Reading William Rice’s book prompted me to ponder on how we use the Lesson module in Moodle at Our Lady’s. I steered clear of it for a long time, finding the layout complex (which it is) and unable to see how you could deliver a ‘lesson’ without a teacher at the front of the class. I stand by the former concern -in fact, if you’re going to create a Lesson, this is one of the rare times when I would advise people actually to use pen and paper to plan it  before logging into Moodle. On the second concern, however, I was wrong. If the nature of your subject suits it, a Moodle lesson is ideal for independent learning, perfect for introducing a new topic with no teacher present. A lesson is basically a set of linking pages which students can navigate through according to how they want to learn or where they want to progress. The challenge for the teacher planning the lesson is to think of all possible alternatives and provide links to them – but, with practice, it can be achieved. I’ve used this module  in ICT as a Step-by-Step walk through of a new skill – for example; a student wants to learn how to use Movie Maker. The options are : do you know where to find it on the network? If the student hits yes – they move on; if not, they are directed to the page showing them how to locate and open it up. Different learning styles? Include them in your lesson! When the student has loaded up Movie Maker they are asked if they know how to import photos – and if they choose the ‘no’ option, they are then given the choices of watching a how to  movie in Captivate, reading the instructions on screen or downloading to print off. If I’d had time I’d have made a podcast too, for aural learners. And it is not just our students who can benefit from the lesson module.I’ve used a similar ‘walk through’ with teachers wishing to use the free HotPotatoes software that can be used in Moodle to generate self-marking activities. A couple of pages in, the teacher is asked: would you like to make a crossword/multi-choice/drag and drop? When they’ve made their choice, once again they can select how best they would like to learn this , from a variety of options. You can grade lessons, provide pupils with a score at the end, but of course the types I have described don’t need grading; it’s enough just to reach the final page. (within the Moodle set up they’re known as ‘practice’ lessons) However, you can use the grading system to good effect by creating Decision Making Exercises, useful in many subjects such as RE, Citizenship, history and – in the following example – geography. You set up a scenario – I used a real life flood in the north of England. You get the pupil to role play; give them various courses of action and, according to which decision they make, give them  points – or take points away for a bad move. I added hyperlinks and images to the real life flood in order to show the consequences of their choices. There are other ways to achieve what I have discussed: there is a program called Quandary enabling you to make these ‘action mazes’ (but it’s not yet SCORM compliant)  and you can make linking pages in PowerPoint or Adobe Captivate – but we are talking Moodle and the Lesson is a useful one!

I’ve downloaded this from PacktPub; purports to be a book full of ideas for using Moodle effectively in learning and teaching. It’s by William Rice    who blogs on moodle.org; it’s a 5.6MB download, 193 pages, divided into 10 chapters covering the principal Moodle activities. It’s up to date, as he deals with Moodle 1.9 which we don’t yet have from CLEO. I must confess the first few chapters covering forums/chat/quiz/lesson/choice didn’t particularly grab me but that’s because at Our Lady’s we’ve been making innovative use of these for a while now, but I do like the way he not only suggests teaching ideas but also explains how to set up each activity, with screenshots and examples.  So the book is not just  how to moodle – it’s how to moodle effectively. The later chapters on wikis, glossaries and workshops I found more useful as he really highlights here the interactivity of  Moodle  and its value in student collaboration . Apparently there’s a learning pyramid that says students only retain 5% of what they’re told, 10% of what they read but 50% of what they discuss. Where a forum facilitates discussions between students and teachers,  and a collective wiki enables whole classes to combine their learning, he suggests setting up individual student wikis for them to edit as they progress and for the teacher to comment on (engaging in a Socratic Dialogue, apparently!) and also suggests making the Glossary more than just a bank of words set up by the teacher. Students could add their own words which they feel might help classmates; classmates could rate them on how helpful the definitions are; they could (providing the teacher alters the settings to make them invisible to others) equally input possible test/plenary questions at the end of a topic, which the teacher could then pool together as an assessment. On the subject of assessment I particularly liked the chapter on workshops. If all you want is for students to upload their work, you might as well use the assignment module. According to the Learning Pyramid, teaching others gives a  90% retention rate – so if you want them to view, assess and rate each others work -and tick that ‘peer assessment’ box – then a workshop is ideal.  I would recommend the book even if you have used some of the features he discusses, as there is bound to be something there you might not have thought of. I almost wish I’d bought the paper version now – to ‘have and to hold!’