Educator, Thinker, Consultant

Month: November 2014

Moodle Rubrics

I found this post, My Teacher is a Zombie, about using the rubrics function in Moodle whilst browsing. It is a very nice write up of using rubrics and especially using rubrics in Moodle.

Essentially, Mr. Dorian Love, mentions how he uses rubrics to quickly and more effectively provide feedback to students by using rubrics. This provides the students with a much better idea of what to improve if a higher grade (or more proficiency) is desired. He provides specifics (including a screenshot of an actual rubric) that he uses to grade his “zombie presentations”.

The biggest point that Mr. Love wants to make is in regards to the chore aspect of grading. Using rubrics can help smooth that out. Moodle can help reduce the friction of grading, make it more transparent and more understandable. Basically, it is a win all the way around.

Note that rubrics probably shouldn’t be the only method of grading that you use. This is one more place the Moodle really shines. Moodle does provide the teacher with multiple methods of providing feedback and grading. Within Moodle, the teacher can choose to use a variety of questions that can be automatically graded (multiple choice questions, Yes/No, True False, Matching, Math equations), short answer quizzes, essays, peer reviewed work, and reflections. Most of these can be mixed and matched together.

Like much of life, there is not one simple way of assessing student work. Moodle helps expand the possibilities of assessment in a way that can help teachers do real work.

Nice to hear

I’ve been working with a great group that is doing some really nice work with Moodle. My part of the process has been twofold:

  • working with the writers of the curriculum to identify how to use Moodle effectively and
  • working to help the teachers who will implement the curriculum become comfortable and adept at using Moodle.

There are some really talented individuals involved in the process. So when I received the email below, it felt really good.

I just want to tell you both how impressed I am with your work! I just went through the course and as I had questions, they magically were answered by the next text section. It is a very, very professional piece of work and something that you can take great pride in.

All too often, I fail to truly thank those who do terrific work. Receiving that email really made me feel good. It also reminded me to be more thankful of those I have the pleasure of working with.

Moodle and Social

Moodle is extremely powerful. However, it could be prettier. Well, at least some of us think so. One of the issues that some teachers face is that they are accustomed to using Social media (like Facebook) and have that as a reference point. Well, what if you could combine the power of Moodle with the familiar interface of Facebook?

Some really bright and influential people have teamed up to answer just that question. REMC has funded an effort to bring a much more social format to Moodle. This involves a degree of programming to make everything work. Moodle is built for this type of customization. The goal is to officially launch the project in January of 2015. The launch is projected for the Michigan Moodle Moot.

This is really about more than making Moodle pretty. It is about lowering the cognitive load for teachers and students. It is about providing a pathway to use Moodle. It is about lowering the barriers of entry. The hope is that this will give teachers and students an easy way to get involved with Moodle. Then, as teachers are ready, they can expand to advantage of the wide variety of tools that are available within Moodle.

Want to know more? Check out the video below.

What do you think? Would this be of interest to you?

This is a first implementation. So improvements will be made. We will be combining this with the evolve-D theme as well.

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