Module 3: moodle

Since I already use moodle for my in-person classes this module was fairly easy for me to complete, but I find setting things up in moodle can be kind of tedious. It's easy for my mind to drift and forget what I'm trying to do. I may be especially moodled-out since I spent a lot of time this week setting up moodle courses for my in-person spring classes.

I wonder if there are any centralized places faculty share innovative ways they are using these moodle tools to accomplish different things. And maybe short cuts to building courses faster. I feel like there's a lot of buttons to push to do anything in moodle, it's really frustrating.

One way I have found Moodle really useful in my in-person courses that I'll share here is using the "choice" feature. I set it up to help students sign up for presentation days. I like it because students have equal access to the sign-up and they were able to double-check what they had signed up for anytime. Before I used moodle for this, I used a paper sign-up sheet which meant I always had access to the sheet but students didn't. With the moodle choice, I can also set it up so they can switch if there is space available, so if students make a mistake and their desired date is still open, they can swap. A downside is by putting the sign-up online instead of during class time, some students just won't do it. I solve this by informing them of their speech date, and this hasn't been a problem for me so far, but in another situation it might.

Week 2: Tools

I had a harder time than I expected completing the technology activities I've done so far for this week. The problem wasn't so much the new tools -- I'm used to a learning curve and having patience with myself figuring out something new. The problem was my materials for the F2F course I planned to use were so oriented toward an in-person classroom, many of them needed to be completely redone before they were appropriate for a screencast format. This was funny because the activities in my class are fairly easy to reproduce online -- I often do something like review the main points, bring up a few examples and ask students to discuss. This would lend itself well to a brief screencast or two and then one or two discussion boards. But since the questions for discussion and interaction were so integrated in my presentation, I needed to look at several lessons before I found one that would work. Maybe I would be wise to think of these tasks as more discrete F2F as well...

I also realized, as I returned to and referenced material from class, that I don't know how to "keep my notes" in an online class in the way I do for a F2F course. How do we encourage students to keep records of their thoughts and work that will help them to study and might come in handy for future reference? I'm inclined to suggest that paper-pencil notetaking is still a valuable task for online work, and a folder of resources wouldn't be inappropriate, but perhaps I lack imagination.

I'll also mention my increased awareness of questions of time when creating these products. I find myself hesitating when I try lecturing via screencast or podcast to disclose some stories I might tell in a classroom, because the audience is so uncertain, and I want to make something I can re-use years down the line. This means my attempts at timeliness might be more appropriate in other formats, unless I want to commit to making new audio resources regularly. I also wonder about the practicality of doing too much work in an audio format when I might have to create transcripts for accessibility, which sounds like a lot of work! Maybe better to go from a typed manuscript to a podcast? I see the benefits and drawbacks of each direction.

Thoughts on community and online vs f2f

In general, one struggle I have is combining my slap-dash incomplete knowledge of pedagogy with my knowledge of how to use online tools to build relationships. As I learned all too well in my first years in grad school, understanding material and being good at explaining it isn’t all there is to being a good teacher. The same is true with my online experience: I can make a blog or combine text, images and video to get a point across. I have made friends and had intellectual discussions online successfully. But doing those things in voluntary spaces and doing them as a college instructor are not the same. What does it mean to “show up and teach” online?

One big difference I noticed came up in several of the resources in this module is that the work of designing course activities must occur before the semester begins, so the hour or so (depending on the course and my experience teaching it) preparing before a class meeting looking for good examples and thinking about how to make that 50 or 80 min worthwhile is work that will already be done in an online course. Instead, online instructors spend a lot of their time interacting with students in discussion boards and responding to questions and providing feedback. I suppose those are the things I do in that classroom time, but maybe in a more concentrated way.

Thinking about how to do online instruction well makes me also think about other contexts where I’ve learned and built relationships online. I don't know that I have much to add to what the resources provided suggest. Frequent interaction in a place where you feel safe to share your ideas and build on others is important. I know as a professor, just like as a blogger, I can do something to provide safe spaces for conversations and topics that students want to weigh in on so they can build up to more complex or difficult material later in the semester. I also wonder, when we think about community, how as an instructor I can encourage the kind of responses I want and discourage inappropriate responses subtly. As a blog owner, if I don't like somebody's tone, I'm fine with just deleting the comment and not worrying about the poster or his/her motivation. As an instructor, I need to work harder to maintain the relationship with the student and help him or her see what I am looking for. I'll also need to find ways to encourage a variety of folks to contribute instead of catering to an audience that is more self-selected.