Anne Dickinson
e-Learning Unit, Coventry University
Tuesday afternoon, Session E, just before the coffee break.

As you can see, I’m the last in the group so we might be pushed for time.

Below is the bit about the workshops. I’ll concentrate on demos and tips during the session itself, although you will find some tips below…

Context

At the beginning of this Academic year, 2010-2011, Coventry University switched to Moodle as its sole virtual learning environment (VLE). Courses at Coventry are modular and every module at the University has its associated web.

2009-2010

  • The previous academic year, staff had been encouraged to move the stuff which had been residing in the original VLE.
  • Training sessions “Moving to Moodle”, “Moodle Doodles” were held.
  • A library of resources “how to” guides and movies was built.
  • The services of a team of (mainly) students was called upon. This team is known as “The Flying Squad” and they were paid to answer queries and move more problematic items such as quizzes

This academic year

  • A range of basic workshops continues to be available for all staff. Induction for students follows a similar pattern to last year’s induction.
  • A seminar “More about Moodle” has recently been given, to highlight how to shorten the topics list, embed youtube videos and illustrating other Moodle Activities that are available in Coventry.
  • The printed guides and “how to” videos have been expanded.
  • We continue to have the services of the Flying Squad who have helped tutors with student induction as well as help with routine enquiries from staff and students.

Workshops for staff

This academic year Moodle workshops for members of staff include the following:

Your Moodle home page:

  • basic features of Moodle
  • essential module information

Adding files to Moodle:

(yes this was what most of them wanted)

  • smaller files can go to Moodle (max 2M)
  • larger files to Curve digital repository (Equella)

Grades in Moodle:

  • We are in the process of automating the movement of grades from Moodle to the University’s student database.
  • Tip: we used offline activity to add a column that didn’t have a Moodle activity related to it. We encouraged people to use percentages for the results. It then made it easy to use weightings to calculate totals.

Workshops for tutor groups

  • These were given on request
  • Also, workshops have been given for admin staff who get questions from students such as “why can’t I see my module (Moodle Course)”?

Moodle Open Workshops

Demonstrations are given on request and people just come along to Moodle away on their own. These have been held monthly.

Moodle Induction for students

  • There is a briefing session for tutors and student proctors (helpers) who are involved in the induction.
    • They use the session to explore the Moodle Induction Course for themselves so that they can prepare themselves for possible problems that students might have.
    • We get advanced notice of some problems before the students arrive.
  • An economic version of the student guide was created. Last year’s had been a dual booklet giving both Moodle and the previous VLE. This year’s is a dual sided A3 sheet of paper that can be folded into an A5 booklet. Most of it is how to get into Moodle!

Presenter

Anne Dickinson’s Coventry University blog (CUBA stands for Coventry University Blogging Academics) :)