Hi,
I'm new to Moodle but learning fast. I'm wanting to use it in a sort of automated self-paced learning environment. Online students will enroll for courses on their own, and the courses consist of video, audio, and text. After studying the material, the students will take tests which will be graded by Moodle (no subjective grading). I will not be using any chats, forums, journals, etc. Just content (resources) and quizzes.
Here's the thing: I will be administering the site, but am not actually going to be a teacher. Each course will sort of be self-sustaining, students will study independently, and the video/audio/text will do the teaching. I am wondering if it is even necessary for me to assign a teacher (which would have to be myself) to each course, or if I can just create each course but not assign a teacher. I don't want to confuse students, and I certainly don't have the expertise to be able to handle inquiries they might ask a "teacher."
Any thoughts would be invaluable.
Rob
You might already know that you can change where it says teacher to say something else...perhaps advisor? Tutor? Whatever you like.
It's under the link where you assign teachers...you can type something different in. For example next term when our student led publication comes out we have a course which has a Production Editor and Editorial Board Members.
Or you could hide the fact you were the teacher.
Hope this helps.
Thanks
Stephen
You might already know that you can change where it says teacher to say something else...perhaps advisor? Tutor? Whatever you like.
It's under the link where you assign teachers...you can type something different in. For example next term when our student led publication comes out we have a course which has a Production Editor and Editorial Board Members.
Or you could hide the fact you were the teacher.
Hope this helps.
Thanks
Stephen
If you go into the settings for the course, you'll find that you can specify what a 'Teacher' is called. You might want to supply 'Technical Assistant'
or whatever communicates your role properly to the online students.
John
or whatever communicates your role properly to the online students.
John
Hi Rob,
Welcome to Moodle! its a great piece of software and the community here is really friendly.
Technically what you suggest is straight forward and Moodle can do it fine. But I think you are missing out on what makes a course and course and not just a e-text book. Interestingly, I've been having a conversation with an organisation wishing to branch out from face to face teaching to web courses here in the UK. Their attitude was similar to yours:
his version was 'we can't get the experts to answer questions students might put them'. When I pointed out that in my experience most student questions aren't that difficult I was met with unbelief. Trust me, I've been thrown in the deep end teaching things I don't really understand, after doing some basic research I've found students very rarely asked me a question I can't even half answer, and when they do, they're usually quite happy when I say 'I don't know, I'll get back to you on that'.
are there other reasons you can't interact with the students? Sometimes its just impossible, I've been part of a team supporting UK army students overseas and it was impossible to have them interacting in any meaningful way. But if you can have contact you will find it adds a lot of value, for example, in the UK Open Uni students on a course were contacted proactively by the tutor over the phone. The students rated this contact highly.
If you haven't heard of it before I can recommend reading around Constructivism, plenty of links here at moodle.org, its why Martin started Moodle in the first place.
Hope those thoughts are helpful, interested to hear more about your planned courses
Rich
Welcome to Moodle! its a great piece of software and the community here is really friendly.
Technically what you suggest is straight forward and Moodle can do it fine. But I think you are missing out on what makes a course and course and not just a e-text book. Interestingly, I've been having a conversation with an organisation wishing to branch out from face to face teaching to web courses here in the UK. Their attitude was similar to yours:
I don't want to confuse students, and I certainly don't have the
expertise to be able to handle inquiries they might ask a "teacher."
his version was 'we can't get the experts to answer questions students might put them'. When I pointed out that in my experience most student questions aren't that difficult I was met with unbelief. Trust me, I've been thrown in the deep end teaching things I don't really understand, after doing some basic research I've found students very rarely asked me a question I can't even half answer, and when they do, they're usually quite happy when I say 'I don't know, I'll get back to you on that'.
are there other reasons you can't interact with the students? Sometimes its just impossible, I've been part of a team supporting UK army students overseas and it was impossible to have them interacting in any meaningful way. But if you can have contact you will find it adds a lot of value, for example, in the UK Open Uni students on a course were contacted proactively by the tutor over the phone. The students rated this contact highly.
If you haven't heard of it before I can recommend reading around Constructivism, plenty of links here at moodle.org, its why Martin started Moodle in the first place.
Hope those thoughts are helpful, interested to hear more about your planned courses
Rich