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Moodle for Language Teaching

November 11, 2009 by Roy Johnson

online language-learning activities using Moodle

I have been critical of some of these Moodle guides in the past. That’s because most of them are not much more than an explanation of Moodle’s individual features, but no suggestions about how they might be used to create dynamic eLearning courses, exploiting the interactivity that Moodle offers. Moodle for Language Teaching is far more useful, because it approaches these issues the other way round. It starts with the premise of online learning design, then shows how it can be done using Moodle.

Moodle 1.9 for Language TeachingJeff Stanford very sensibly begins by explaining the structure of a course in Moodle, and how its parts relate to each other. It’s important if you haven’t used Moodle before to understand the difference between course content and the extras that can be attached via blocks and add-on modules. [You also need to get used to the names of all these features.] All this will help you to conceptualise your course design, and it explains clever supplements such as Mobile Quiz which allows the downloading of quiz questions onto mobile phones.

Stanford also explains how to choose all the important settings for a course – the various permissions, users, course timetable, and what will be shown to students in the way of grades, results, and feedback. All of these options are amazingly detailed and customisable from within Moodle – so long as you know your way around the various settings.

All of his explanations are offered in a direct ‘Here’s how to do it’ manner, with screenshots showing you what to expect and copious lists of free software to help you achieve what you’re looking for. But be warned! Take anything new one step at a time, and don’t expect to create a richly interactive multimedia course in just a few days. Or – if you are new to Moodle – even a few weeks.

He explains how to create quizzes – and here’s an extra tip from someone who did this the hard way. You should learn how to categorise and store your quiz questions groups, so that you can re-use them in different combinations. This will save you the laborious effort of re-keying questions and their multiple possible answers.

The book understandably uses language learning as its pedagogic objective, but in fact almost all of the features of Moodle discussed could be used for creating courses in other subjects. For instance the glossary building activity to create lists of key terms and a ‘word a day’ feature; the Chat module, which acts in the same way as other Instant Messaging systems; or the ‘Hot Potatoes’ quiz-making module.

It’s assumed that the second language being taught is English, so this makes both the ideas and the examples useful for teachers of English, communication skills, or other language-oriented courses.

Many of the stages of course creation involve entering small items of information into a data base using forms. There is quite a conceptual gap between the data entry process and what appears on screen as the final result to a user. You should expect to find this quite arduous at first, but then straightforward once you’ve done it a few times.

There are lots of different types of quizzes possible – missing words, multiple choice questions, matching words, or matching pictures to text – and you can also shuffle questions so that no two people see them in the same order (which I can assure you helps to minimize copying by students using adjacent screens).

For a language course he naturally explains the use of audio and video files to enhance learning. There’s a free add-on module called NanoGong which can be used in conjunction with a quiz to produce vocabulary, pronunciation, intonation, and word stress exercises. You can also make short podcasts or add dictation exercises to which students reply in writing.

There are any number of opportunities to allow students to interact with each other, compare notes, see each other’s blog entries, rate discussion contributions, swap messages via email and the forum, and comment on each other’s work. But here’s another tip from hard won experience. Before you design a course, make sure how much time the tutor (even if that is you) can spend monitoring all this activity and participation in group work. Many institutions see online learning as a way of saving the expense of tutor time, rather than enhancing the student’s learning experience.

Writing activities are relatively straightforward. Students enter text and save their efforts as a journal, a blog, their profile, or as an assignment. You’ll be lucky if they do just one of these. But they do like feedback on any work submitted – so the book quite rightly ends with a section explaining the huge variety of assessment and grading systems that are available in Moodle.

In fact there is so much guidance and support available that it won’t all fit in this (fairly long) book. So two additional chapters have been placed on the publisher’s web site. These cover making your Moodle course materials look nice on screen, and preparing your students to use Moodle.

I’ve a feeling that the publishers Packt have learned from feedback on their earlier Moodle guides, and have wisely gone down the road of putting the designer’s needs first. Their formula works well here, and this guide for me is a better manual for designing courses than all the others currently available. We’ve been designing customized Moodle courses at www.texman.net for the last few years now, and having a guide like this at the outset would have flattened what at times was a painfully steep learning curve.

Moodle for Language Teaching   Buy the book at Amazon UK

Moodle for Language Teaching   Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2009


Jeff Stanford, Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching, Birmingham: Packt, 2009, pp.505, ISBN: 1847196241


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Filed Under: CMS, Online Learning, Open Sources Tagged With: Course design, Education, Moodle, Online learning, Open Sources, VLE

Online Course Design – a bibliography

October 30, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Online Course Design  Laurel Alexander, Education & Training on the Internet: An essential source for students, teachers and education providers, Plymouth: Internet Handbooks, 2000, pp. 192, IBSN 1840253460. Guide to online resources for students and tutors. Exstensive listings of online courses in UK and abroad.

Online Course Design  Tom Boyle, Design for Multimedia Learning, London: Prentice Hall, 1997, pp.240, ISBN 0132422158. Software and media for creating learning programs. Slightly dated now, but sound on basic principles.

Online Course Design  Stephanie Browner, Stephen Pulsford, and Richard Sears, Literature and the Internet: A Guide for Students, Teachers, and Scholars, London/New York: Garland, 2000, pp.191, ISBN 0815334532. Popular guide to resources, techniques, and issues for literary studies classes.

Online Course Design  Alan Clarke, Designing Computer-Based Learning Materials, London: Gower, 2001, pp.196, ISBN 0566083205. Practical design principles – from conception to evaluation.

Online Course Design  Jason Cole & Helen Foster, Using Moodle, Sebastopol: O’Reilly, (second edition) 2007, pp.266, ISBN 059652918X. Clear and straighforward guide to course design using the open source virtual learning environment Moodle.

Online Course Design  Julia Duggleby, How to be an Online Tutor, Hampshire: Gower, 2000, pp.158, ISBN: 0566082470. Simple guidance notes for online tutors and course authors. Suitable for those working on community-based education.

Online Course Design  D. R. Garrison and Terry Anderson, E-Learning in the 21st Century: A Framework for Research and Practice, London: Routledge, 2003, pp.167, ISBN 0415263468. Course design – from planning and authorship, through to evaluation and assessment. Largely theoretical.

Online Course Design Duncan Grey, The Internet in School, London: Cassell, 1999, pp.155, ISBN: 0304705314. Guide to equipment, policies, and resources for teachers.

Online Course Design  Irene Hammerich and Claire Harrison, Developing Online Content: the Principles of Writing and Editing for the Web, New York: John Wiley, 2002, pp.384, ISBN 0471146110. The principles of writing and editing for the Web.

Online Course Design Reza Hazemi, Stephen Hailes, and Steve Wilbur (eds) The Digital University: Reinventing the Academy, London: Springer Verlag, 1998, pp.307, ISBN 1852330031. Academic essays on the e-Learning revolution.

Online Course Design   Silvina P. Hillar, Moodle 1.9 English Teacher’s Cookbook, Birmingham: Pakt Publishing, 2010, pp.207, ISBN: 1849510881

horton-2

Online Course Design  William K. Horton, Designing Web-Based Training : How to Teach Anyone Anything Anywhere Anytime, John Wiley & Sons, 2000, pp.640, ISBN: 047135614X. Best-selling guide to all aspects of instructional design and writing for web-based training materials. Highly recommended.

Online Course Design  Bob Hughes, Dust or Magic: Secrets of Successful Multimedia Design, London: Addison-Wesley, 2000, pp.264, ISBN 0201360713. Amusing and thought-provoking study of working on multimedia projects – from web design to CD-ROM and interactive video.

Online Course Design  William W. Lee and Diana L. Owens, Multimedia-Based Instructional Design, San Fransisco (CA): Jossey-Bass, 2000, pp.357, ISBN 0787951595.

Online Course Design  Roger Lewis and Quentin Whitlock, How to Plan and Manage an E-learning Programme, London: Gower,2003,pp.185,ISBN 0566084244. Practical step-by-step guide to planning, designing, and managing online learning courses – will apeal in particular to managers and administrators.

Online Course Design  Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton, Web Style Guide, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999, pp.164, ISBN: 0300076754. Excellent web site design guide. Originally written for medical students at Yale. Concentrates on design principles and navigation.

Online Course DesignMarguerita McVay Lynch, The Online Educator: A guide to creating the virtual classroom, New York/London: Routledge, 2002, pp.170, ISBN: 0415244226. Complete guide to designing and teaching online courses. Recommended.

Online Course Design  Robin Mason and Frank Rennie, eLearning: the key concepts, London: Routledge, 2006, pp.158, ISBN 0415373077

Online Course Design  Jakob Nielsen, Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity, Indiananapolis (Ind): New Riders, 2000, pp.420, ISBN: 156205810X. Nielsen puts speed and simplicity of access above all else in this tutorial on Web site design which pulls no punches. Fully illustrated with good and bad examples. Recommended.

Online Course Design  Jakob Nielsen and Marie Tahir, Homepage Usability: 50 websites deconstructed, Indiananapolis, (Ind): New Riders, 2002, pp.315, ISBN: 073571102X. Neilsen shows the strengths and weaknesses of famous web sites – and offers his own makeovers of their home pages.

Online Course Design  Jonathan and Lisa Price, Hot Text: Web Writing that Works, Indianapolis (IN): New Riders, 2002, pp.507, ISBN 0735711518. Professional-level manual on how to write, structure, and edit information for the Web. Highly recommended.

Online Course Design  Roy Rada, Understanding Virtual Universities, Bristol: Intellect, 2001, pp.122, ISBN 1841500526. Course design and construction for online learning.

Online Course Design  William H. Rice IV, Moodle Teaching Techniques, Birmingham UK: Pakt, 2007, pp.172, ISBN 184719284X

Online Course Design  William H. Rice, Moodle: E-Learning Course Development, Packt Publishing: Birmingham, 2006, pp.236, ISBN 1904811299.

Online Course Design  William H. Rice, Moodle 1.9 Teaching Techniques, Packt Publishing: Birmingham, 2010, pp.200, ISBN 1904811657.

Online Course Design  Karen Schriver, Dynamics in Document Design, New York (NY): John Wiley and Sons, 1997, ISBN: 0471306363. Wide-ranging academic and practical study in design theory and applications – with arguments for professionalism in design.

Online Course Design  Patti Shank (ed) the Online Learning idea book, San Francisco: John Wiley, 2007, pp.354, ISBN 0787981680

Online Course Design Jeff Stanford, Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching, Birmingham: Packt, 2009, pp.505, ISBN 1847196241

Online Course Design  John Whalley, Theresa Welch, Lee Williamson, E-Learning in FE, London: Continuum, 2006, pp.118, ISBN 0826488625

© Roy Johnson 2009


Filed Under: How-to guides Tagged With: Bibliographies, Course design, Education, Online learning

Understanding Virtual Universities

July 15, 2009 by Roy Johnson

course design and construction for online learning

Teachers in higher education are under increasing pressure to develop novel methods of learning, to understand the latest developments in IT, and to make their courses available on line. The purpose of Understanding Virtual Universities is to help them gain an overview of what is involved. Roy Rada is very good at giving the overall picture – explaining the architecture of a university-wide learning program. He also describes in detail the courseware production cycle, and the role that individuals play in the process. He arranges his contents into four parts: virtual learning in relation to the student, the teacher, the administrator, and society in general. He explains the benefits of group and collaborative learning.

Understanding Virtual UniversitiesThis is undoubtedly fine in theory, but I sometimes felt that he didn’t take much account of real practice. My own experience suggests that students are often reluctant to engage in collaborative projects – particularly with people they hardly know. The most convincing example he describes is the group hypertext project on Tennyson’s In Memoriam – the long Victorian poem divided into sections to which are linked related documents, commentary, and criticism. This leaves behind a project which can still be accessed at the University of Virginia.

The experiments on which he reports make it quite clear that IT is most effective when it is combined with other, mixed learning activities in what he calls ‘studio’ classes. In this respect, I was rather surprised that he doesn’t cover any of the better-known Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) such as WebCT, Blackboard, and Learnwise.

For any teachers thinking of developing such courseware there are some detailed reports on the testing and results achieved – in courses ranging from Geography to ‘Design and Analysis of Algorithms.’ There’s a chapter on the history of teaching methods which I feared might be boring but which offered a fascinating survey, ranging from ancient Egypt to Web-based archives in the modern university.

He also includes a consideration of which subjects are best served by online courses – and he even looks the funding and cost-benefits of online learning, as well as the consequences of pursuing these innovations at the same time as maintaining quality assurance.

This leads into a consideration of the IT systems educational organisations need to have in place to deal with student records, finance, and administration. He then explores the partnerships and collaborative schemes between education and businesses which are providing courses for employees in the workplace. This also includes a consideration of revenue opportunities in the form of consultancies, franchises, and specialist publishing.

His range is wide, and he is very well informed. If there’s a weakness it’s that he flits around from one topic to another rather quickly, never exploring any issue in depth. But that’s also the strength of the book, because he cover all aspects of running Web-based learning in an institution. Many people might have a deep knowledge of one aspect of Web-based learning, but few people have an overview.

© Roy Johnson 2002

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US


Roy Rada, Understanding Virtual Universities, Bristol: Intellect, 2001, pp.122, ISBN: 1841500526


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Filed Under: Online Learning Tagged With: Course design, Education, eLearning, Online learning, Technology, Understanding Virtual Universities

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