Learning standards: K-12 Education Standards linked to moodle activities

Learning standards: K-12 Education Standards linked to moodle activities

by c miller -
Number of replies: 18

I am working to implement moodle in a K-12 academic setting in Texas (while spreading the faith for open source). All things educational in Texas have to relate, correlate, and incorporate our education standards (TEKS).

I am sure that Texas is not alone in this. And on a national level, certain standards have to be tracked to be in compliance with the No Child Left Behind bill... especially if we wish to receive federal funding!!!

So, I'm looking for advice and info on what would be the best way to do this. My preference would be to include the following abilities:

1) Allow the site admin to set up the DB of standards

2) Be relatively easy for the teacher to select the standard

3) Include a category (English, Mathematics, etc.) possibly from a drop down menu  and then select one or more standards - pop up menu with radio buttons?

4) Ultimate wish list - allow technology illiterate administrators to search the db to see if the standards are being covered (by individual course or teacher)

If this needs to be moved or has already been answered, please let me know.

Thanks,

Chris

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In reply to c miller

Re: Learning standards: K-12 Education Standards linked to moodle activities

by Martin Dougiamas -
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We've discussed this before (a long time ago) and I think this would be very useful, but it's not coming very soon. Make sure you get it in the bug tracker (if it isn't already). Search for "outcomes".
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Learning standards: K-12 Education Standards linked to moodle activities

by c miller -

Thanks.

It's unfortunate, but I'm not too surprised. I was not too certain how it would fit with the current version.

Basically, that's the only piece of the puzzle that would keep K-12 schools from fully using Moodle.

Our local education service center which serves 87 school districts is currently looking at Moodle. We have a couple of Jr. colleges around Ft. Worth using it. Most of us use Chancery's WinSchool for student information. Chancery recommends Moodle through it's 3rd party SIF vendor.

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In reply to c miller

Re: Learning standards: K-12 Education Standards linked to moodle activities

by Ger Tielemans -

Because the shortname is used as the backup name, we changed that field in a set of drop down menu's. When you set up the course, the coursecreator can select the labels in the boxes. After that the name is frozen.

The number of boxes and the content of the choices is stored in a simple xml-file: the admin can fill and adapt to the local structure

We also changed the 52 weeks view of Moodle in a periodview: courses are connected to a period, a student will only see his courses of that period but still can access courses from previous periods. (Not possible with the standard closing eye option) Again the admin can choose the periodsystem with start and enddates (we use quarters) and one extra system (one of the schools uses trimesters.)

You can also set a checkmark to escape from the fixed periods and set your own start and enddate, but these are not visble in the periodoverviews of the students. (we use these for moodle courses which we use as teacher groupwaretools)

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In reply to c miller

Re: Learning standards: K-12 Education Standards linked to moodle activities

by Scott Elliott -
This is actually something I've been considering working on this summer.  Even in community colleges there is a push to tie courses / assignments to some standards, even if just the objectives listed in the syllabus.

Anyway, I'll try to keep you posted on where I am in the process.

Of course, any financial incentive would be welcome wink


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In reply to Scott Elliott

Re: Learning standards: K-12 Education Standards linked to moodle activities

by Art Lader -

Even in community colleges there is a push to tie courses / assignments to some standards, even if just the objectives listed in the syllabus...

This is coming in Aiken, too. It would be very helpful, indeed, if it were built into Moodle.

-- Art

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In reply to Art Lader

Re: Learning standards: K-12 Education Standards linked to moodle activities

by Ger Tielemans -

Me Too: To keep it simple I think of:

  • In section zero I want a popup-box where the teacher can checkmark in a list the competences which are covered in that course. The items should be taken from a central list/catalog.
  • in the other sections I want:
    • after a quizz also a competence choice
    • after an open task also a competence choice, but also a set of scales to assist you during grading of that task. (rubrics)
  • competences and these sets of gradingscales are organised in a catalog
  • a second catalog shows the courses and the competences that are covered by these courses...
  • (Vocational training schools map these competence descriptions on professions and tell you which competence you must possess on which level.)  
  • example of rubrics are in Kansas, Alaska,..
  • the royal version of this system allows teacher to choose a scheme by browsing the catalog, change anything and place it back as new scheme (See Rubistar)  
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In reply to Ger Tielemans

Re: Learning standards: K-12 Education Standards linked to moodle activities

by Scott Elliott -
Ger thanks for your input.

Do you (or anyone else for that matter) know if there is a common format or repository for educational standards?  My guess is there is not.

In terms of getting the standards into moodle, I see a manual entry process, but would also want to allow the importing of these standards.

Anyone?
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In reply to Scott Elliott

Re: Learning standards: K-12 Education Standards linked to moodle activities

by Art Lader -

Don't know if this helps, Scott, but my standards are attached.

-- Art

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In reply to Art Lader

Re: Learning standards: K-12 Education Standards linked to moodle activities

by Ger Tielemans -

The standards of Art are good examples of the RUBRICS schemes as a SMART tool to describe levels of competencies: In Europe we have a nice example of such "grading" system for language skills: the Eurpean Language passport (a mix of Rubrics and Portfoilo).

I think that this can be a good base..

A bad use of Rubics is doing a single statement in only one column of Art's scheme and fill the other columns with "more" or "less"

A more common alternative is giving an Institute a formal status and TRUST that the grades on their impressing certificates with golden seals, reflect the same levels of skills I can Verify in Art's approach..   

So I propose a rich tree of competency descriptions and refinements of these descriptions with SMART Rubrics as the leaves in that tree.

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In reply to Scott Elliott

Re: Learning standards: K-12 Education Standards linked to moodle activities

by Bruce Walker -

Hello Moodlers,

Our non-profit offers free academic standards data in RDF/XML format for all fifty states and DC plus selected national organization standards through Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution licensing.  We are, to my knowledge, the only free source for this valuable data.  http://www.achievementstandards.org

The academic areas covered are ELA, science, math, social studies.  State standards documents are atomized, digitized and assigned web resolvable URI's. 

If there is a more appropriate place for me to post this information, could one of you more experienced members point me to the right area of the Moodle forum?

Any questions can be directed to me at brucew@jesnadco.org.

 Bruce

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In reply to Scott Elliott

Re: Learning standards: K-12 Education Standards linked to moodle activities

by mark snow -

This is something that I would like to see as well.  For those that have not seen the product, I really recommend looking at brainhoney.com.   This is the most advanced LMS that I've seen.  They have a drag and drop objective alignment feature that ties back in to a reporting feature to show mastery of objectives based on grade data.   Very slick.  brainhoney.com  Create a free account and give it a try.  They have the state standards all ready to go.  I could envision something like this in moodle.

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In reply to mark snow

Re: Learning standards: K-12 Education Standards linked to moodle activities

by Bryan Williams -
Mark, this is an ancient post but I'll add that ELIS for Moodle has this feature now as well. That is, a state K-12 standard or competency map can be directly applied to Moodle's Outcomes feature, and then fairly granular reports generated.
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In reply to Scott Elliott

Re: Learning standards: K-12 Education Standards linked to moodle activities

by Malcolm Koch -

There is a common format suggested for standards documents not the standards alone. The SIF Framework now has some field names recommended for school information systems. Feel free to contact me at: malcolm@collaboration-technologies.com and I can direct you to resources. We are investigating how to accomplish some planning, alignment, and assessment outcomes linkage via Moodle and would appreciate all collaboration possible to properly develop this for Moodler's use. We have used this information to construct a database structure just for standards/outcomes which is searchable and filterable. We have managed to create a way to "pop" a standard into Moodle, but it's not really the way to go at this point because we had to "modify" the Moodle Core to do it. So guidance is appreciated. Our database construct we think will satisfy K12 tracking requirements.

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In reply to c miller

Re: Learning standards: K-12 Education Standards linked to moodle activities

by Malcolm Koch -

Please contact me at malcolm@collaboration-technologies.com OR koch123@peak.org

We are working on the following:

1. Modifications to Assessment engine to track standards.

2. Modifications to Gradebook to report assessments by standard, standards-based report card.

3. A standards-based lesson planner with cross links to standards-based learning activities (assignments) and a repository of learning resources which will pretty much handle articulations of standards to learning resources.

We are looking for a consortium to handle financing of the programming. The design is well finished. I can supply you now with a template for a standards DB SQL. I am looking for contracts to populate DB especially for Oregon, TEKS, and Arizona.

Regards,

 

Malcolm L. Koch

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In reply to Malcolm Koch

Re: Learning standards: K-12 Education Standards linked to moodle activities

by Phyllis Wiggins -

I am using Moodle to set up a learning center business (tutoring service) for K-12 math students which is aligned with the state standards.  I want to give assessment tests to determine placement, then a study plan to remediate or enrich then a post test.   Any guidance would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Phyllis Wiggins

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In reply to c miller

Re: Learning standards: K-12 Education Standards linked to moodle activities

by Malcolm Koch -

We have been working on a standards database format that satisfies the demands, we believe, of SIF compliancy and have linked it to moodle. The latest rendition of Moodle (2.01) allows activities to be linked to outcomes (nee Standards). However, the depth is limited primarily to assessments. Our ability to do that was "tested" on a Moodle 2.01 and we'd rather not do it by modifying Moodle Core. We've a search engine to an external standards database and are able to filter, select, and "pop" selected standard to an assessment item. Certainly some direction and some financial support for an entire block would be helpful. We've yet to deduce whether "tags" will thread or link a standard/outcome throughout Moodle. (malcolm@collaboration-technologies.com)

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In reply to Malcolm Koch

Re: Learning standards: K-12 Education Standards linked to moodle activities

by Courtney Engle -

Have you been able to work this out?  I'm seeking a way to create teacher lesson plans including the list below. I'm also wanting to match those up with a database of standards, at a state level, per national level (National Business Ed Assoc.), and ISTE*NETS.  

Ideally, I'd like a module option of teacher lesson plans only displaying to non-students. I'd also like to populate the database of standards and connect resources and activities to the correlating standards. 

 

  • Lesson Plan Title:
  • Concept / Topic To Teach:
  • Standards Addressed: 
  • General Goal(s):
  • Specific Objectives: 
  • Required Materials: 
  • Anticipatory Set (Lead-In): 
  • Step-By-Step Procedures: 
  • Plan For Independent Practice: 
  • Closure (Reflect Anticipatory Set): 
  • Assessment Based On Objectives: 
  • Adaptations (For Students With Learning Disabilities): 
  • Extensions (For Gifted Students): 
  • Possible Connections To Other Subjects: 

Suggestions or ideas?

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