Shark introduction Morphology and its behaviour characteristics
Management report
1. Chinese Language School Digitization
IT6930
University of Colorado Denver
Ming Yuan Chen
March 2011
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2. Overview and background
When I began to search for an internship, I knew it is very hard to find one
in my field, especially for someone who has no experience. At the end, I
decided to work with the Colorado Chinese Language School. After contacting
the principal, he offered me an internship opportunity. We mostly contacted
each other by mail and scheduled meetings when necessary.
CCLS, the Colorado Chinese Language Schools, is a non-profit school
founded in 1974. It was established by educators and parents, primarily for
teaching children how to listen, speak, read and write Chinese, also
emphasizing Chinese culture and extracurricular activities. The students’ age
ranges from 5 to adult and the languages classes are categorized by Mandarin
speaking, and non-Mandarin speaking. There are 13 teachers in CCLS and
eight of them are for language classes. As most classes focus on a basic level,
teachers use traditional methods for their teaching. PowerPoint and
Voicethread are the only technologies they used for their teaching. Most
teachers are mothers and have other jobs, and they only teach Mandarin on
the weekend.
In my discussions with the principal, he hoped that their teaching could
better integrate technologies. Their concerns were that they don’t know which
technologies they could use and how to take their first step. The principal also
hoped they could have a private environment for their students to post class
outlines online and have an online grade system. As in Taiwan, a traditional
Mandarin-speaking country, the ministry of Education strives to develop
digitalization of learning resources. Most schools use Moodle to improve
teaching quality. I told the principal the trends, and he agreed to use Moodle
and hoped that Moodle can improve their teaching quality.
As CCLS is a relatively small school, I began my analysis immediately. I
explained the differences between Edu2.0 and Moodle to the principal,
showing him the report, Moodle vs. Edu2.0, that I created with other members
(Bruce, Ming-Yuan, Linda, Ellen, 2010). Then I offered him a proposal
including purposes, learning objectives, evaluations, short-term goals, and
long-term goals. I thought that what I did was quite thoughtful; however, things
were not going well at the end. I sent the proposal to the principal and
thereafter began to design and prepare the teaching materials and
presentation for CCLS. After I met the principal and explained how Moodle
could help their teachers and their school, the principal found that there were
some problems, and that the project might not go as well as planned.
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3. The principal restated a big picture of what he wanted, and we discussed
the content more specifically. I redesigned the proposal and hoped that I could
try my best to help CCLS. Because of the time limit, I did not finish this project
as I expected. I definitely would love to help CCLS finish the project in the
future, yet this report describes the process and the reasons why I failed.
Project Objectives
After my project was set, I began to set up my objectives for my learners. This
project is based on the ADDIE model.
Analysis Phase
This is the first time the CCLS has tried to change their whole system and try to
use new technologies to improve their teaching, so there is no former
experience as my reference.
At the beginning, since the teachers have no strong background knowledge
about information technologies, I need to make certain that teachers know why
we want to do this. As a result, my first plan is to talk about the importance and
the value of digitalizing teaching. Then, I needed to make teachers familiar
with Moodle and help them know how to guide their students to use Moodle.
The third plan I wanted to do was to help teachers communicate on Moodle.
My final plan was to help teachers create digital materials. After that, I planned
to evaluate how the materials work and what else can be improved. Because
there are only 13 teachers teaching in language classes, I assumes I would
use three hours or longer to teach them face to face.
Design and Development
My design begins with the proposal as below.
Class Digitalization
The Purpose Unlike the tradition teaching methods, digitalization is a
student-based teaching method. That is to say, the
teaching designs will include interactive learning,
collaborative learning, social net working, and education
developing (Wen-Yi Xing, 2009).
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4. Interactive learning: For example, create a podcast for
students and allow students process the materials online
and have feedback and communications with their
classmates in Moodle. Also, teachers can present videos
in Moodle which allow students to interact and learn from
each other.
Collaborative Learning: Activities between students
and students allow them to learn from each other which
are very helpful.
Social Net Working: Moodle
Education development: Offer students an optional
reading materials and optional discussion area so that
gifted students can achieve their learning desire.
The focal point of class digitalization is not technology but
how we use technology to help our teaching.
The Value It is very important to let teachers know the value of
using technology for their teaching. I will show them the
real successful cases of using Moodle from other
schools.
Short term 1. Teachers will know how to use Moodle.
goal 2. Teachers will know how to communicate in Moodle.
3. Teachers will know how to input their teaching
materials and teach students how to use Moodle.
4. Teachers will know how to use different technologies
to create their teaching materials.
5. Two teachers will use Moodle to assist teaching for
trials.
Long term goal 1. Build up an online community.
2. All teachers can use Moodle to assist their teaching.
Materials Podcasts: Create podcast as an assignment or a
digitalization preview before next class. Teachers can use tool
such as VoiceThread or Voki.
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5. Note digitalization：Students don’t need to spend
too much time on writing notes. Teachers can offer
students PowerPoint or digital note by using Scrid,
or Calameo.
Animated materials：Share animations or digital
stories to strengthen students’ memory.
Online discussion：Offer students a forum for
interactions or talk in Mandarin by recording what
they said. Or, students can create Mandarin
conversations together.
Online Quiz：Linking online quizzes and
assignments are good for students to practice.
According to the report (Scott T. C., Robin W. T.,
Mark B. S., 2007), online test is an effective way to
help students practice because when students try to
finish their quizzes, they usually will use reading
materials rather than their memory. The goals of
online quizzes are not on students’ grade but
students’ involvement. Teachers can easily know
which parts need to be emphasized according to
students’ mistakes.
Sharing Teachers can share their materials with other
Materials teachers. Also they can embed their materials in
Moodle for students. In Moodle, teachers can have
privacy to prevent their teaching materials from
being stolen by others.
Evaluation A good digital materials design need to be
continuous improved so that the materials can
achieve better results. That is to say, the materials
designed for class A may need adjustments for class
B. Every year, depending on different students, the
materials may be a little bit different.
Final Performance：Periodical performance can help
teachers improve their teaching quality. Also, the
materials and outcomes can be published and
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6. promote CCLS popularity.
Notion Inform Parents: Inform Parents and guide them
how to log on Moodle to see their kids’ learning
activities and also can see the grade of their
children.
Consider to offer a discussion forum for parents.
After reviewing the proposal, the principal felt good with those ideas and I
began to design materials in Moodle. Designing teaching materials and
preparing presentation to the principal was not difficult to me. However,
Moodle is new to me and CCLS is a small school, and there was no technical
support for me. I not only needed to design the materials but also needed to
help them set up Moodle. I needed to take care of any problem I encountered
and presented all the functions to the principal before I really could teach their
teachers. I spent plenty of time on figuring out how Moodle functions and can
help their teaching. Every time there was a technical problem, it killed me and
made me painful for several days as I was eager to find out the answers. (The
original design materials are listed in Appendix A.)
Implementation Phase
When I finished my presentation to the principal, he liked the functions of
assignment, quiz, questionnaire, grade system, group and so forth. However,
he told me that there were some problems. For example, he said that even if I
taught teachers how to use Moodle, many of those teachers may not be able
to use it, because they don’t have materials to upload. The current materials
and most classes are at a basic level, so those teachers rely heavily on the
text book. Also, those teachers do not have time for face to face class, so it will
be better to use teaching videos for their teachers. Creating teaching videos
are not difficult but the principal wanted me to hold off on doing that next step.
He mentioned another problem and told me that actually they have different
online resources for CCLS. They used to have a blog and now they have a
website. Also, one of their teachers set up her own webpage for students’
teaching guide. It is a kind of chaos, because there is no representative for
CCLS. When students or parents want to find their class materials or class
information, they cannot easily find things they want. The principal wants their
website to be the main place that parents and teachers turn to. Consequently,
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7. the principal wants me to combine their website and Moodle first.
What does that mean to combine the website and Moodle? For example, the
principal felt that the function of the grade system in Moodle was good, but he
didn’t want the students or parents go to Moodle’s main page and log in and
then click the grade button. For some parents, it may be very complicated. He
wanted me to think of a way that parents may just go to their website and make
the process easier. For another example, their website offers students to
register a new account; so does Moodle. The principal wanted me to think of a
way that students do not need to register again. Also, the principal wanted to
use the questionnaire, discussion forum, and other functions from Moodle, but
everything needed to be connected to their website to make things easier.
As a result, I needed to draw a map and give the principal another proposal. I
reviewed the website and thought of ways to achieve CCLS’s needs. Below is
what I came up with. (The original chart is in Appendix B)
My Suggestions
Class Page
In CCLS’s class page, they offer the list of their classes; however, they do
not offer enough information for viewers. So, my suggestion was that they
hyperlink the class schedule from the web site to Moodle, so the user can
click the class button and see the schedule and outline. Or, even more, it
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8. would be better if they offer a class sample for the viewers.
Registration Page
I suggested the principal input the account name and password into
Moodle, so the learners do not need to register again. Technically, this
suggestion needed to be evaluated by the engineer of CCLS.
Faculty and Contact
In this area, we only can see teachers' list but no contact methods. My
suggestion was to hyperlink the Moodle message address. Simply saying,
when parents click teacher's contact, parents need to log into a verified
account and send messages to the teacher. Then, Moodle will send mail to
the teacher automatically. It not only can protect the teachers' privacy but
also help parents and students contact with each other.
Parents
In this area, CCLS has an empty page. My suggestion was to put all
Moodle functions here, so parents and students can easily find everything
they need in this page. Below are the functions the principal wished to
have.
A. Online Grade system: Set up a Grade button connected to Moodle, so
parents can log in to the system and check for their children’s grade.
B. Principal Connection: As the principal mentioned an experience that
one time after class, teacher chatted with a kid’s mother and left. One
student was left behind in the classroom and parents were very angry
about this. As a result, the principal wanted to set up a way that parents
can directly contact the principal. This function was the same as the
contact function mentioned above. Parents can login and send text to
the principal. Unlike e-mail, the principal has privacy because only
verified users can connect to the principal and only he can check the
messages.
C. Questionnaire: Set up a questionnaire area so that parents can offer
opinions to CCLS. Or, they can use Google Questionnaire to reach the
same effect.
D. Parent Discussion Forum: Setup a discussion forum in Moodle so
parents can interact with other parents.
This was my proposal of how to combine their website and Moodle. I believe
that there are a lot of things needing to be processed. For example, I tested
several times whether the suggestions I gave would work on the website or not.
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9. However, all these suggestions may need to be built by the engineer of CCLS,
but not my personal website. Maybe the principal needs to have meetings and
discuss with other members of CCLS or maybe they have some difficulties or
may not consider whether my plan works. I told the principal that I was
planning to create the teaching videos first, whereas he told me not to, saying
that if the plans were not approved or used, I would waste my time on those
materials. I don’t have so much time waiting for their decision, so I decided to
write the report and announced that I did not finish this project as expected.
The project did not finish thoroughly, so there is no evaluation process of
ADDIE in my report.
Reflection
Constrains and requirements
One of my constraints is that this is my first time doing the project and I could
not find an experienced partner to work with me. Unlike a big school or
company, they may have a department for resolving Moodle or server
problems, but I needed to work alone on my own.
Working on this project really made me think and learn a lot. Retrospectively, I
made a lot of mistakes; for instance, my initial analysis was not thorough
enough, so there was an incident in the middle of my project. I realized the
importance of analysis, which corresponds to our duty that we need to save
time and money for our client. For someone doing this kind of project alone
first time, it is not easy to estimate what is going to happen. It is said that the
only thing that won’t change in the world is change. You will always need to
have plan B and prepare for unexpected issues. I know my job may look
awkward to a professional instructional designer, but I experienced all the
process alone and learned a lot from it. Even thought the work is not done, it
was a good lesson for me to learn project management. There is still a long
way to go in my career and I believe that I can do better in the future.
References
9
10. Bruce, B., Ming-Yuan, C., Linda, M., & Ellen, R. (2010) Content Management
System Comparison: Moodle vs. Edu2.0. Unpublished master’s thesis,
University of Colorado Denver, Denver, Colorado.
BoettcherV., & Conrad, R. M.J. (2010). The Online Teaching Survival Guide.
San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Jason, C., & Helen, F., (2007). Using Moodle: Teaching with the Popular Open
Source Course Management System. San Francisco: O'Reilly Media.
Richardson, W., (2010). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web
Tools for Classrooms. California: Corwin
Scott T. C., Robin W. T., Mark B. S. (2007). The Benefits of Linking
Assignments to Online Quizzes in Introductory Biology Courses. MERLOT
Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, Vol. 3, No. 3.
Wen-Yi, X., (2009). Digital Learning 2.0. [online]. Available:
http://www.slideshare.net/go38/20-1792094 (March 9, 2011)
Wen-Yi, X., (2009). Enjoy Moodle Just For Fun V2. [online] Available:
http://www.slideshare.net/jainan/moodlev2-1835863 (March 9,2011)
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