MoodleMoot

Panel Discussions and Key Messages

Overview• Dublin Feb 18 – 21st

• Day 1: Workshops• Day 2 and 3: Panels,

presentations and networking

• Day 4: Hackfest

Martin Dougiamas (founder of Moodle) present in person rather that Skype!

Future of Online Learning

• Panel outlined their views followed by views from the floor

Martin Dougiamas• The use of social media can only be considered as

surface learning. It doesn't provide the deeper learning required.

• Still a place for formal and certificated learning (whether online or face to face).

• Computer aided learning has the possibility to learn more & be more efficient.

• “Before MOOCs there were books!”

Future of online

learning

Smith - Hibernian College

• We want credentials and to be part of a community.

Future of online

learning

Ross McKenzie

• Just in time learning. • A lot of activity of traditional online learning

and MOOCs. • The future is in assessment:– Monitoring and tracking. – Accrediting what students are doing.

Future of online

learning

Michelle Moore

• Assessment• Automation• Adapting to learners needs (based on

performance and / or interest).

Future of online

learning

Any thoughts from this room?

Future of online

learning

Martin Dougiamas

FuturesMain Presentation

80% of teachers use 20% of features

(broad guess)

Future of MoodleHQ focus • Core development (usability, feedback, performance). • Plugins. • Community.

Developments for 2.5 / 2.6• New core themes• Course listings redesigned• Assignments (better GUI, offline on mobile)• Reviewing forum and wiki from OU.

• New app based plugins, can download and install straight from Moodle plugins site. Translation for plugins.

Future of Moodle

Future of Moodle according to Martin• Open yet private• Scales & extends easily • Capable toolset for local implementation,

research• Contributes to community and further

development

Other Key Themes from Event

• Badges• Theming (using bootstrap)• Efficiencies– Apprentices and ambassadors for Moodle

development– MUGs for shared development and collaboration

– Fishbowl activity

Theming

• Tools used to check current use including (ClickHeat for heatmaps and Piwik for analytics).

• Dashboards seem popular• Bootstrap as base

Feedback from sessions attended

Becky

Social Constructivism and Moodle

• Michelle Moore• Martins 5 laws (on Moodle.org).

• All of us are potential teachers as well as learners - in a true collaborative environment we are both

• We learn particularly well from the act of creating or expressing something for others to see

• We learn a lot by just observing the activity of our peers• By understanding the contexts of others, we can teach in

a more transformational way (constructivism)• A learning environment needs to be flexible and

adaptable, so that it can quickly respond to the needs of the participants within it

Social Constructivism and Moodle• 'Construct knowledge by people working together

(collaborative) rather than just be given the information'.

• A learning environment that adapts and responds to the needs of the students.

• Get the students to do the work (eg: glossaries, wikis)– Students were learning about using Moodle and had to

pick one tool to learn about and then they input that into a glossary and then students rated them.

– Workshop tool for peer review of the content.

• With social constructivism the students presenting the information helps to develop understanding.

10 useful things a teacher can do with roles

• Give students forum moderator rights• Students approve database & glossary entries• Students to grade assignments (instead of using workshop)

to do this. – Assign students to non-editing teacher roles in the activity.

• Use roles to hide blocks so that only a specific users see it (use to create teacher / student help block).– edit block settings and remove user view

• Enabling students to create questions. Switch on for one day.

• Calendar entries editor.• Remove some privileges on Moodle (custom naughty

student role!)

Can usability testing make your Moodle better? (City College London)

• Did user testing to get people think out loud when using Moodle to look at developments.

• Looked at theming, my Moodle, course format. • Created clickable prototype using Azure.com based on

improvement ideas and then did user testing again.• Designed a course format with a dashboard at the top

for consistency and showed summary information (eg: assignment updates, forum updates).

• Need plenty of time to do it. • Find scope and stick to it. • Decide what you are prepared to change and what not

to change.

Happy New Year with Moodle• End of term / year Gradebook harvesting. • Do as process. Can it be centralised?• No set 'end of year' which could mean needing to

harvest data at different times.• Build in some kind of audit.• Need go consider 'rollback' process• Include an audit trail.

• My notes: Could we make a teacher only sticky block at that time of year for staff to prep course for next academic year (request full archive, reset manually, harvest Gradebook. Include instructions.

Moodle and Gaming

• Lessons and conditional activities• Like choose your own adventure books

Lessons

• For decision making activities

Blogs about the event

• Carol Hampton

• MoodleFairy (Mary Cooch)

• Becky Barrington

Twitter #mootie13 (CSV archive)