Poet Ponders the Digital

I recorded grades and the end is near. The last day of class was May 4… teaching is over for me, for now. The future isn't clear, yet, but it appears I won't be teaching next year and maybe for a few years to come. I'm not sure I'll have much of anything to say about teaching and technology, but you never know. I do leave thinking Moodle is much better than Blackboard's alternatives. Moodle was a much better experience, overall. The gradebook, forums, wiki, and other features were fantastic. Maybe I'll be teaching again sooner than I anticipate. In the meantime, I'll be writing away.

In the last few days, I have noticed what might be called an "explosion" of activity on the forums for my writing class. With 23 students, these where the statistics: Thursday: 56 new posts. Friday: 246 new posts. Saturday: 100+ new posts. After you scroll through the posts, reading them or not, Moodle marks the posts as read. This means that each night's posts were counted separately. I make that distinction because WebCT didn't take the same approach -- some posts I had read would remain marked "new" for several days. What leads to twelve discussion threads being so active? I'm not sure but I am going to explain what I do. It should be noted that I use online spaces for every class, so students always have access to materials. However, I do not use the online spaces for instruction when a course is not specifically online. The current course is traditional and the forums are mainly to help students discuss assignments. 1) I set "weekly...

I still dislike the "pop-up" or "list" method for entering grades in Moodle. I could enter digits much faster; I hate being forced to use the mouse / touchpad to select grades. This is consuming a bit more time than it should, but it seems comparable to Blackboard in terms of the time and effort. At least I have Moodle set to always show the complete enrollment when I enter grades. For some reason, Blackboard always showed only ten students at a time, no matter how often I told the system I wanted to see 25 or more students at once. The grade book for Moodle is a bit confusing, still. I use a Numbers spreadsheet I migrated from MS Excel, so the online grades are only for students to track their progress. Still, I wish the display were a little easier to read. The last column is showing an average points earned per assignment, when what I would like to see is a points total. I'm sure I'll figure out how to change this… but it isn't a major issue right n...

I went back to requiring weekly responses to readings and lectures after two semesters without the requirement. I know students always complained about weekly responses and I found that the grades in a course would not change with or without the responses. But, something told me that the online conversations were valuable. There are already 138 posts to the forums on Moodle this semester. The students are using the forums actively, along with the group wiki pages I set up on Moodle for students. The posts reflect a much deeper attention to detail than I think the students exhibited in the courses without weekly responses. While the grades might not be different without the responses, I'm convinced the overall quality of work and reflection is higher. I realize that if the grading were more objective this would not be an issue — in a writing course we always "curve" the grades somewhat based on the work in that class. Also, I think the students rise to what they perc...

I have experienced two issues with Moodle that annoy me. One is inconvenient, the other is truly frustrating. The inconvenience doesn't surprise me: the full-featured editor and some dialogs do not function properly in Safari. Since I don't mind coding the HTML manually, this is okay, but for students wanting the "Word-like" editor I have to explain they need to use another browser on a Mac. It's definitely not unusual, since Blackboard behaved oddly via Safari. The frustration was with assignments. If you select a "single file" assignment, you cannot return a copy of the file with comments. The problem for me, and probably other writing instructors, is that mark-up is part of the grading process. I like to return a paper with comments in the original file. If you create an "Advanced Assignment" item you can return drafts, with certain requirements. But, not realizing I had to create an "Advanced Assignment" even for a single fi...

Students have submitted their first assignments via Moodle and are starting to use the Moodle-based Wiki system for group projects. I have a lot of ideas for using this system, so I'll have to consider how the ideas might be shifted to Blackboard just in case. I like the use of standards within the Moodle Wiki and how easy it was to create a Wiki per group. I am going to be grading papers today, so I'll learn about returning them with grades tonight. So far, I'm obviously pleased with how flexible the system is. There are often too many choices, but I'm willing to tolerate some of the complexity for the extra power I seem to have as an instructor. Maybe newer versions of Blackboard will be as flexible. If I accept a post at a BB-only campus, I hope to have some time to play with any modules they have added. Moodle is working so much better for me that I'd hate to go back, though.

Moodle is definitely proving to be more flexible and, sometimes, more efficient than Blackboard. I created five groups for class today in under 15 minutes, something I could not do as quickly in Blackboard. I then created a Wiki for each group in only three steps. The Wiki in Moodle does use HTML instead of Wikitext, but that's okay with me and should be okay for students. The system is new for most students, but they seem to have far less difficulty than my previous classes with Blackboard. That's a definite positive to using Moodle. The campus interviews I have for tenure-track posts use Blackboard. If hired, I would certainly want to advocate for Moodle, now. Unfortunately, such choices are seldom up to instructors and few IT departments want to support several platforms. Reporting is overly detailed in Moodle; I would prefer a chart or something by student. Still, it is nice to be able to check so many student activities. Next week I collect my first online assignment and r...

This semester I am using Moodle for online course content, after six years of Blackboard use (including WebCT, WebVista). I thought I'd chronicle my experiences; I know it helps me refine my thoughts and it might help other instructors. As I design my course, which starts Jan. 19, 2010, I am finding some things take a bit of extra work with Moodle. This is because the system tends to present every possible variable for an activity, even when only two or three are required. It would be nice to have a "show basic" option for some tasks. I realize some instructors use every option, so those should be easily accessible, but cut the clutter is a good design philosophy. When I do use an option, such as setting the maximum points for an assignment, the system uses a "pop-up" or "drop-down" list, when I would rather key in the numeric value and tab to the next field. Scrolling through every number, from 1000 to 1, for "points possible" is annoying. I...