Leading up to redeveloping our Moodle site later this year I've been thinking how to draw on lessons from gaming industry and sites like facebook to make it more engaging as a social community that users interact with and return to on a regular basis rather than somewhere to get lecture notes.
Before launching into a feature request I though it was worth getting some input in the lounge for ideas. Lewis Carr's presentation at the iMoot had lots of positive messages about making it interesting/easy for the user, including some food for thought around stimulating healthy competitive use of the system (eg league tables for activity). Combining that with FaceBook's FarmVille type games I envisaged users having course "collections", where they can complete sets of thematic items (eg in context of my own Academy users might have to "collect" 6 Shakespearean sonnets, or items associated with ballet, or famous alumni). Uploading assignments or contributing to forum discussions would give either a random chance to discover items, or points to buy them - completing a set then unlocking another level, giving bonus league points or other "reward". Being able to trade or gift items to other users could be desirable, particularly to encourage co-operative interaction outside a field of study, so perhaps if some items could only be obtained by completing taks in music or film studies they would have to co-operate cross-dept to achieve the task.
Any ideas and suggestions (development offers?) welcome - as are constructive thoughts on pro/con of expanding the role of the VLE to be more than just an academic tool. I don't want to re-invent facebook - but I do think we can learn something from it about making our online services attractive to learners.
How about a wiki competition. You could setup wiki's and use groups to assign students into teams, each with their own wiki. They then have to develop their wiki to cover a certain aspect or topic of the material.
Then set up a choice activity where the students have to vote on which wiki they think is the most useful. (They are obviously not allowed to vote for themselves).
The winning team gets some sort of prize.
This will work nicely as teams will have to check out other teams wiki's to get an idea of where they stand and in doing so will indirectly learn the material.
Then set up a choice activity where the students have to vote on which wiki they think is the most useful. (They are obviously not allowed to vote for themselves).
The winning team gets some sort of prize.
This will work nicely as teams will have to check out other teams wiki's to get an idea of where they stand and in doing so will indirectly learn the material.
I've got other ideas for creative use of activities here.
Hi Ryan,
Yes - like the idea of developing a wiki to share with wider audience. We've already started using similar technique for course specific glossaries and resources developed as UG books (user generated) - but without the competitive element (other than as part of their course marks).
Hi Ryan,
I like the idea of putting the students in charge of developing a course - though can imagine some lecturers being terrified at the prospect (could be an interesting pilot to engage courses where staff aren't comfortable using Moodle - let students prototype what they would want to see and do with technology). Currently looking at setting up student society groups - either in Moodle or Mahara - that will have student "champions" with permissions to build course content and moderate. I see huge potential for Moodle as intranet for consistent communication and resource management.