Seeking course content for Instructional Design students to "Moodle-ize"

Seeking course content for Instructional Design students to "Moodle-ize"

by Amy Kotwitz -
Number of replies: 6
This spring, we will be co-facilitating a course on how to use Moodle for graduate students in an Instructional Design and Technology (IDT) program. To help create an authentic learning experience, we would like to provide our learners with "clients" who have "real" courses. So, we're turning to the Moodle community for assistance.

Who:
We're looking for organizations or individuals who would like to have their course content developed in Moodle and are willing to play the role of "client" and/or subject matter expert by answering questions, providing feedback, etc. over an 8-10 week period between the end of January and first part of April.

What:
The course content (text, links, assessments, videos, images, etc.) needs to be compiled, complete and ready to hand off to us by January 1 to be ready for our learners to begin development. Ideally, we would like to build courses that allow for communication and collaboration to allow the IDT students to explore the possibilities of Moodle, but if you have a need for the development of a self-paced course we may be able to do that as well.

When:
If you're interested in this opportunity, please email us at idtmoodleproject@comcast.net by December 1 with a description of your need and a brief outline or description of your course. In addition, please include information about your willingness and ability to be available and participate in the design process. For instance, would you prefer all communications to come through us, the facilitators? Or, are you interested and willing to participate in a course forum and interact directly with the learners?

Disclaimers:
  • Recognize that while the IDT students will have the guidance and support of their instructors, they are students and we cannot make any guarantees about the quality of the work. We also cannot guarantee that we will be able to complete the course development. Realize that the gamble on the other side though is that you may walk away with an awesome course. smile
  • Since the goal of the course is to learn to use Moodle, we will ask for a lot of latitude or freedom in the course design to allow the IDT students to experiment with the various Moodle tools. Our hope is that we might also help you explore some ideas you hadn't considered as well.
  • Once your course is developed, we are willing to show you how to make revisions or corrections to the content (within reason), but once we give you the course backup, it is yours to maintain.
  • Finally, as much as we would like to help everyone who would like to participate, that won't be possible. We will let you know by January 1 if your course has been selected.
If you have questions, let us know; you can send us an email or post them here. If you work in a school or organization who uses Moodle, please distribute this message to your staff and colleagues.

Thanks in advance for your time. We look forward to hearing from you!
Michelle and Amy

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In reply to Amy Kotwitz

Re: Seeking course content for Instructional Design students to "Moodle-ize"

by Marc Grober -
Well, I am intrigued.... But also somewhat confused, in that if one were to provide the "what", hasn't one by definition likely already done the instructional design?

I typically recommend an "early" text on instructional design to my post-bacc students, West, Charles K., James A. Farmer, and Phillip M. Wolff. Instructional Design: Implications from Cognitive Science. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1991, in no small part because it is was written almost 20 years ago, and its use often underlines the some of the failure of our teaching colleges...... I've found, however, that so many who claim interest in educational technology do not appear to be interested so much in the design of instruction as in the amassing of a pile-o-stuff. Indeed, I often find that teachers have a very difficult time with an exercise in which I require flow charting of instruction before trying to implement the instruction as a Moodle Lesson. I see a great many classes out in the wide world in which students are taught how to put stuff in boxes (i.e. populate a Moodle topic with "stuff") but I would never suggest that those students had learned anything about instructional design.

I have always subscribed to the notion, in some respects part and parcel of Moodle Mythology, that in instruction the medium is often, as McLuhan put it, the message. That is to say that we may teach as much or more through the manner of instruction. If I want to provide instruction in Adam Smith's view of capitalism I could point students too materials on Smith, I could take existing materials and convert to Moodle lessons, or I could create an exercise that would embody Smith's ideas about virtuous capitalists which would offer the aforementioned content on the sly as it were ;=} How would your students grasp my intent, and if through the client/developer relationship, then are you in a sense asking the volunteer to also volunteer X hours to assist in the training of your students..... And in a larger perspective and to return to my ealier point, isn't my selection of materials in part determined by the instructional design I adopted for my course?

I look forward to your comments and some additional information about the course (institution, syllabus, etc), This sounds like it could be quite a lot of fun as well as enlightening.


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In reply to Marc Grober

Re: Seeking course content for Instructional Design students to "Moodle-ize"

by Amy Kotwitz -
Hi Marc--
Thanks for your questions and comments! We too are really excited about the potential of this project! When teaching this course in the past, students have struggled with not having an actual course or content to build in Moodle. Even for those who had ideas about a course they wanted to construct, they spent as much or more time constructing the content (i.e. writing the text and so forth) as they did working in Moodle. So, Michelle and I thought that if we could help the students with the content side of things we meet one goal. Furthermore, by turning this into an authentic learning experience, where the students are actually creating a course for an outside entity, a course someone could actually use, we believe the level of effort and enthusiasm will be higher. Last but not least, even though this technically is a Moodle course, Michelle and I don't want to just teach the tools. We want the students to learn the tools in relationship to how they might really use them in "real life" and to help them learn to make decisions about when to use and how to apply each tool, or module, to create quality courses.

To answer your questions . . .
"if one were to provide the "what", hasn't one by definition likely already done the instructional design?"
Maybe, but not necessarily--at least not instructional design in the "Moodle way." For example, suppose an organization has been delivering training face-to-face through a collection of PowerPoint slides and they are now ready to move their course online. Yes, the organization did the instructional design for the face-to-face instruction, but they may not have the knowledge, expertise or time to reconstruct it in Moodle to best take advantage of Moodle's tools and capabilities. Will some of the design work they did previously still apply? Absolutely, but a set of PowerPoints posted online doesn't make a great Moodle course so they can't stand alone. smile

Also realize we'll be pushing our students to explore all of the possibilities of Moodle whereas not all Moodlers have the luxury of time to allow them to do so. Consider an online course that primarily consists of assignments and quizzes . . . we would push our students to explore the collaborative and more interactive possibilities of the content with tools like workshops, wikis, lessons, etc. For that reason, by the way, we may ask for some liberty with the content so students are able to make these explorations. So even though the instructional design work may have been done, we know that sometimes it is easiest to resort to the tools you know. We're hopeful that someone out there might be interested in seeing what else might be possible for their course.

"I see a great many classes out in the wide world in which students are taught how to put stuff in boxes (i.e. populate a Moodle topic with "stuff") but I would never suggest that those students had learned anything about instructional design."
I think we're basically operating on the same set of principles. Michelle and I didn't want to teach a Moodle course in which we just told the students what to click; we didn't want them to end up with a course comprised of random, disconnected samples that were constructed just for the sake of creating them. Our goals for this course include helping our students learn how to use Moodle; helping them differentiate the available tools; and finally, to reinforce the instructional design process through the creation of an actual course. Realistically, we only have so many hours with our students and the course is a Moodle course, not an Instructional Design course, so the instruction surrounding Instructional Design will be less explicit, but the design process will provide the basis for the organization of the course. We're counting on the program's required ID course to teach the core ID information; we're just hoping to reinforce, apply and elaborate.

How would your students grasp my intent, and if through the client/developer relationship, then are you in a sense asking the volunteer to also volunteer X hours to assist in the training of your students..... And in a larger perspective and to return to my earlier point, isn't my selection of materials in part determined by the instructional design I adopted for my course?
Our plan will require the "client" to contribute some time, but in exchange, they will get a Moodle course right? smile Really, our hope was that we could find some sort of happy medium that will work for everyone involved. Our thinking is that Michelle and I would work with the client to do the initial information gathering; to learn about the intent, goals, materials, learners, etc. Then, we would act on behalf of the client with the students. Instead of the students all asking the "client" the same or a similar set of questions, we would respond to those. We would likely have follow-up questions for the client in cases where students had additional questions, but those could be filtered through us as well.

Alternatively, if the "client" wants to be more involved, we could set up a forum that would allow the "client" to engage directly with the learners. The learners could ask questions and the client could respond in the forum.

Beyond these questions, we would like for the client to participate in at least two Elluminate sessions. The first one would be at the start of the course and would basically be an opportunity for the students to meet the client and to ask some initial questions. The second session would be at the end of the development cycle where the student groups would each present their course project (more on this below).

We don't want to be a burden on anyone willing to volunteer, but the "client" should be aware that there will be some time commitment--they won't be able to just send us their stuff and run. smile

As far as the selection of material, I hope I've clarified this question above, but I will reiterate that even though you may have selected the textbook and may have PowerPoints and quizzes, there is still quite a bit of latitude in terms of how those materials can be presented to the students.

I look forward to your comments and some additional information about the course (institution, syllabus, etc).
The course is being offered at Emporia State University in Kansas where they have an entirely online Instructional Design and Technology Masters program. (Michelle and I are both graduates of the program.) The recommended textbooks for our course are: Using Moodle by Jason Cole and Helen Foster (Second edition) and Classroom Instruction that Works by Robert J. Marzano, Debra J. Pickering, and Jane E. Pollock. In Classroom Instruction that Works, the authors present nine different instructional strategies proven to have a positive impact on student achievement. We will model these instructional strategies within our course and will ask our students to consider these strategies as they develop their own courses as well.

We won't take time to lay out the entire syllabus here, partly because we're still revising it from last semester, but we're happy to share a general outline of the key points. If you would like further detail, please let us know.

Weeks 1-3:
We'll start with typical beginning of course activities including introductions and so forth and then students will work on several different activities that will result in a database with descriptions and examples of each tool. Rather than have every student try to learn every tool initially, each student will focus on learning one tool well and in the process, they'll begin to learn about the various resources available to help them learn about other Moodle tools when the time comes. They'll also complete an activity in which they partner with another student to compare and contrast similar tools.

Weeks 4-11:
Through this portion of the course, all of the students will work in small teams on the same "client" course project. We'll walk through the entire instructional design process and in the end, the teams will present their projects to the client who will be asked to select one as the "best." During this time frame, we'll include a variety of support and collaborative activities and assigned reading.

Weeks 12-16:
In the final weeks of the course, we'll make our way through another round of the instructional design process as students have an opportunity to construct another course. Students will have more flexibility in this phase and may choose to construct a course with content they select or to choose a second project from the community contributions. Students may choose to work independently or again, in small groups.

Students will also work throughout the course on collecting "best practices" on various topics including: web design, online course design, facilitating collaboration, effective feedback, and Moodle best practices.


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In reply to Amy Kotwitz

Re: Seeking course content for Instructional Design students to "Moodle-ize"

by E. L. Cooper -
I don't understand why you don't pick a basic text, like the one your school uses for Humanities 101 based on that text and a syllabus. That makes the design a double win The school can actually use the good designs and the students get to see their work has value.
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In reply to E. L. Cooper

Re: Seeking course content for Instructional Design students to "Moodle-ize"

by Amy Kotwitz -
Thank you, E.L., for your response. During our initial course planning, we considered your idea. However, the university does not utilize Moodle across all curriculum. In order to prepare future teachers and designers, the Instructional Design and Technology program recognizes the need to provide training on Moodle. However, not all departments use Moodle.

In addition to having limited options on our campus, we also wanted to give back to the Moodle community. While providing our students with a great experience with 'real' course material, we would also be giving someone in the Moodle community a course design to use.
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In reply to Amy Kotwitz

Re: Seeking course content for Instructional Design students to "Moodle-ize"

by Colin Fraser -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Testers
I have been running small to medium courses for training teachers, and I have found that, almost invariably, if I give them material, they make a mess of it. If I give them an assignment that simply says "you are interested in ----whatever (they fill in the blank)--- Design - create and write - a two or three topic module in Moodle about that subject." Of course there is such things as utilizing resources, materials, images, videos, sound bytes, anything they think they need to explain to me that underwater basketweaving is relaxing and farnarkling is better than dodgeball. The less structured input from me does mean a better outcome for the teachers. The more imaginative approach they take, the better. I let them use their own judgment, and if they chose something they are interested in, them the better the result.

There is also other issues - quality and logical consistency. While it is very tempting to give you some materials, and say good for you, and this is how I would like it - I cannot guarantee the credibility of the result. I cannot accept that the logic that has gone into the construction process is what is actually needed, irrespective of what instruction I give or how much time I spend with the developer. I have found that I cannot, and this is true of most teachers I suggest, use another person's class work, their assignments and their resources. This is simply because I need to have some ownership of the end result. I need to take someone else's work, break it down, rebuild it to suit me. I know this sounds pedantic and egotistical, but the reality is I can be an automaton and present whatever needs to be presented, but if I want my students to get the best out of it, then I really need to make sure I know what it is I am presenting and the logic behind the design that dictates that I do this at that point. Without those things, the whole process becomes meaningless - for me anyway.

Please, I am not rubbishing your essential premise or your approach, just I find it difficult to respond to it with materials. What you may want to think about is the development of something in the vein of taking an aspect of Moodle, a resource or an activity and asking students to write a tutorial on how to use that element.

Good luck.
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In reply to Amy Kotwitz

Re: Seeking course content for Instructional Design students to "Moodle-ize"

by Don Hinkelman -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers
Dear Amy,

This is a great way to do some ID training as a real project. I admire your approach. Without reading all the comments and useful insights in this forum, here are two comments to consider:
  • Prepare all video, audio and resources by January 1st: Actually, you should warn your students that this little comment is really 90% of the process of Moodlizing content. I have Moodlized three or four courses for foreign language learning and these tasks consume huge amounts of time. Needless to say, for this reason I cannot participate in your kind offer. However, if you want to take an already-Moodlized course and have students improve it, please contact me--I have several in speech communication and intercultural communication.
  • Blended learning as a predominant form of instruction: You did not mention whether your designs are blended, but all of my classes using Moodle are blended classes. We use blended learning spaces and about 20% of classtime is spent online. Another one hour per week is spent online with homework tasks. I am not sure of your emphasis in your IDT classes, but I think the vast majority of Moodle teachers use it in blended situations. Further, I recommend blended over pure online classes for a variety of reasons--learning styles, non-verbal interaction, groupwork and pairwork for example.
Good luck!
Don Hinkelman
Sapporo Gakuin University
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