After helping organise a staff development day about 21st C Learning (more about that later), I find myself musing on the link between feedback and encouragement as reciprocal actions.

This was a day with mixed ability and experience staff, all encouraged to take the next step up on their education technology skills ladder. They did this in groups, led by a colleague who is more experienced.

Usually what happens with these ‘traditional-style’ staff development sessions is that a survey is sent the next week to staff (the ‘happy sheets‘). Did you find this useful? That’s interesting but not as interesting as asking again 6 weeks later, are you still using your newly acquired skills? If not, why not? If yes, how else can we help you?

Now a little red cynical me, popped up on my shoulder, and said: “of course they will not still be using it in 6 weeks”. There’s rivalling priorities (research, clinical placements, marking) and suddenly what was claimed today to be a timesaver (Moodle quizzes, Flip videos), seems like just too much work.

But then I thought, wait a minute, that is my responsibility too. How can I encourage and support them over the next 6 weeks, so they will continue to use these skills?

My preference would be to run staff development through networked learning. Inducting staff into an education technology network of like-minded colleagues, would make on-going encouragement and support easy. But this is not a part of our institution (yet – give me time ).

So in traditional staff development situations (one day, 2 days, a 2-hour workshop), how do I deal with my side of the bargain? If participants are expected to continue using a newly acquired skill and give me feedback on my workshop/my work, then my side is to provide active encouragement & support (more than just being on the end of a phone or email). But being realistic about my available time too, as only e-learning advisor in an institution of 350 staff.

Options to keep my side of the bargain within current institution structures:

• Use the newly set up Faculty community page to provide links to examples and instruction videos
• Send weekly emails to the group with interesting education technology and 21st C learning news
• Send 3 surveys for feedback, 1 next week, 1 in 6 weeks, 1 at end of the year. These need to be informative & snappy, but not happy sheets
• Encourage the staff with more education technology experience to share examples of their work on the Faculty community page
• Run virtual debates via the Faculty community page. Some valid questions and worries were posed today about use of social media in education. This conversation can be continued
• Ask faculty managers to take active role in encouraging continued ed tech use (through above mentioned methods).

Any other suggestions?

A few weeks ago, a Social Media Cheat Sheet was doing the round. A nice visualization of the pro’s & cons of each social media channel, but with a business/marketing focus. I thought I should do one for social media use in education. However for most of the teachers I work with, our Moodle (EIT Online) is still their primary online teaching environment. So instead I set out to create this poster size guide for teachers, allowing them to compare the functionality and pedagogical advantages of some standard Moodle tools, adding a column to indicate how tricky the tool is to set up.

Moodle Tool Guide for Teachers

Hope you find it useful. Would appreciate your feedback.

Moodle Tool Guide for Teachers (PDF)

A few weeks ago, I ran an online facilitation workshop with a group of teachers & their managers. Together they run a programme that is taught entirely online. As part of this, a draft of some online course protocols was on the table. Most of these had to do with the updating & editing of the courses, but one of the protocols had to do with teaching the courses. It proposed that teachers should use the Course Announcements forum (a News forum in Moodle, our LMS) at least once a week. In the past, some courses (certainly not all, don’t want you to get the wrong idea…) had underused the Course Announcements (and other forums). A rather heated discussion followed this proposal.

The opponents to this protocol seemed to have 2 main objections:

1. They didn’t like to be dictated in when and how they should contact their students,

2. They felt that one course announcement a week would be too invasive, as the students would receive these as an email in their inbox, adding to their “information overload”.

I find that drawing a parallel with the on-campus  situation is always helpful. In this case…

1. We are all used to teachers being timetabled in, to be in a set classroom, at a set time, to teach a set group of students for on-campus classes. This is a ‘protocol’ that teachers accept and in fact, expect. Surely this new expectation to send a course announcement, in a set environment (the Course Announcements forum), at a set time (once a week) to a set group of students (the online students) is not unduly different from the on-campus expectation?

2.  We find it perfectly acceptable to ask students to leave their home, arrange child care or time off work, drive 2-10 kms to our campus, find a parking space, then walk across campus to be in a set room at a set time and sit there for 2-4 hours in a row. But an email in their inbox is too much of an imposition?

I believe that in an online class, communications should happen in a steady stream, flowing freely & flexibly, whether through forums, chat rooms, wikis, blogs or other means, as participants, teachers & students together, come to grips with the topics. I’ve seen the differences in courses I’ve taught. When I’m communicating in a steady stream, so do the students. In cases where I flagged as I got too busy with other commitments, the entire course dynamics sagged like a soufflé when the oven door is opened. I’ve learned from this and now see a weekly email/forum post as an opening shot, rather than a bridge too far. Am I overly optimistic?

Of course it will take a while for all of us to get used to working in these new environments, but I’d like to echo Tomaz Lasic’s thoughts: “The sooner educators move beyond the point of fear & awe of Moodle [or any other tech] and see it as a tool just like a pen, desk, whiteboard, book etc. the sooner they will be used better and more frequently to reach the pedagogical goals”. Just try to picture the Course Announcements forum as that place at the front of the class where you usually stand or sit to communicate with your students.

Last week Friday I started a fun little Twitter event called Tour de Moodle. Interested in seeing other people’s Moodle setups, layouts and themes, I asked people to share a link to their Moodle homepage.

Tour de Moodle tweetout

I thought it would be a perfect end-of-year activity, but last weekend was embarrasingly quiet (cue: tumbleweeds). However, after a week the Tour de Moodle now seems to be getting a little traction (thanks to @adzebill, @moodleman, @moodlerific, @dafyddhumphreys and @joseph_thibault).

You can see the stops the Tour de Moodle has made so far at What the Hashtag (my favourite twitter archiver at the moment): http://wthashtag.com/Tourdemoodle

Participating is easy, just send out a tweet including:

• a link to your organisation’s Moodle homepage
• the hashtag #tourdemoodle
• the hashtag #moodle
• optional: “Pls share yr Moodle too”

Looking forward to watching your Moodles race by! Currently the yellow jersey holder is @kineoopensource.

Some of the lecturers I work with have started using wikis in their courses this semester. Students and staff have reacted largely positively. They appreciate the collaborative work they can now do but don’t enjoy the usability. After doing some wiki introduction sessions, seeing the Moodle wiki in action over the semester and also supporting staff in their use of other wikis (Wetpaint, PBWiki), I have a few additions to my Moodle Wishlist, to do with the Moodle Wikis. Here’s what I wish for:

• On Edit automatically open the enlarged version of the editor. Very rarely is a wiki page short enough to be comfortably edited in the small editor version. And it is the nature of wiki pages to grow so why not open straight into the larger editor?
• Threads or comments function associated with a page. The current workaround is to set up a discussion forum to go alongside the wiki. But this leads to posts like: “if you go to the second page in the Tools category you can see the work I’ve done…”
• Improve the internal linking. Add a drop down menu or button (Insert Wiki Link) with list of pages to choose from. The current  process has too many steps:

1. Find the exact page name,
2. Then copy its name
3. Then find page you want to put the link on
4. Go to Edit mode
5. And paste the name between square brackets.

• Improve the picture upload. The Binary File option is clunky and using it is unlike any other action students take in Moodle.
• Allow creation of Userpage. Having your own wiki space can be motivating and a way of creating buy-in. (Could this perhaps also show overview of user’s actions in the wiki?)
• Allow creation of template pages. Being able to set up templates would allow staff to guide students better in what is expected of them.
• Add an Add page button. Creating a page by giving it a name in square brackets is a simple action but an unfamiliar concept that is difficult to explain.

Working both in WebCT and Moodle this semester, I’m discovering quite how different these environments are. More about that later. In the meantime, 2 features present in WebCT that I would like to see in Moodle.

• Group tool, where students can self-select into groups with a maximum number of slots and based on this grouping, are enrolled in the appropriate forums/chats etc.

• Replies to My Posts – in forum-based courses you are unlikely to read everything. But there are certain things you always want to read, the replies to your own posts. Having these grouped as you log in to the course is very handy. Perhaps this could sit in the My Posts tab?