NetSpot presentation at ascilite 2010 conference.

1. Moving
forward
with Moodle
Mark Drechsler
Senior Consultant, NetSpot Pty Ltd

2. Why this presentation?
Anecdotally – most Moodle courses use
only a fraction of the available features.
Why?

3. Method
• Series of questions given to six unis
• Five using Moodle at an enterprise
level
• One using Moodle for a trial of around
¼ of its students

4. Caveats
• Not intended as a rigorous analysis
• Small attempt to gain perspectives
from those who have already made
the move to Moodle

5. Moodle usage?
How many Moodle courses
in your University
would be classified as
little more than
document repositories
and drop box holders?
Image cc from http://www.flickr.com/photos/piet_musterd/

6. Responses … probably
70% - 80%
A majority
of courses…
Less
than 50%
…most of
our sites... About 10% -
if that.

7. Why so… high?
“…staff adopt LMS features along a
continuum beginning with … content
dissemination and … moving towards …
discussion…”

8. Why so… low?
“… because the pilot participants self-
selected based on their course teaching
requirements”

9. Why so… low?
“…we introduced a set of minimum
standards…”
Image cc via http://www.flickr.com/photos/iliahi/408971482/

10. What things have helped
support the change?

11. “… strong culture of academic
support for pedagogic
improvement”

12. … teaching staff were
forced to redesign their
online courses and took
the opportunity to
develop new
approaches…
Image cc via http://www.flickr.com/photos/fivesilver/134085696/

13. “… reasons are not related to the
product but the training and
process changes associated with
the move…”

14. “introduction
of peer review
of courses…”

15. “…the passion and drive of the
central/local Moodle support teams
means that attention is paid to current
research, methods and best-practice.”

16. “… possible it was the change itself,
not necessarily the change to Moodle
specifically that was responsible…” (for
improvements)

17. “…vast community at moodle.org…”

18. But has Moodle helped?
• All six said yes, Moodle had helped
educators in their University improve
their teaching practice.
• One did say „yes and no‟.

19. What part has
Moodle played in
supporting positive
transformation?

20. Supporting collaboration
“… allows them to do more of what they want
to do, particularly with respect to
community building & collaboration…”
“… involving students more in doing the work
(wiki, forum, database) rather than the
lecturer providing more…”

21. Power tools
“… the database tool has been a huge
bonus…”
“… some tools such as databases & wikis have
been invaluable (in a small number of
cases) to inspiring collaboration &
engagement…”

22. “… flexibility in role and permissions
handling…”
“… profile feature has encouraged and
engaged students (and thus lecturers) in
social networking…”

23. What were
the biggest
challenges in
moving to
Moodle?
Image cc via http://flickr.com/photos/craigallenphotography/4104550682/

24. “…we saw a number
of staff attempting to
implement Blackboard
like interfaces to their
courses in Moodle…”
Image cc via http://www.flickr.com/photos/epublicist/3546059144/

25. “Workload!”
“…time and effort to actively engage
with your course, site and content can
be a significant effort…”
“…shortage of time…”
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26. “… IT department had little to no
appreciation of the teaching
academic's context and tried to
implement Moodle in the same way
they would any other IT system…”

27. “… challenge is how to use the
functionality appropriately for the best
pedagogic outcome.”

28. “… working with
or (effectively)
against
topics/weeks
structure…”

29. “„Fixing‟ something that you‟ve been
using for years… can be confronting”

30. What Moodle things were „big
winners‟ with academic staff?
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31. Databases…
…as a formative student group peer
review tool.
…as a student viewable video
submission tool.
…as an exhibition tool.

33. Blogs in Moodle (BIM)
• Plugin developed by David Jones of
CQU - blog aggregator/assessor
• Now being used in other Universities –
great example of collaboration in the
developer community!

34. Meta Courses
“…allows students to be aggregated
into program based
communities…”

35. Subject A Subject B Subject C
Moodle Course Moodle Course Moodle Course
Enrolments automatically flow into…
Metacourse:
- Collaboration
- Announcements
- Support

36. One telling comment:
“… requires
less work to
do the
minimum”
Image cc via http://www.flickr.com/photos/spackletoe/90811910/

37. Summing up?
Moodle will not be a magic wand for
improving teaching practice without
suitable resourcing for support and good
change management in place

38. Over time, many will experience:
- Initial shock – why!?
- Replication – how do I…?
- Extension – maybe I could…?
- Collaboration – why don‟t we…?

39. If part of a broader change strategy
then Moodle has appeared to:
• Lower the work for simple courses; and
• Provide more flexible tools for advanced
teaching requirements.