How Moodle Is Ignatian

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How Moodle Is Ignatian
A Presentation for the JSEA Colloquium Presented
by Anthony Borrow, S.J. and Miguel
Santos of Dallas Jesuit College Preparatory June
26, 2007 Cincinnati, Ohio
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How Moodle Is Ignatian

• An Overview of Where We Are and Where We Are
  Headed
• Context What are your interests, hopes,
  expectations?
• Context How this presentation came about
• Experience - What is the IPP? What does it mean
  to be an Ignatian educator?
• Experience - What is Moodle?
• Reflection - How Moodle Is Ignatian
• Reflection - What does this have to do with
  social justice?
• Action - How can Moodle facilitate collaboration?
• Evaluation - Reviewing the data
• Questions and Answers (maybe)

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How Moodle Is Ignatian

• Context Lets see if the pieces fit
• What are your interests, hopes, and expectations
  from this presentation?
• What experience do you have with the IPP?
• What experience do you have with Moodle or other
  online technologies?
• What experience do you have with teaching?

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Who Moodles?
A number of Jesuit schools have already adopted
Moodle as their choice for Course Management
Software including Strake in Houston and the
University of Detroit High School. In addition
there is the larger Moodle community of over 1150
organization in 81 countries.
Total of Moodle Sites 9408 Total of Moodle
Courses 247024 Total of Moodle Users
2649168 Total of Moodle Teachers 440749 Total
of Forum Posts 2803617 Total of Course
Resources 1511822 Total of Quiz questions
1697332
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How Moodle Is Ignatian

• My context something was missing
• Why I began searching for something like Moodle
• My first experiences of Moodle
• How this presentation came about

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How Moodle Is Ignatian

• Experience
• What is the IPP?
• The way in which teachers accompany learners
  along the path to knowledge and freedom
  (OConnell)
• Context
• Experience
• Reflection
• Action
• Evaluation
• Identify the key characteristics of being an
  Ignatian educator?

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What is Moodle?
Its like MySpace except for school
unidentified student
Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environm
ent
Do you Moodle? As a verb it refers to using the
software
Got Moodle? As a noun it refers to the software
When young you are, Moodle you must!
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What is Moodle?
Moodle is part of a group of software called
Course Management Systems, Learning Management
Systems (LMS), or Virtual Learning Environments
(VLE). E-Learning attempts to allow students to
use online resources and interactions to promote
learning.
Moodle is a course management system a FREE,
Open Source software package designed using sound
pedagogical principles, to help educators create
effective online learning communities.
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Moodle Philosophy
What is Moodle?
Activities are at the heart of a course
management system. Moodle was designed by an
Australian educator and computer scientist
(Martin Dougiamas), with social constructionist
principles in mind. Constructionism asserts
that learning is particularly effective when
constructing something for others to experience.
This can be anything from a spoken sentence or an
internet posting, to more complex artifacts like
a painting, a house or a software package. In a
similar way, Ignatian pedagogy encourages using
context, experience, reflection, action, and
evaluation.
Martin Dougiamas Creator Lead Developer
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Promoting Learner Involvement
Why use Moodle?
A constructivist perspective views learners as
actively engaged in making meaning, and teaching
with that approach looks for what students can
analyze, investigate, collaborate, share, build
and generate based on what they already know,
rather than what facts, skills, and processes
they can parrot. Some of the tenets of
constructivism in pedagogical terms include

• Students come to class with an established
  world-view (context), formed by years of prior
  experience and learning.
• Even as it evolves, a students context filters
  all experiences andaffects their interpretations
  of observations.
• For students to change their world-view
  requires work.
• Students learn from each other as well as the
  teacher through course content and through
  reflection about the meaning and usefulness of
  that content.
• Students learn better by doing (action).
• Allowing and creating opportunities for all to
  have a voice promotesthe construction of new
  ideas and assists teachers in evaluating the
  successfulness of their learning activities

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Moodle Tools
ResourcesThe primary tool for bringing content
into a course may be a plain text label, a simple
web or text page, links to the web and uploaded
files.

• What online resources are available to help add
  some BANG to your course? Do you know of any
  websites that you would like to have available to
  your students as a reference for the course? Do
  you know how to make these online resources
  available to your students? With Moodle it is
  very simple to add links to these resources with
  no fear of blowing up your website.
• Perhaps extra-credit for a student who finds an
  online resource that you use on Moodle? Now
  instead of you searching for that perfect website
  the entire class is collaborating to search for
  and share resources that enhance the learning
  environment.

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How to Moodle
Activities are the heart of making the most use
of Moodle in your classroom and helping your
Moodle course stand out in the field. You can
choose from a variety of interactive tools to
help get your students more involved with course
material in a personalized way.
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How to Moodle

• Assignments
• Used to assign online or offline tasks learners
  can submit tasks in any file format (e.g. Word,
  Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, image, a/v etc.).
  Assignments with due dates are automatically
  added to the student calendar.
• Online tasks are useful for assigning a simple
  paper or journal that you wish to grade online.
  Simple editing features such as bold, italics,
  underline are available. In addition, a
  convenient word count is available.
• Offline tasks are useful for reading
  assignments, work that you will be collecting by
  hand, etc.
• Uploaded tasks are great for PowerPoints (no
  more logging in and out)

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How to Moodle
Forum Discussions allow for students to have a
conversation about a topic outside of the
classroom. I have assigned these as homework
assignments during movies and for presentations
that the students attend to assess what the
students are picking up on. Then I can use class
time to re-direct or focus on a particular issue.
Can be really helpful for the introverted student
who needs time to pull his thoughts together
before speaking.
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How to Moodle

• Glossary
• Allows for the creation of a glossary of terms
  used in a course. Has display format options
  including entry list, encyclopaedia, FAQ, and
  dictionary style.
• I like to use this as a way of highlighting
  vocabulary and allowing the students to build a
  study resource for themselves.

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How to Moodle

• Questionnaires
• Student surveys are a breeze using Moodle.
  Private questionnaires are appropriate for using
  with a single class. Templates can be made to be
  used in multiple classes. Public questionnaires
  allow you to survey multiple classes but have the
  results automatically tabulated in one place.

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How to Moodle

• Questionnaires
• After the students have completed the
  questionnaire, the teachers see the results
  already tabulated (no more counting!)
• Surveys can be given anonymously (while ensuring
  that a student only takes the survey one time) or
  stored with the name

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How to Moodle
Quiz Create all the familiar forms of assessment
including true-false, multiple choice, short
answer, matching question, and essay questions.
Question and answers can be shuffled. Random
questions can be chosen from a question bank.
Question banks can be shared and worked on
together by using a Teacher Repository.
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How to Moodle
Quiz Students can review their quiz attempts to
see which questions they answered correctly (or
not). Options are available so that the student
can see the correct answer (or not) as well as
feedback as to why a particular answer was
incorrect.
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How to Moodle
Quiz Teachers can conveniently view student
scores on the attempts and then view those
attempts to see which questions were missed. In
addition, teachers can see how long a student
spent taking the quiz. If given as a homework
assignment the teacher may be interested in the
time that the student took the quiz. All of this
information is readily available.
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How to Moodle
Quiz My favorite quiz feature is the item
analysis where I can sort the questions in order
of most missed and review the quiz with the
class. This gives an opportunity to correct
common mistakes that the students have made. If I
make a mistake on the quiz, I can correct it on
the spot and re-grade the quiz attempts on the
spot.
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How to Moodle

• Other Moodle Activities include
• Chat - Allows real-time synchronous
  communication by learners.
• Choice - Instructors create a question and a
  number of choices for learners results are
  posted for learners to view. Use this module to
  do quick surveys on subject matter.
• Feedback The feedback module is similar to the
  questionnaire in that it allows the teacher to
  create surveys. Dallas JCP used this module to
  implement course evaluations. It is simpler than
  the questionnaire module however, both the
  feedback and questionnaire modules are custom
  additions to Moodle. The feedback module is being
  considered for inclusion in the standard Moodle
  distribution for version 1.9.
• Lesson - Allows instructor to create and manage
  a set of linked "Pages". Each page can end with
  a question. The student chooses one answer from a
  set of answers and either goes forward, backward
  or stays in the same place in the lesson
• Wiki - Enables documents to be authored
  collectively in a simple markup language using a
  web browser. The Moodle wiki module enables
  participants to work together on web pages to
  add, expand and change the content.
• Workshop - An activity for peer assessment of
  documents (Word, PP etc.) that students submit
  online. Participants can assess each others
  project. Teacher makes final student assessment,
  and can control opening and closing periods.

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The Many Faces of Moodle
Students can be free to personalize Moodle by
selecting their own theme or language however,
Teachers can force a theme for a course to help
it stand out or force a language to provide an
online, interactive experience of working in a
foreign language. Students appreciate the choice
and it helps them to take ownership of their
learning.
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How to Moodle

• Messaging
• Moodle has allowed me to increase my availability
  to the students. When a student has a question
  for outside of class I request that they send a
  Moodle message. The advantage is that I can view
  my communication history with a student and it
  provides a wonderful documentation tool. I like
  to remind students when they do not complete an
  assignment. Then when I have a parent teacher
  conference I have a record of my significant
  communications with the student. You also have
  the ability to control who can message you.
• Students can also message one another should
  they have questions.

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Learner Management Features - Calendar
Students can easily see what work they have due
for a single course or all of their
courses. Students can then click on a given
activity and receive more detailed information.
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How Moodle Is Ignatian

• Reflection
• How Moodle Is Ignatian, Let us see
• I hinted that the social constructivist pedagogy
  sets up a good environment for the IPP but how
  exactly does this get played out online with the
  tools available in Moodle?
• Some examples may help to better illustrate the
  correlation

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How Moodle Is Ignatian

• Reflection
• Lets reflect on how we might use Moodle to get a
  students CONTEXT.
• Which resource or activity might be helpful?
• For a single question I might use the choice
  activity
• For multiple questions I could use the feedback
  activity

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How Moodle Is Ignatian

• Reflection
• Im trying to share some information with my
  students that we have reviewed in class. I want
  them to be able to review that EXPERIENCE on
  their own.
• Which Moodle tool can help me now?
• Resource link to a file
• While this could be a topic for debate, I
  frequently make my PowerPoint presentations
  available to my students so that I can keep the
  students engaged in conversation rather than
  taking notes.

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How Moodle Is Ignatian

• Reflection
• Now that the student has some new information, I
  want to see what the student can do with it. I
  want the student to read the material and apply
  to his or her life by writing an essay. Is there
  a Moodle tool I can use to encourage the student
  toward deeper REFLECTION?
• The assignment activity is great for assigning a
  writing assignment to see what the student has
  learned. Are there any other activities that
  might work better as a group activity?
• Perhaps a forum?

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How Moodle Is Ignatian

• Reflection
• Great, so now how can I have the student do
  something that demonstrates that they actually
  learned something? What ACTION might a teacher
  typically do to assess learning?
• Exactly! The quiz activity but wait, what did
  he just say, open-book, open-note, open-friend?
  How is that learning?
• Hint What action is taking place? (its not
  cheating).

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How Moodle Is Ignatian

• Reflection
• Now, how can I get an EVALUATION of the learning
  that took place?
• While an obvious thought might be another
  feedback or choice activity, I like to look at
  the activity reports (or Moodle logs) to see how
  things stacked up

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How Moodle Is Ignatian

• Reflection - So lets review your Moodle tool
  box. Moodle can be used to help you
• identify the CONTEXT of your students
• provide learning EXPERIENCES (resources) to your
  students
• Encourage deeper REFLECTION on the material
• Take ACTION and applying the knowledge and skills
  to complete some type of an assessment (i.e.
  assignment, quiz, wiki, etc.)
• Provide you with the data you need to EVALUATE
  the learning that took place.

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How Moodle Is Ignatian

• Reflection
• What does this have to do with social justice?
• Because Moodle is open source (i.e. free) it can
  be used by various humanitarian groups. For
  example, Moodle is used in a variety of
  third-world settings including to help educate
  nurses about HIV in Africa, to provide
  educational resources throughout Brazil, Mexico,
  and Central America. By supporting Moodle and
  helping to improve it we also help improve the
  resources available to other institutions who
  would not otherwise be able to afford such a
  system.

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How Moodle Is Ignatian

• Action
• How does Moodle facilitate collaboration?
• Ideally, I would like all of you to be able to
  use Moodle but lets
• look at some examples
• Discuss teacher repositories within a school
• Explore the possibilities of creating a Jesuit
  Moodle Network
• What can happen when we put our Moodles together?

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How Moodle Is Ignatian

• Evaluation
• Reviewing the data What Ive learned this year
  from the facts
• My students are motivated to learn
• I wonder how many times they took the sample
  final exam? How much time did they spend studying
  or preparing? (Repetition)
• My students are interested in learning
• What happened when I provided a resource to my
  students that was not assigned, not for credit
• When do students work?
• Not on Saturdays! (and I can prove it)

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Why should I use Moodle?
Moodle provides tools that benefit both student
and teacher. It provides the teacher with a
number of tools to implement the IPP. It provides
the student with the skills and opportunity to
learn how to use those tools.
St. Ignatius notion of the tantum quantum says
that we should use all created things (including
tools like Moodle) in so far as they help us to
make progress (in the spiritual life) and to
avoid them in so far as it hinders our progress.
Similarly, my hope is that you will discover some
ways that Moodle might help you to better utilize
technology in the classroom. Use it in so far as
it helps you.
As Ignatian educators, Moodle will enable you to
better collaborate with your colleagues by
sharing resources, ideas, and hopefully workload.
I like to call this the divide and conquer
method.
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How Moodle Is Ignatian

• QA
• What questions, concerns, ideas, hopes or fears
  has this presentation raised for you?
• Hurdling the technology gap
• Does your school have adequate computer access
  for students?
• What about parent access?
• With Moodle 1.8 you can control and customize the
  level of parent access your school desires

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Why use Moodle?

• Moodle helps prepare the student for college life
  and assists the student in developing the skills
  to become a life long learner.
• Why is it important for our students to be able
  to know about and utilize Learning Management
  Systems like Moodle?
• Many colleges and universities are using such
  technology to manage their courses. Some common
  commercial (i.e. NOT FREE) LMSs that you may
  already be familiar with include
  Blackboard/WebCT.
• The average internet user is online 3 hours per
  day. 57 of that time is used as a communication
  tool (email, instant messaging, chat rooms, forum
  discussion boards). The remaining time is divided
  between (surprise, surprise) game playing
  (20.3), web surfing (15), and shopping (10).

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Why use Moodle?
It is important to teach the students how to
effectively and appropriately use technology for
educational purposes that build a real sense of
community. Moodle allows for student activities
to be monitored and evaluated. Students can
receive feedback from their peers as well as
their instructor. This provides for personal
formation (cura personalis)
St. Ignatius says that we should go in their
door and bring them out yours. Moodle provides a
way to communicate with the students through the
internet which is a medium familiar to them. We
use that familiarity to engage our students on a
deeper level. By doing so, we teach them how to
use the internet to increase their knowledge.
They become active learners.
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Why use Moodle?

• Student Achievement with Technology
• Exposure to Technology helps student
  achievement. Students scored in the 64th
  percentile when exposed to technology as opposed
  to the 50th percentile when not exposed to
  technology (Kulik).
• Students who are knowledgeable of how to use
  technology have higher self-esteem (Milken).
• The appropriate use of technology allows for
  more individualized instruction (Waterford).
• The ability to use technology provides the
  student with more developed skills for the
  acquisition and organization of information
  (Apple).

Students appreciate having course resources
available to them and have expressed that Moodle
helps them stay organized. Teachers have access
to a greater amount of a students work and
better documentation.
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Why use Moodle?

• Student Achievement with Technology
• Utilizing technology allows for
• higher student engagement of fundamental
  learning principles (Apple)
• Faster comprehension of material (Kulik)
• More cooperative group environments (MIT)
• Better communication and demonstration of
  understanding
• I hope that it allows for
• increased sense of community
• better utilization of classroom time to focus on
  material not understood or mastered

If you have any questions about steps to take so
that your school can begin to use Moodle or
simply how to better utilize Moodle please
contact Anthony Borrow, S.J. (aborrow_at_jesuitcp.org
). Anthony is committed to promoting the use of
open source solutions in education.