Moodle Project Guidelines

You'll be working on creating an online lesson/activity in moodle throughout February and March.  We'll then test each others' moodle courses out and leave feedback.

We'll be covering how to do each of components of your moodle project throughout the semester.

The minimum requirements are:

1. Students must be able to do your activity online.  Don't assume the instructor (you) is going to be in the same room as the student using your moodle course.  This means you need to clearly explain what the student is to do.  You might do this via a video introduction or screencast, for example.
2. Your moodle course must incorporate some constructivist activity.  This might be some real-world problem or scenario, or a game for example.   Some open-ended, participatory, non-artificial task.  You might have students use the blog or wiki or discussion forum to discuss a problem or project, for example.  I'll give several examples of how to do this in week 5.
3. Your moodle course must incorporate some assessment activity, as well as an exit survey.  It might be formative or summative.  It might be a quiz or an assignment with a rubric, or you might formatively assess blog posts or discussion posts, etc. Week 6 will cover this.  The exit survey can be created using the 'feedback' activity in moodle, and would ask questions like 'what would you change or improve about this course?'
4. Your moodle course must incorporate multimedia somehow.  This most likely would be a video screencast(s) (using http://screencast-o-matic.com/ or a similar tool), or an audio podcast, or embedding a video or flash animation or game.  We'll cover this later in February.

Points and Deadlines:

Your moodle project is worth 100 points and is broken up into several stages.  Do each stage in order and wait until your topic is approved before proceeding.

Deadlines for each stage below may be adjusted based on class progress (they may be pushed back, they won't be moved up).

We are doing the project in 3 stages, with 3 deadlines for each:

1. Blog about a possible topic (Due by Feb. 3rd) Post to your blog with a topic for your moodle project.  Think about the 'big idea' or ideas you want students to understand.  This is the first stage of backward design, which we'll learn more about in the coming weeks.
2. Get approval for your topic (will be done by instructor shortly after Feb. 3rd) Check your blog post for comments from the instructor.  You may need to make adjustments to your topic (narrow the focus) or even pick a different topic if it doesn't meet the requirements (conceptual not procedural, involves a misconception)
3. Blog about converting your topic into a problem or scenario (due by  Feb. 17th)  As noted in the above requirements, you'll need to design your moodle project in a constructivist way.  Most likely this would involve creating scenario or problem to hook students into your topic (but it could also involve a game, or database of cases, or some design activity...).  See the Week 5 resources on problem-based learning for more guidance, especially the Converting a Topic into a Problem page.
4. Blog about stage 1 and 2 of backward design for your moodle project (due by Feb. 24th).  What is or are the big idea(s) or essential question(s) you want students to learn from your moodle module?  How are you going to assess that students understand them.  Post to your moodle blog about your plan, following the guidelines provided by Backward Design (see the Week 6 resources).
5. Create assessment activity in your moodle course (due by March 3rd) The second stage of backward design. We'll learn about formative assessments and other types of assessments, and how to create assessment activities in moodle, in week 6.  ALSO required in your moodle project is a simple exit survey using the 'feedback' activity in moodle.
6. Blog with a progress report (I've cancelled this assignment - just please don't wait until the last week or last day to start creating learning activities in your moodle course)
7. Finish design and create exit survey (due date pushed back one week to March 31st) - Create the learning activities and multimedia for your moodle project, finishing it up.  Create an exit survey at the end of your moodle module asking participants questions like 'what did you like about this lesson' and 'what would you improve about it' and so forth.  Use the 'Feedback' activity in moodle to create this anonymous exit survey (select 'Feedback' from the Activity popup menu at the end of a section while in editing mode in Moodle).
8. Testing (finish by April 7th) - Spend a week trying out 3 other moodle projects and leaving feedback in their exit survey.
9. Post-mortem blog post (due April 14th) - Post to your moodle blog with reflections on your project based on your experience and the feedback you got.  What changes/improvements would you make if you had more time or money, for example?

Grading

The blog posts will count for your weekly assignments (10 points each), and your moodle project will be graded as a whole (100 points) by how it meets the minimum requirements listed at the top.  Each of the 4 minimum requirements counts for 25% of the grade.

That's it!  If you have any questions or run into any issues using moodle, feel free to email me or post to the help forum on our class page.