Hi there,
To add to what Marcus has said, "I try to suppress my innate desire to talk at them and use lots of varied moodle quiz questions to keep them doing things rather than simply being the passive recipient of information", I find that it's not the Moodle tools in themselves that are important (though they're the necessary infrastructure) but the interactive tasks that the teacher uses them to present to students. What works I find is to make them:
- a way for students to express their feelings and thoughts,
- obviously relevant to their field of study.
It's difficult to devise tasks that correspond to both criteria and I don't always succeed - but I try.
Though in an ideal world this wouldn't be necessary, I find it helps to give a score to everything they do: answers to Questionaires, contributions to Wikis and Glossaries, postings in Forums, etc. I only give one score: 100% (or nothing). I give them so many tasks, it's impossible to respond individually to each task performed by each student: it's a way of making it evident that their work has been noticed and valued. I make it clear to them that they are being graded on doing the tasks, not on how well they do them. My experience is with distance learning and I've found either students don't partipate at all (maybe because they're lazy or maybe because of a myriad of other reasons including the fact that my course doesn't correspond to their needs as they perceive them) or they participate a lot.
Cheers,
Glenys