Learn Moodle MOOC starting

Today I am excited to be starting week one of the learn.moodle.net MOOC. As an experienced Moodler, I still get a lot out of attending a beginner Moodle MOOC. Here are some of my thoughts on what I think experienced Moodlers will get out of the next four weeks:

• Examples of different ways Moodle courses can be set up and different ways to setup activities.
• The opportunity to see how you can run a course with a lot of participants. Not many of us run MOOCs but as they have become more common it is good to participate in them to keep current of this trends pros and cons.
• A reminder of the kinds of questions beginners think of (outside of your own work context).
• An opportunity to help beginners with their questions and give back to the Moodle community.
• The experience of using things you might not have enabled in your own Moodle environment, like badges. This will help you think about how they might be used in your own context.

Having started the first week activities, I am already seeing hundreds of participants rolling up their sleeves and digging in. The course uses completion tracking to help you manage your tasks and progress as a learner in the course. There are clear tasks to complete and an indication of what kind of assessment will be carried out in the course. There are also badges used as one form of motivation. 

Anyway, enough of reading my notes; if you want to join go to learn.moodle.net to sign up and get started today.

Learn Moodle MOOC

Did anyone notice how quick 9 August 2015 snuck up on us?

If you haven't already set yourself up on the Learn Moodle MOOC now is the time to do so as the introductions have been flowing in from all around the world. What a great opportunity to network, share your experiences and learn from others.

iMoot15 and mootau15

At #iMoot15 Miriam and I facilitated as session aimed at getting a conversation going and gathering information in the Moodle community about how we manage enrolment, access, and semester rollover. Miriam and I hoped that this would feed into the working group at #mootau15 on archiving and roll-over.

Our institute is reviewing how we manage enrolment, access and course rollover in Moodle. We have struggled to find solutions that work across the board and maintain an exception list that we see increasing. Initial conversations with other institutes suggested that the perfect solutions are yet to be established. We hoped this iMoot discussion would build on the work started at https://docs.moodle.org/28/en/Year-end_procedures and in the forum https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=50298 and that we could find out more from the Moodle community about what the issues we collectively have so as we can understand them better and work towards resolving them.

Our iMoot presentation is here and the details on the Moodlemoot working groups are here. Note there are two working groups, so check out the assessment analytics working group too.

If you are able to share your institutes current enrolment/access/rollover practice please complete our form here or get in touch with us.

We have so far found that most institutes do not automate creation of groups, and many duplicate courses each time they are run. Each institute has their own approach to where the teacher’s role starts and ends.  With everyone using different student management systems, and having different strategies around re-use of courses and access periods for students to their learning resources (and artefacts the students create!) it is very helpful to share ideas on how to meet the requirements of your institute and your learners.

You can also comment on this blog post if you prefer. Looking forward to further discussion.

Moodlemoot Australia 2015

I hope you have all registered for mootau15 and I will see you at Monash University in (Clayton) Melbourne, 6 to 8 July 2015. This is going to be one very exciting Moot, boasting an impressive range of keynotes and with a new schedule format that makes the most of the time together. The introduction of working groups to the Moot format brings together users, researchers and developers to work together to make Moodle better.

Monday 6 July is professional development day. There will be keynotes and sector based sessions, working groups, and drinks reception.

Tuesday 7 and Wednesday 8 July are community days, focusing on the interests of users in different roles. More keynotes, role based sessions, new features and roadmap, and more social activities.

Thursday 9 July is developers’ day. Even though the main conference is over, this will be a day of action for working group members and developers. There will be new developer training and a hackfest with working group interaction.

See you there!

iMoot15

 

If you use Moodle, don't forget to register for the global online Moodle Conference iMoot15 and "come on a learning journey with us" Thursday 28 May to 1 June 2015 (you should totally check the local times for this) #iMoot15 Everyone Matters.

 If you haven't attended before, you can listen to the Free Moodle podcast where Vinny Stocker is interviewed by Stuart Mealor from HRDNZ.

MOSOMELT cMOOC

This week I joined MOSOMELT. I meant to join last week (or was it the week before?) but this week a prompt from a colleague reminded me to actually leap in and signup.

What am I talking about? I’m talking about a cMOOC designed by some lovelies at AUT as a professional development strategy that takes on a distributed communities of practice approach. Over 24 weeks MOSOMELT will take us on a journey of Mobile Learning Technologies (with some friendly global experts) designed to develop both our personal eportfolios and pedagogical practice. There is an option for validation by external CMALT accreditation too.

Why? I think this can provide a valid and effective way to offer and receive professional development. Enrolling in a cMOOC with some work colleagues means we have strengthened the likelihood of successful completion as we can motivate each other to stay engaged (a common problem with online only courses). There is also a great community of practice involved, with many members I know and respect for their contributions, so I can imagine this can be a robust course with some excellent opportunities to develop my portfolio, and my practice.

See you there!