I have been publishing some of my teaching materials on the language course. As mentioned there, I often use the rather unispired lesson and preparation/revision format below
1) a reading (moodle resource)
2) comprehension questions (moodle quiz)
3) comprehension questions (in class activity)
4) extended questions (in class activity)
5 ) TOEIC part II style quiz on extendend questions (moodle quiz)
6) Forum posts (moodle forum)
The most important thing that moodle provides is a way of forcing (yes coercing, bludgenioning, brutalising and all sorts other words along those lines) my students to prepare, to read a text before they come to the lesson. I find that the format above is a great success
. Having been forced to read the text the students are much more ego involved, and take part more effectively and enthusiastically in the class discussion and subsequent forum debate.
Please kindly note that most of the social, possibly socially constructive, and in any event nice, politically correct parts of the above lesson structure could be achieved without Moodle. I am afraid that Moodle does not give me any extra opportunities for social interaction (except here). I could go to a classroom and sip coffee with my students, ask them to come to my private chat room, bulletin boards, and wiki if I wanted social construction. The glossary seems pretty unique but perhaps it is in some wikis? But, in any event, I could not brutalise (in the Marxist sense) my students without Moodle. It would take too long to set a random selection of randomly ordered questions, with randomly ordered answers to force the students to read the text. For this automatic brutalisation or "auto-brute," ability of Moodle I am eternally grateful. Aside from the time that this saves me, I simple do not enjoy brutalising my students. Unlike (it would seem from the smiles) guards in Iraqi, I do not enjoy that part of the job. I would be entirely socially constructive by preference.
And activity linking is an important part of a partly socially constructive, partly brutalising process. Activity link is in fact the nice, kind, socially constructive part of the process. Activity linking does not hide it rather reveals.
Activity linking gives us the opportunity to reveal, after the brutal, hiding part (since testing always involves hiding) is over.
I would like to be able to offer the students the opportunity to download all the comprehension questions that I am using in part 2 above, which they will also be using in class. But these questions are of course the same as the pool of questions that I am using in the quiz. Hence if they are not hidden then the auto-brute (provided by the quiz) will be less effective.
Gratefully,
Tim
takemoto