Mahara area

One of my objectives is to explore the use of Mahara to allow students to showcase and share their work with tutors and peers for peer assessment and most importantly External Verifier (EV) could view individual students' e-portfolio with a click of mouse. By using Mahara, I will be able to achieve the above.

The Higher and Advanced Diploma in IT are relatively new curriculum and structures of delivery and assessment needless to say are completely different from existing vocational National Diplomas. Due to the fact that students are not allowed to showcase their work on Mahara until the end of controlled assessment, students uses Mahara to upload and share files and documents with tutors in/ outside of class. The idea is to allow tutors to mark and track individuals' progress of the class activities or homework during the delivery period of the course.
The following shows what the students shares with me in my Multimedia class.













I find this really useful for me and I know colleagues on the team also uses Mahara to create a group for both groups of students and use it as a tracking mechanism and feedback purposes.

Use of PDP in Moodle

The college is implementing and encouraging tutors to use moodle for electronic tutorial records, professional learning targets and allowing students to have the opportunity to document their interest, career aspirations and area where they could have a confidential area to self-evaluate or reflect on their own performance on the course and identifying if they require additional support from tutors. The left screen shot shows the report or progress of students completing their PDP on moodle.

Being a course tutor, it is my duty to ensure that
students' welfares are taken care of and especially their performance during the course of their studies. Moodle has come in really handy for me as a course tutor, to monitor students submission of work and tracking their progress throughout the whole course and other unit components that I don't deliver. The screen shot on the right displays an example of achieved targets from a randomly picked student from the Higher Diploma IT.



Moodle has made it convenient for both the students and the tutor to set specific targets, monitor the progress and sign off to mark that the relevant targets has been met, in order to obtain EMA bonus at the end of the term.

The screen shot on the left displays an example of a student reviewing their own progress with their tutor and a record of the tutorial discussion follows on what they have discussed and agreed.

Moodle has certainly helped tutors saves quite a lot of time tracking individuals' performance and progress by providing an online centralised tracking mechanism where other subject tutors could comment on. I personally find Moodle system easy to use and the only barrier as a full-time tutor with limited course management & tutorial time allocated would not allow much opportunities for me to further consider how I could utilise the tools available on moodle to enhance my lesson delivery and to further investigate how my students learn best online. By having the opportunities to sit and plan on how to use those to fit into the new curriculum delivery and set deadlines by awarding body. I think college or school should consider allocating specific or extra time for course tutors to explore and plan how these tools could be implemented.

Quiz tool in Moodle

As I was exploring the tools provided in moodle, I came across the Quiz tool, where tutor could ask students on open/close or open questions to allow students the opportunities to express themselves freely. As you can see on the left screen shot, I have used the Quiz tool to enquire if students from the Higher Diploma Level 2 students enjoy using the new Moodle as their virtual learning portal/ envrionment.

As seen above the answer from a randomly picked student response on the specific question: 'Do you find Moodle interesting?'. It clearly shown that student do like the idea of having so many varieties of tools available to assess and record their achievement online.

Some students has also verbally feedback that they prefer the new moodle in comparison with the old VLE named 'Blackboard'. Reason being is that the functionalities and features available in moodle has a lot of similarities to their social networking site, i.e. facebook, beeboo and hi5 account, focusing on communication and Quiz tool allows them opportunities to assess their initial knowledge on the subject.

Due to the shortage of time to fully explore the features and functionalities of moodle and to prepare resources or materials online. I felt like I could do much better than what I have contributed and done for my current students.

My E-me experience!

So far, my experience of using Moodle/ E-me is quite pleasant and I particularly like the features for submitting and marking learners' work on-line.

It saves so much time and papers! which results in my desk looks much more tidier than last academic year!

Coming back to the different types of assignment submission methods, I have used the 'Advanced Assignment Submission' tool/ activity to allow my learners to submit, marked and feedback as many times as they like, and learners love it!

Reason being is that they won't have to worry about the printing quota anymore and gets their feedback instantly.

Online marking has never been easier with E-me, it allows you to correct/ highlight learner's work on their assignment/ doc itself by using 'Online Text' assignment tool, where they could just login to E-me and make the amendment and resubmit it and be graded/ marked.

By doing this, especially with the new Diploma, learners would have a clearer idea which mark band are they currently working on and what needs to be done to pursue/ gain higher marks.

This not only motivates learners to put in more efforts to achieve higher marks, but they also learn how they are being assessed according to the mark grid and prepare themselves when the control assessment start.

Well, that is my experience so far with the assignment tools on E-me.

How do I set out to achieve my objectives!

The action plan to achieve the objectives:

Objective 1: To enhance the learning and delivery of the Higher Diploma
Action 1: Using Assignment Tool in Moodle to submit, track and grade students’ work

Objective 2: To centralise resources
Action 2.1: All handouts, podcast, vodcast, lectures are to be uploaded onto relevant files/ folders



Action 2.2: Coursework to be uploaded on Mahara Portfolio area.


Action 2.3: Students to create a view where external assessor/ examiner could view/ assess their product or coursework online

Objective 3: To have one standard point of communication across the board
Action 3.1: Calendar to be visible on the right panel of Moodle to remind students of submitting their coursework on-time

Action 3.2: Chat room for employer/ mentor from work to communicate with the students (during the period of June - Work Experience)

Action 3.3: ILP using Moodle PLP area– individual chat room and recording the conversation

Objectives/ Outcomes of Moodle experience!

Here I would like to share what I intend to achieve from participating in this Moodle project!

Objectives:

1. To enhance the learning and delivery of the Higher Diploma
2. To centralise resources
3. To have one standard point of communication across the board

Outcomes:

Students should be able to:

1. Utilise the facilities provided by Moodle to help organise their work during their study with the college
2. Engage and take responsibilities in their own learning by independently exploring the tools and functions available to produce their coursework
3. obtain help from everyone who participate in Moodle, this includes tutors, peers or classmates

Tutors should be able to:

1. Utilise the facilities available on Moodle and embed it into their teaching or delivery
2. Record assessment progress by using the tracking mechanism available on Moodle
3. Conduct more activities online to provide opportunities for students to engage in their learning, expand and applied their knowledge of technologies into practice

The next post I will be publishing is how I set out to achieve the above mentioned objectives and outcomes. Don't miss it!

Moodle Experience!

The objective of this blog is for me and the Diploma team to contribute or describe our journey with all aspects of Moodle and the Diploma.