1 - The course page (home page) has a good amount of visual and information, but not too much. No scroll of death! There are good uses of headers with a little detail, but most of the detail is pushed into a secondary page that is linked from on the course (home) page. There are 6 sections in the course.
2 - Clear expectation - with a goal for each section.
3 - Making good use of moodle activities, like forums, assignments, wikis, chats - with completion tracking. The student is engaged in active learning and knows their progress. Progress is indicated on the course page. At a glance, students can see where they have been and what they have done.
One of the sections, with its stated goal and completion tracking indicator.
4 Use of a multimedia conferencing like Web -ex. Where the participants can all communicate and a moderator can share pretty much anything they want. I watched the recording of the event and it was informative. Web - ex is a third party conferencing software that may need to be installed on your computer/tablet/phone.
5 Good navigational structure. On each sub page or section page, there is a common navigation option that allows you to go to the previous and next sections, without having to return to the course (home) page.
6 The use of the Wiki activity. This is a bold and aggressive method to engage the students. Moodle likes to toot its horn regarding the "co-constructionist" methodology. The Wiki actually does this. A blurb in the wiki:
A wiki is a web site that lets any visitor become a participant: you can create or edit the actual site contents without any special technical knowledge or tools. A wiki is continuously “under revision.” It is a living collaboration whose purpose is the sharing of the creative process and product by many. One famous example is Wiki-pedia, an online encyclopedia with no “authors” but millions of contributors and editors. The word "wiki" comes from Hawaiian language, meaning "quick" or "fast."(http://www.teachersfirst.com/content/wiki/)A Wiki allows a group of students to collaboratively write and edit a piece of writing together.
Getting people to actually contribute something meaningful is a little trickier. You can use a tool like a Wiki, tell them how to use it, or what they could do, but in the end, if the students (contributors) are not motivated or abstract thinkers, you will only get garbage and the exercise will fall on its face. But that is true in general, not just with the Wiki.
7 Good use of existing videos and content. You do not have to recreate the wheel. Like the
- KhanAcademy.
- Slideshares
- Vimeo
- EngageNY
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