un-course

I would like to see more un-courses. I like to learn in a group. It doesn't have to be taught or even highly organized. Someone has to get it started, and maybe do a re-cap. The topic has to be interesting or specific enough to attract a critical mass. But other than that, that is plenty to provide a satisfying and rewarding learning experience. That's an "un-course".

FOC08 Facilitating Online Communities and CCK08 Connectivism and Connected Knowledge courses were great. They both had hard-working leaders who added a lot of value - course outline, readings, discussion set-up, as well as some other key components, like promotion and directing traffic and modeling communication at the kick-off.

If CCK08 and FOC08 are any example, having very large numbers of interested participants and a few vocal ones help enormously. It seems that there are many more lurkes than regular contributors, and the numbers decline over time.

A mechanism for regular updates helps - subscriptions, automatic aggregation of posts, discussion digests emails provide reminders to participants. That way participants can see what's going on and determine if they want to jump in or save the information for a schedule time later.

The Moodle course managements systems is flexible and accommodating. This WikiEducator Moodle installation is a great example. Once the course was added, I was free to set-up and use that "course" for this un-course. So far I am delighted with the results. Of course, it would be nice to have more participants. But considering the promotion was limited to the WikiEducator group email list with approximately 600 subscribers, this is a great response.

I'd like to see more un-courses under the WikiEducator banner. I hope that the WE administration will continue to support, and even expand and encourage these learning opportunities. By providing a home and a platform, WikiEducator can promote the teaching and learning side as well as the content creation side of open learning.

Do you have any un-course ideas? What learning support to you and your learners need that can be provided by Moodle? Are there any other facilitation tools that would be useful for un-courses in the future? Can WikiEducator play a bigger, more active role in promoting un-courses?

Questions on getting students started on Catalyst

Question 1.
I think students in on-line classes have an orientation that Distance Learning prepared for them to learn Catalyst. I'm wondering if it's worthwhile for instructors to also have some kind of "Getting Started" page that shows students how to work with the material set up for their class? For example, two of the very basic tasks that my students would need to know for the class to flow smoothly are: 1. Allow their browsers to accept pop-up windows and 2. Use control-v (in Windows) to paste text into the web page that Catalyst provides, since the "paste" menu option doesn't work. Is this type of knowledge so basic that most students know that already or is it worth it for me to type something up, or is this information already available somewhere?

Question 2.
During the quarter, when students have Catalyst-type questions to which I don't know the answer, where is a good resource to direct them?

Question 3.
Since I require students to show up on-campus for exams, if they cannot make it during the scheduled time, is it Instructional Testing or Distance Learning who proctor the exam? Also, most on-line classes that I know schedule on-campus exams in the evening. Is this common practice or is it a requirement at De Anza?

Tracking students' work

Here we go. A question from one of the other TEI course participants.

Is it necessary for students to type their name on the on-line assignment that they submit, or is Moodle going to make it obvious whose work it is?

No and it depends. Moodle keeps track of EVERYTHING, so the identity of the student submitting an assignment is known. However, I usually expect students to include their name on formal assignments. They should always identify themselves on course work submissions, regardless of medium.

For discussions, I "sign" all my postings with just my initials - not really necessary, but I want students to realize it is me, the instructor, posting. Moodle automatically displays the poster's name and picture. I encourage students to provide a picture or an image for their profile which shows up in discussions and in lists of submitted work viewable by the instructor. Even if you don't have a "face" to go with a posting or a quiz submission, you have a "visual" for the student.

Any other thoughts or suggestions?

Groups - MoodleDocs

Scott brought up the subject of the Moodle Groups function. I thought there would plenty of good documentation about the Groups function available at moodle.org. I would just reference a couple of good sources and it would be covered, right? Well, there are resources, and you are welcome to poke around through them. However, they aren't what I was hoping for - a nice summary of group use and an overview of selecting among the options provided.

Also: watch out for versions - the Moodle documents (docs.moodle.org) may contain references to as many as 3 separate versions of Moodle - pre-1.7, 1.9 and ?? on a single page. Check with the context-sensitive help provided with the installed version of Moodle to be sure.

Groups FAQ - MoodleDocs
docs.moodle.org/en/Groups_FAQ
-- lots of questions and answers, some general overview, others more complex

Groups - MoodleDocs
The Groups feature allows a teacher to assign teachers and students to a group within a course. Participants in a course can belong to more than one group ...
docs.moodle.org/en/Groups
-- instructions for setting up groups

Using Moodle: Groups
You may wish to browse and/or contribute to Moodle Docs Groups. Page: 1 2 3 4 (Next) .... Have you solutions to these drawbacks of moodle groups please? ...
moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=1490
-- discussion forum - enter as guest - whole discussion on groups with people asking and answering specific questions

Using Moodle: Thinking Through Groups
Here are some comments and observations about the "Groups" interface (where an instructor can put participants in distinct groups) and other group-related ...
moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=63054
-- discussion forum - just enter as a guest ok to see comments - more talking about the function than how students and instructors use it, but it might answer some of your questions

Do any of these give you a good general understanding of the Moodle Groups function? Do these answer your questions?

If you find other resources that are good ones, please pass them along.