Moodle, H5P and Sorting Activities

I was asked to replicate a sorting activity. See, as an instructional practice, we have a couple of groups of things that we have educators sort. We have twenty slips of paper that are cut out. We ask the participants to sort the items into two columns. Usually, we have participants work in teams. 

The activity works well. They can sort and discuss and resort. What it doesn’t do well is scale. It’s fine that we have six envelopes with twenty slips of paper each. However, we are being called on to complete this exercise with a very large group. This would call for thirty envelopes. That’s a lot of copy/cut and organize. Plus, this activity would then be rolled out to their staffs. 

Instead of making all those copies, cutting up all those slips of paper and stuffing them into envelopes, I decided to move this to a digital activity. But how? Certainly we could’ve used Google Drawing and shared the document. That would work, but the user experience isn’t wonderful. 

Rather, I turned to Moodle and H5P (two pieces of open source software that can really help with learning). H5P activities can occur right within Moodle. I quickly created a Drag and Drop activity using H5P within a Moodle course. Now, the can easily be replicated. A quick back-up and restore, and done. 

For the participants, this is great as well. They have a labeled column on either side of the screen (Column A & Column B). In the middle are 20 statements which they can drag to either column. They just need to put the statement anywhere in the column. Once they are done and agree, they can click the “How did we do?” button. This will show them which answers are correct (appear shaded green) and which one are incorrect (appear shaded red). Then they can try again if they wish. (The statements will all return to their original position in the middle, so no mindless moving of the statements). 

This same process could be used with a chart as well. I’ve shared this process with a social studies teacher who is going to have the students classify different time periods in terms of different criteria. (Basically, the teacher has a table with twelve different boxes. Each box has one to four statements that occur with that box. 

The statements will be available on the screen below the table. Students can then drag the statements into the correct box. 

This process can also be done with GapFill. However, in GapFill, the student must put the statements exactly where the teacher had them (so, not only in the right box, but the right line of the right box). With H5P, we can designate anywhere in the box. 

I think that this is a great enhancement. It allows teachers to replicate and scale a useful teaching strategy. Not to mention that the assignment can easily be differentiated for students with different needs. 

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