Hi Martin,
Thanks for your interest. I was not quite sure what you were looking for so I checked out your web sites (explaining the delay in replying!). Hopefully this should help:
I'm not using any
one avenue for this. It's very much a holistic approach. There are several reasons for this. I'm learning Moodle as I use it to teach students so it's very pragmatic in that sense. I'm one of only a handful of users so there's little institutional backup or research. Students are, universally I think, wary of anything new and need to be brought into the system and ideally come to own it (hence my post and the reply about epistemologies - many thanks).
Enough for the background, how do I get people into Moodle?:
a) immersive experience: All my courses run through Moodle and so any student wanting to get more information will need to use it. It's graded according to year but the basic assumption is there;
b) pedagogically: Moodle does not replace the teacher but it puts the teacher in a new role. Allowing for latitude in definitions, I use blended delivery. Everything I do offline I do in moodle. This allows for students who miss/lose work to catch up. It allows them to find more work. Importantly, Moodle allows (and expects in senior years) a collaborative input. This allows the student to "own" their course, suggest input, comment etc. This has been the hardest part of the work. I find Australian students less ready to work with staff than I did in my UK life;
c) I'm a bit sceptical about the 'digital native' concept. Given that, I'm a car native and should have been entered for the Bathurst 1000 at age 6! Students are born with ICT but it's not genetic. Therefore at the top of my courses I have 2 icons: learner and provisional (following the car theme). Each year is different but the basic theme is the same: learners get a 2 page document showing them the basic features of Moodle as it pertains to their course (which I call Moodle4n00bs); provisionals get a more advanced set of ideas about how to stretch their learning with Moodle (PowerMoodle - quaint I know but it makes them laugh and that's half the battle);
d) Useability studies/discussions: I pepper all courses with my email address, forums, help desks and anything else I can think of to get feedback on the use and design of moodle (and also, of course, course feedback). Everything sent is acted upon where it is an improvement;
e) Walking the walk: it's easy to talk Moodle but I also try to demonstrate it. I get asked to give presentations on Moodle, do some training, mention Moodle in most lessons. In othe words my students know that it's a real part of my worklife and not just something I'm doing because everyone else is (virtually the opposite sadly).
I hope this has helped. Feel free to ask something specific. All my courses are still works in progess but I've set the HSC (yr12) course to open as it's often used to show an example. The link should be
here (then log in as guest). Feedback welcomed.
Cheers,
Paul
PS - I came across
this link - it might help
