Getting ready to Moodle

We will start the conversion of 5% of our courses (~25 in ITEE) to Moodle very shortly - ready for teaching in Study period 2 2010 [the final decision on which courses these will be in our Division is in the hands of the Deans T&L - Brenton].

To start you thinking about Moodle and its functionality - here is a movie (2 min 45) that explains the bits of Moodle using lego.



There are also the Using Moodle book (this is what I used to build my first moodle course).

I am really impressed with the increased awareness of social presence within the Moodle environment that I am currently trialling with students. You know who the particpants are, when they are online, where they have been, where the unread discussion forums are - it really feels alive. I am hopeful that this change to Moodle will convince more teachers to use the online environment as a way to engage students in their learning.

YouTube lectures

Did you see this article about a UNSW academic using YouTube as his content provider?
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2009/03/04/1235842462189.html



Pity it doesn't really share what the students think of it - but it does emphasize the benefit of creating short pieces of content for the teachers - its re-usability - in this case, for high school students.

I remember a few years ago the sound of dropping jaws world wide when MIT announced that it was going to put all of its content freely available online - as it was the not the content that was the mark of the MIT experience, it was the learning activities that really made the difference. It is what the student does that is important.

Besides YouTube, iTunesU also provides good systems for distributing and organising content (audio and video) - see promotional video here. We need to factor this mobile dimension of learning into our thinking about delivery options.