nn has to be replaced by the 2 digit number the trainers have given you before.
You have the teacher role for this course.
• Go to your own course.
• The system displays the home page of your course. We have filled in a few details
already. However, most of the page is still empty.
• Go to the left column: Administration block: Settings.
• The system displays the course settings form.
• Do not change the course category.
• Replace the full name of the course by the title of your own choice.
• Replace the short name of the course a short name or code you prefer. This short
name will be used as quot;breadcrumbquot; at the top of each page, i.e. a hyperlink to
return directly to the home page of your course.
• Enter a short description your course (preferably one sentence only) in the summary
field.
• Set the number of weeks/topic to the actual number of topics in your course.
• Do not change any other fields.
• Save your changes.
• The system displays the course home page again.

Fill in the metadata
• At the top of the centre column of your course, we created an entry called quot;metadata
(for teachers only). Note that this entry appears dimmed. It is only visible for the
teacher(s) of this course, i.e. you!
• When you click the entry, the system displays a web page containing an empty
metadata form.
• Click on quot;Update this resourcequot; to open the form for editing. Do not forget to save your
changes.

Fill in course and section title(s)
• Go to the home page of your course. Note, that the title of your course is not shown
there. This is a matter of the appearance theme used.
• Enter the course title manually.
1. Click on the quot;quot;Turn editing onquot; button (upper right corner).
2. At the top of the centre column, below the words quot;Topic overviewquot;, click the edit
icon (small picture of hand with pencil).
3. The system displays an editing field.
4. Fill in the name of your course. Select the text and set the text style to
quot;Heading-1quot;.
5. Save the changee.

2-12-2008 9


• Enter the title of one of your sections.
1. If you did not already before: Click on the quot;quot;Turn editing onquot; button (upper right
corner).
2. The centre column contains a sequence of empty sections. Go to the section you
want to give a title and click its edit icon (small picture of hand with pencil).
3. The system displays an editing field.
4. Fill in the name of this section. Select the text and set the text style to quot;Heading-
2quot;.
5. Save the changes.

2-12-2008 10


11:30-11:45 - Short break
11:45-13:15 - Session-2
Design phase - global
Synopsis
The second phase of the course development process is the design phase. The results of
the definition phase form its starting point. At the end of this phase the course has to be
specified completely. Other people (programmers, graphic designers, text writers) have
enough information to be able to really build it. The design is tested for internal
consistency and for a consistent application of the definition phase results.
Designing an online course is not a mechanical process. Numerous questions have to be
dealt with. To give a short impression:
• what is really needed to fulfil the mission of the course?
• what is needed to accommodate a variety of learning styles?
• what is needed to compensate for the drawbacks of asynchronous learning?
• what should be fixed as part of the online course, what should flexible in the hand of
the teacher during course delivery?

Exercise

Specify educational activities
• Look at the quot;course story board formquot;. This form is a tool to design a whole course. One
sheet has room for 1-5 topics containing 1-5 items each. If this is not enough, use more
copies of the form.
• Place a yellow sticker in the left cell of each row. Write the title of the topic on it.
• Now, fill each topic with 1-5 activities (red, yellow, or green stickers).
• Choose a colour for each student activity (see table below)
• Write on the upper half of each sticker: the activity plus the eventual subtopic. It is
important to concentrate on what you want to happen, not on how you are going
to use Moodle, e.g. Reading O'Brien, Chapter 5.
• Compare your quot;global designquot; with your peers. Change it when appropriate.
Colour Meaning Examples (from student point of view)
Red Individual activities Reading, working individually, being tested
individually.
Yellow Synchronous group Synchronous activity, either offline (face-to-face
activities meeting) or online (like chat).
Green Asynchronous group Asynchronous group activity, like working
activities collectively, communicating, presenting,
receiving feedback, testing.

2-12-2008 11


Bind to Moodle activities
• Link each educational activity to one or more Moodle activities. Use the following mind
map to search for possible links. Write your solution in the lower half of the stickers.

Student Task File Web Web Assi Chat Choi Foru Glos Hot Jour Less Quiz SCO Surv Wiki Wor
Pag Link gn- ce m sa- Pota nal on RM ey k-
e men ry - to shop
t

reading x x x x x

communica- x x x
ting

working x x x x x
individually

working x x x x x
collectively

presenting x x x

receiving x x x x x x x x x
feedback

testing x x x x x

2-12-2008 12


Review course design
Now, review your course design:
• For the resources: add a symbol to indicate whether:
• the resource is home-made,
• the resource is purchased elsewhere.
• For the green and yellow activities: add a symbol to indicate:
• plenary activities,
• separated subgroup activities,
• visible subgroup activities.

2-12-2008 13


Story board form

2-12-2008 14


Design phase - detail
Detail design

Forum
There are several different types of forum to choose from:
• A single simple discussion - is just a single topic, all on one page. Useful for short,
focussed discussions.
• Standard forum for general use - is an open forum where any one can start a new topic
at any time. This is the best general-purpose forum.
• Each person posts one discussion - Each person can post exactly one new discussion
topic (everyone can reply to them though). This is useful when you want each student
to start a discussion about, say, their reflections on the week's topic, and everyone
else responds to these.
• Q And A Forum - The Q & A forum requires students to post their perspectives before
viewing other students' postings. After the initial posting, students can view and
respond to others' postings. This feature allows equal initial posting opportunity among
all students, thus encouraging original and independent thinking.
The options for quot;Force everyone to be subscribed?quot; (= to receive e-mail notifications) are:
• No
• Yes, initially
• Yes, forever
• No subscriptions allowed
The options for RSS feed for this activity are:
• None
• Discussions
• Posts

2-12-2008 15


2-12-2008 16


2-12-2008 17


Assignment

2-12-2008 18


Choice
The options for quot;publish resultsquot; are:
• Do not publish results to students.
• Show results to a student after they answer.
• Show results to students only after the choice is closed.
• Always show results to students.

2-12-2008 19


2-12-2008 20


Chat
The options for quot;Repeat sessionsquot; are:
• Don't publish any chat times.
• No repeats - publish the specified time only.
• At the same time every day.
• At the same time every week.

2-12-2008 21


Exercise
• Look at your storyboard form for a forum activity. If you found one, fill in the detail
form for that activity.
• Do the same for an assignment activity, a chat activity, and a choice activity.

Review
Exercise

Assignment
• Go to the Moodle Intro course.
• Make the assignment in Section 1.

Choice
• Fill in the Choice in Section 1.

2-12-2008 22


13:15-14:15 - Lunch break
14:15-15:45 - Session-3
Realisation phase 1/3
Synopsis
The realisation phase follows the design phase. Now, the real construction of the course
(finally) can start. It consists of programming course activities as well as creating or
purchasing content materials and all kinds of components like pictures, animations, and
video fragments. Finally, all these pieces have to be fit together in the course.This has to
be tested, both by the developers and by other people, e.g. a sample of the intended
audience.
In the case of asynchronous learning, the course activities and content documents are the
only links between the distant learner and the institute. It is therefore very important
that course materials are visually appealing and attractive.

Exercise
• Create the forum, you prepared before.
• Create the assignment, you prepared before.
• Create the choice, you prepared before.
• Create the chat, you prepared before.

Assets
Assets are the multimedia used in our course materials:
• sounds
• graphics and animations
• pictures
• video clips
• etc.
All these assets have to be created or acquired.
Two documents could be of great value: a Style Guide or Art Bible, and the Master Asset
List. The first document could be a guide at institutional level describing the rules and
policies for online course development (and delivery). It includes samples of any artwork
used in courses. When the document focuses on artwork, it is also called the Art Bible, the
reference book you use (and may have made yourself) for all asset production or
acquisition. One topic to be dealt with in these documents is the standard naming
convention for all assets.
The Master Assets List contains an exhaustive list of all the art work and other assets you
will include in your course. It is recommended to develop such a list in Excel as a
spreadsheet can be sorted easily on various fields. Relevant fields are:

2-12-2008 23


• ID-# - a sequence number, just as unique identifier, especially useful in database
applications,
• name - name according to the standard naming convention,
• caption - short title,
• format - file type and other relevant technical details,
• size - file size,
• author/source - author or source of the asset,
• creation date,
• version,
• used - location(s) in the course where this asset will be used,
• status - e.g. ordered, draft, final.

Sources

OpenLearn (OU)
The Open University OpenLearn environment

2-12-2008 24


MIT Open Courseware

JISC Catalogue
Further Education Collections Catalogue

2-12-2008 25


Exercise

Design a wiki 1/2
• A wiki is a web site (set of web pages) created with easy tools (no programming
required) that can be worked on collaboratively.
• You can create a wiki that you fill and modify yourself; the students only can browse
and read it. You also can create a single wiki that all students may extend and change,
or one for each subgroup or even for every single student. In total Moodle can handle 3
different types that can be used in 3 different modes. The type will be fixed when you
create a wiki, the mode maybe changed when needed.
There are three wiki types: Teacher, Groups, Student. In addition, like any activity, the
wiki has the Moodle group modes: quot;No Groupsquot; quot;Separate Groupsquot; and quot;Visible Groupsquot;. This
leads to the following matrix of nine possibilities:
No Groups Separate Groups Visible Groups
Teacher There is only one There is one wiki for There is one wiki for
wiki which only the every group which every group which
teacher can edit. just the teacher can just the teacher can
Students can view edit. Students can edit. Students can
the contents. view the wiki of view the wikis for all
their group only. groups.
Groups There is only one There is one wiki per There is one wiki per
wiki. The teacher group. Students can group. Students can
and all students can view and edit the change the wiki of
view and edit this wiki of their own their own group only.
wiki. group only. They can view the
wikis for all groups.
Student Every student has Every student has Every student has
their own wiki which their own wiki, which their own wiki, which
only they and their only they and their only they and their
teacher can view and teacher can edit. teacher can edit.
edit. Students can view Students can view
the wikis of other the wikis of all other
students in their students in the
group. course.
Unless the group mode has been forced by the course settings, it can be set with the
groups icons on the course home page after the wiki has been created.
A teacher can always edit every wiki in the course.
• Review your course story board and mark all the places where you want to include a
wiki with a small round sticker, marked W.
• Fill in the specifications for your first wiki.

2-12-2008 26


2-12-2008 27


Design a wiki 2/2
• Apart from designing a wiki, by specifying its type and mode and other global
characteristics, it is also needed to design the structure of the intended content.
• Of course, you can offer your students an empty wiki and let them work from scratch.
However, in many cases it helps them if you have structured the content already:
1. by creating a set of empty pages (title only) and their interrelations,
2. by filling certain pages with a format like some headings.
• Often the preferred structure for a wiki is the hierarchy. The wiki is then set-up as a
book with chapters, subchapters, etc.
• However, you are completely free in the way you structure a wiki. Examples:
1. The wiki offers a walk through a visual representation of the knowledge domain
of a course.
2. The wiki describes the countries of Europe. Each country has its own page. The
pages of neighbour countries are linked. Try to travel from Germany through all
countries and back while visiting each country only once.
3. The wiki describes the stakeholders of a certain topic, e.g. the stakeholders
regarding educational innovation at your institute. All stakeholders have their
own pages. Give them a short description and use links to other stakeholders
when appropriate.
4. The wiki describes the rooms of a building you know well (your house?). Each
room has its own page. The pages of rooms connected by doors are linked. Once
you have constructed this building, another person could try to te-engineer the
underlying map.
5. The wiki describes a 2D or 3D matrix. Each cell has its own page. Navigating is
possible through adjacent cells/pages in all directions.
• Design a wiki by making a drawing of all the pages involved and their interrelations.
• Take an empty page. Use little stickers (or draw rectangles) to represent wiki pages;
use pencil lines to represent page links.
• As an example you may try to design a wiki for the countries of Europe. Only
Neigbouring countries will be interconnected by hyperlinks. Source: Google Maps.

2-12-2008 28


Create a wiki
• Go to your own course and create the wiki you prepared before.
• Once you have filled in the initial wiki form and saved the sessions, the system creates
an empty wiki (one empty page only) for you.
• On a wiki page, you can create a new page by entering the title of that page between
square brackets. As soon as you have saved the current page, the system displays it
with the title of the new page in bold, followed by a clickable question mark. If you
click the question mark, the system creates the new page for you.
• On a wiki page, you can create a link to another page by entering the title of that page
between square brackets.

2-12-2008 29


15:45-16:00 - Short break
16:00-18:00 - Session-4
Implementation phase 1/2
Synopsis
The realisation phase ends with the creation of the master copy of the new course. Now it
is time to really organise the effective and efficient use of the course. It has to be
reproduced for use in other institutes and/or published for use by students. This phase
ends when the course passes acceptance tests by the client organisation, by the intended
users (staff) and by the organisational unit that will be responsible for the systems
management.
The success or failure of an online course depends heavily on information and
communication technology. In this phase the online course has to be transferred to the
organisation that is going to exploit it. This requires technical documentation, an
acceptance test and possibly training sessions.

Course testing

Procedure
Once a course is almost finished, it has to be tested in various ways. The system test looks
at the course as a technical product. The system test is followed by an acceptance test.
Then the course is tested from the point of view of future users.
Testing is more than looking at the computer screen and trying out a few options. Testing
is, or at least it should be, a systematic activity that has to be planned in advance,
executed according to the plan and well documented.
The test plan / test log form is a tool for testing. In fact it is a double form. The left part
is intended to specify the test plan: all activities that have to be carried out to test the
course as well as the expected results. The right part is intended to log the test results.
Each line in the test plan corresponds with the same line in the test log. The test log
indicates that the test has been executed and describes its results. Eventually follow-up
activities are necessary. They normally will be followed by a repetition of some of the
earlier tests.
• Fill in the following test form. Describe the activities needed to test your course.
Describe them in such a way that another person could execute the real testing.

2-12-2008 30


Test Plan / Test Log Form

2-12-2008 31


Exercise
• In the left column, Administration block, click Assign Roles.
• Now, assign the role of student to 2 other workshop participants.
• Other participants may assign the role of student in their courses to you. Look at the
Courses block in the left column of your course. It will show the courses you have
access to. Click on them and have a look.

Implementation phase 2/2
Scales

Background
Teachers can create new custom scales to be used in a course for any grading activities.
The name of the scale should be a phrase that identifies it clearly: this will appear in
scale- selection lists, as well as on context-sensitive help buttons.
The scale itself is defined by an ordered list of values, ranging from negative to positive,
separated by commas. For example: Disappointing, Not good enough, Average, Good, Very
good, Excellent!
Scales should also include a good description of what it means and how it is expected to be
used. This description will appear in help pages for teachers and students.
Finally, there may be one or more quot;Standardquot; scales defined on your site by the system
administrator. These will be available in all courses.

Exercise
• Specify a scale to be used for grading your students.
• Name of the scale:
• Values from negative to positive:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
• Explanation:

Review
• Which questions have not been answered until now?
•
•
•

2-12-2008 32


•
•
•
•

Evaluation & Follow-up
Evaluation
• Go to Section 4.
• Go to the Evaluation Forum and give your reply to the three postings there.

Follow-up
Moodle at Online Educa:
• Four different official Moodle partners (CV&A Consulting from Spain, eLeDia -
eLearning im Dialog from Germany, MediaTouch 2000 srl from Italy and Stoas Learning
from the Netherlands) are be exhibiting in Gardenlounge 2, E147 and E148. They will
have Moodle demonstrations all day.
• There are two Moodle sessions on Friday 5 December 2008 titled: Make Mine a Moodle!
(part 1 and part 2). The first part will focus on a couple of global implementations
(including Shell’s) and the second part will have more audience participation.
Moodle on the Internet
• Moodle international community at http://moodle.org: download the software, get
free support, access to documentation, register of Moodle sites all over the world.
Moodle books:
• Using Moodle; teaching with the popular open source course management system; 2nd
edition; Jason Cole and Helen Foster; O'Reilly Community Press, 2007.
• Moodle Administration; an administrator's guide to configuring, securing, customizing,
and extending Moodle; Alex Büchner; PACKT Publishing, 2008.
• and more
Moodle in Dutch speaking countries:
• Ned-Moove (www.ned-moove.nl) stands for Nederlandstalige Moodle Vereniging, the
Dutch Moodle Association with members and activities in The Netherlands,
Belgium/Flandres and Suriname (South America).

2-12-2008 33

Moodle Introduction - Develop Your Own Online Course Today.

Recommandé

Recommandé

Contenu connexe

Similaire à Moodle Introduction - Develop Your Own Online Course Today.

Similaire à Moodle Introduction - Develop Your Own Online Course Today. (20)

Plus de Pieter van der Hijden

Plus de Pieter van der Hijden (20)

Dernier

Dernier (20)

Moodle Introduction - Develop Your Own Online Course Today.