Students will explore learning management and content management systems for hosting and organizing online learning activity. Investigations will look at proprietary (e.g., Desire2Learn), open source (e.g., Moodle), Hybrid (e.g., Instructure Canvas) and non-traditional systems (e.g., Web 2.0) regarding the pros and cons and technical competencies for the design of learning activities and course management.
At the beginning of the course, we were told to keep this question in mind through the 6 week course:
How can Learning Management Systems (LMS and/or Non-LMS) help me develop courses where students learn in the best way for them (teacher-structured/personalized), while providing me with the tools I require for efficient and efficacious presentation, moderation, support, and assessment (for, as, and of learning)?
I think the key feature to any successful LMS is the organization and the opportunity for student engagement. Throughout this course, I have had a great deal of exposure to many tools that offer these things.
In creating my LMS unit and my non-LMS unit (which I will explain later), along with all the engaging conversation and input with the group, I found a long list of tools that cover all of these items. I added in every possible tool (calendar, quiz, chat, polls, discussion boards, badges and more) into my Moodle build. I think once I am actually teaching a course, I may not use all of them but at least I know they are there to help me with organization and effective communication with students.
Our non-LMS wiki that we built was also a great resource! I now have many reviewed tools (by teachers for teachers) to play around with. Many of these will help to create efficient and efficacious presentation, moderation, support, and assessment.
I am very much looking forward to using many of these tools in order to promote student success.
LMS Build
OLTD Program Outcome Addressed
Be familiar with common terms, definitions and elements
related to Learning Management Systems (LMS) and non-LMS environments.
Demonstrate basic competency with design and implementation within a variety of LMS and non-LMS environments and tools.
Evidence to Support Outcome
I successfully created my first unit in Moodle 2.6+. Here is a screenshot of the homepage. If you would like full access, I would be MORE then happy to add you in as a student :)
Reflection to Support Evidence
I absolutely LOVED this assignment!! It took me several days to prefect but throughout the process, I felt success in each item I created. In order to learn how to create this unit, I relied heavily on my LMS cohort group and youtube. I watched the amazing screen casts that my fellow students created for me and I watched hours and hours of videos created by other teachers that were nothing short of experts.
With each individual element, I acquired valuable vocabulary and knowledge that I have already used in my career. Understanding this tool and how to use it is going to go a very far way for me. I am able to speak confidently to coworkers and clients about the tool and can even now help them out with any problems they are encountering.
I feel very fortunate to have gained this valuable information and am very thankful that I was given the opportunity to do this assignment. I came out of this week of learning feeling like a true Moodle Expert! Thanks for all your help and support Avi :)
LMS Jigsaw and Screen Cast
OLTD Program Outcome Addressed
Plan learning opportunities most suitable to the strengths and challenges of a variety of LMS and non-LMS environments.
Be familiar with common terms, definitions and elements related to Learning Management Systems (LMS) and non-LMS environments.
Evidence to Support Outcome
In week 2 of OLTD 504, we were asked to become the "experts" on one or two specific aspects of our assigned LMS then present it in some format to the group. I chose to explore assessments and quizzes as they pertain most to what I do day to day. I also saw that they were more challenging and I thought I could take on the challenge for my group. I decided to do screen casts of my presentation as screen casts could be used very effectivly in my work and I had never made one. Here are my videos:
Reflection to Support Evidence
After becoming an "expert" in these two areas, I created these screen casts to share with my LMS group. I chose Active Presenter to create them and it was a complete nightmare! I recorded it in a series of small parts and sometimes my voice recorded and sometimes it didn't. I had to rerecord many of the snipits of video over and over. It was extremely frustrating. When I finished my first one, a video was created easily but when I finally finished my second one, it would not create a video in any recognizable format. Hours of time was spent trying to redo, open in a different program, upload to youtube, embed, etc. This was by far the most frustrating assignment in OLTD yet! On the bright side... I did finally successfully create a screen cast (phew). I also learned that Active Presenter is NOT for me!. I believe that I created two great videos that were helpful to the team and I was proud of the finished projects. I did a great deal of research on my topics and did come out feeling like an expret and was excited to share my new knowledge with the team. Active Presenter now lives in my recycle bin.
Non LMS Toolkit
OLTD Program Outcome Addressed
Be familiar with common terms, definitions and elements related to Learning Management Systems (LMS) and non-LMS environments.
Examine current research around best practices and emerging practices for both LMS and non-LMS environments.
Evidence to Support Outcome
In order to demonstrate my learning of these two outcomes, I decided to build a prezzi to showcase all the available non-LMS tools that I am familiar with and would use in a non-LMS environment.
Reflection to Support Evidence
I love the creative process with Prezzi so I was so happy this was offered as an option.
Originally, I misinterpreted the instructions of this assignment and I thought I needed to build a non LMS... So I built 2 :( I am very happy I did that though! I got to gain exposure to both Google Sites and to Edmodo. In building those, I naturally built the toolkit so the actual toolkit itself was very straight forward and easy to describe each item. I also figured out which items integrate well and which do not.
Many of these items in my toolkit are items that I have used but some were brand new to me. I found them through the wiki that our cohort created in week 4. Thanks gang! I am looking forward to trying some of them out and seeing how they are going to help me in my professional life.
After I completed this assignment, I came out absolutely confident that I will be able to run a non-LMS classroom. This was a great assignment!