Art Lader

Paul,

Once again, a meaty post, full of useful insights and information.

I am on the way to school, so I will have to come back to it, but I'll bet that your fellow Moodlers will be very interested in knowing more about your student-led course.

Re "students want teacher interaction": That has been my experience over the years. My high school students want me to be present in the course.

This is something I will be thinking about today:

• Year 9 - engagement
• Year 10 - exploration
• Year 11 - experiential
• Year 12 - evaluative

I wonder what others have to add to that, if their experiences have been similar to or different from yours.

Have to run!

-- Art

Dear Paul,

What a great post. I do not think I can improve upon this: "an exemplary course has cognitively-graded exposure, slowly developed by all stakeholders through time, led by supportive senior executive." I will probably print that out and post it on the wall beside my desk.

This makes me a little crazy, though: "and many had no idea they had to lead." How can a principal not know that his or her leadership is necessary in almost all large, important undertakings at a school? I have been teaching thirty years and this baffles me.

And it is, in my experience, one of the most common obstacles that Moodle faces.

I wonder if you would care to elaborate a bit on making a course congruent with the cognitive development of the students. It would be very interesting to know a little more about that.

I hope that others will respond to your post. I think there's a lot of tasty meat in there we ought to chew on. (What a disgusting metaphor. I like it, though.)

-- Art

I do know this: I have taught dozens of Moodle training courses for Moodlerooms. When the boss (not necessarily the principal) is in the class, the other participants are usually very highly motivated. That's for sure.

Does this always translate into something wonderful after the course is over? I do not know. My gut tells me, though, that it probably does in many cases.

It seems to me that the ideal situation is probably enthusiasm among the folks who actually create and teach the courses supported by leadership from above.

But we already knew that, didn't we?

In the context of this discussion, maybe we need to build some truly exemplary courses before we bring our bosses on board. Maybe we need to have something really, really good to show our bosses. That might help get their support.

So it's good to think about what constitutes an exemplary course, no? And Martin's "Progression" seems to me to be useful in such a discussion.

-- Art

P.S. I am grateful that so many are taking part in this thread. I appreciate knowing what so many Fellow Moodlers think about this topic.

> Most Internet users are after instant information and gratification.

You are so right about that, John.

Anyway, I think that the intro course is a great idea. Well worth developing, in my opinion. Just have to keep pecking away at it, right?

I think that maybe one of the components of a really good course might be some sort of introduction or guide to reduce user frustration help users succeed in the course.

-- Art

Re: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=26282#p396932

Nice job, Anne!

I wonder if you might want to post that image somewhere appropriate at docs.moodle.org.

-- Art