Technology & Instruction for UNEX

A great video about the failure of various new technologies to have a significant impact on education was added to YouTube last week. It's only about 7 minutes long, but it makes some great points and is nicely edited.

In this lesson, we will see how to set up categories in the Moodle grade book and use the categories to generate a weighted final grade. In most cases, this is an easier method than creating a custom formula for the final grade. Access the Grade Book Once you have added the graded activities to your class, login and click on the Grades link in the Settings block. Grade book The grade book's default view, Grader report , will list each graded item, with one column for each item and one row for each student. We will be organizing the items into categories and adding a total number of points to each category based on a 100 point scale. For each category, we will use the average score, assuming that all items in the category carry equal weight towards the final grade. Locate the Grader report menu in the upper left. Change to Full View Click on the Grader report menu and choose Full view . Full view Full view displays the graded items ...

Textbooks can be incredibly expensive. The 20 Million Minds Foundation is doing something about it. Cover the Cost Contest -  The 20 Million Minds Foundation: With skyrocketing textbook costs creating a major barrier to higher education affordability, we want to give students a chance to share how this affects their lives. To do so, we're asking students to submit a 30 second video or 250 word essay describing how they cover the cost of textbooks. Three winners will receive a book scholarship worth $2500. http://bit.ly/coverthecost

Restricting access to course activities and resources isn't something I use in my own classes and I'm not a big fan of overdoing it with this feature, but there are times when it comes in handy. This lesson covers how to set up access restrictions for everything in one week in a Moodle class. Edit the Weekly Summary Turn editing on and click the edit icon under the dates for the week you wish to restrict. This gives you access to the weekly Summary. Set up the restrictions There are a number of options that can be set to restrict access. The simplest approach is to have the week become visible to students at a specific date and time. To do this, click the Enable button next to Allow access from , and choose a date and time. For many students, it may be more convenient if the material is available a few days before the week officially starts, so in this example, I have set it up so the week of August 20-26 will become visible on August 17th. You can a...

On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're the 'Wrong' Professor , by Stacy Patton, describes the experience of Karen McArthur, who discovered that an online class she developed on art appreciation without additional compensation, had been given to two others who then taught using her materials, course design, etc. It is an interesting and disturbing story and one that I think will become even more common as online learning expands. The growing use of adjuncts and the commoditization of teaching and learning in higher education, along with the push to put more classes online and the ease with which one course can be copied into another one all contribute to the problem. I had the experience of teaching an online class developed by someone else only one time and I found it odd to use another person's materials and hear their voice on recordings in the class. It's obviously less work, but for me, it wasn't something I would want to do again. Almost all of our ins...

We have two free classes for instructors available for registration for the Fall quarter. Instructors who will be teaching online or hybrid classes during the Winter or Spring quarters are required to complete Teaching Online with Moodle (online or hybrid format) or demonstrate equivalent experience prior to teaching their first class. 142MSCC02  - Teaching Online with Moodle - starts  October 1 , 2014  – Hybrid, 4 weeks; Meetings at UCR Extension on Oct 1 and 8, 4:30 – 6 PM This class covers the basics of teaching online and using Moodle along with new features of Moodle 2.4 and Adobe Connect. Participants learn about the online environment as they participate in the class and complete assignments. Development of a detailed course syllabus is the final project. Emphasis is on the unique features of online teaching and learning, and the transition from face-to-face to online. 142MSCC01 ...

A recent podcast/documentary by American RadioWorks, “The Science of Smart,” explores how research on learning can be applied to instruction and improve outcomes for students. Segment two, “Learning to love tests” and segment three, “Variation is the key to deeper learning” present concepts that can work well with adult learners. The podcast can be found at the American RadioWorks website: http://www.americanradioworks.org/documentaries/the-science-of-smart/ I also enjoyed the first segment on dual language immersion programs and the new findings that students in such programs actually do better, not worse, than students who are receiving instruction in one language. Years ago, I planned to enroll my sons in the local elementary school's bilingual magnet program. As it turned out, the program was primarily a magnet for students who spoke Spanish rather than English. Such students did not do well on standardized tests given in English, so that particular elementar...

Short article with good ideas about professional development from Edudemic

I listen to the American Radioworks podcast pretty regularly. It covers K-12 and Higher Education issues and frequently addresses technology and teaching/learning. This week's topic is Who Needs College? The podcast contains excerpts from a panel discussion hosted by Minnesota Public Radio . I enjoyed the points made related to seat time vs. what is learned.

A new report, released today, explores how faculty in the University System of Maryland were able to incorporate MOOCs from Coursera, the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) from Carnegie Mellon, and Pearson in a variety of subject areas on different campuses. From the web page: Looking specifically at how faculty in the USM incorporated MOOCs and OLI into their courses, our report points to several positive outcomes: 1) Using MOOC and OLI courses in hybrid formats, faculty were able to achieve outcomes comparable to traditionally taught sections with, on average, considerably reduced class time 2) Students in these hybrid sections fared as well or (using OLI) slightly better than students in traditional sections in terms of pass rates, scores on common assessments, and grades; 3) These findings held true for academically at risk students as well, including those from low-income families, under-represented minorities, first-generation college students, and those with w...

Packt Publishing has a variety of ebooks that cover Moodle. Today through July 5th, you can buy any of their ebooks for $10. One possibility is Moodle Course Design Best Practices by Susan Smith Nash and Michelle Moore. "Moodle Course Design Best Practices is a practical guide that will teach you how to use the tools available in Moodle to develop unique courses for many kinds of organizations. You will be able to utilize the themes that have been contributed by developers. You can incorporate many different types of course materials and interactive assessments. You will also learn how to modify the structure and presentation of resources, activities, and assessments to create courses for individual use, cohorts, and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The use of the various multimedia features to enhance your Moodle courses is also explained in this book."

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We have two free classes for instructors, potential instructors, or anyone curious about online teaching available for registration for the Summer quarter. Instructors who will be teaching online or hybrid classes for UCR Extension during the Fall or Winter quarters are required to complete  Teaching Online with Moodle (online or hybrid format) or demonstrate equivalent experience prior to teaching their first class.  Please note that the hybrid class has two meetings in one week, which is a change from the past, and the remaining two weeks are online, so this is a change from previous classes. Both classes cover the same material but offer different experiences. You are welcome to sign up for both if you like, but it seems unnecessary. 141MSCC02  - Teaching Online with Moodle - starts  June 10th , 2014  – Hybrid, 3 weeks; Meetings at UCR Extension on June 10th and 12th 4:30 – 6 PM This class covers the basics of te...

I use Dropbox almost every day and find it to be a very useful tool for accessing files from multiple computers. I was excited to read about the Dropbox integration with Moodle, but apparently I didn't read the details very closely. I'm not sure that there ever was a reason to use the Dropbox repository feature on our site, given the limitations that it has. There are a number of steps involved in setting up the Dropbox repository, but once you've done that, you can access Dropbox from within Moodle to add files to a class. Problem number 1 is that you can only access 1 Dropbox account per site. In my case, I overlooked that limitation since it was my own Dropbox account that I was accessing. Not very useful for anyone else. The second limitation is that you can only copy files from Dropbox and you can only do it one file at a time. The dialog box that shows up when you access Dropbox give you the choice of copying the file or linking to it. Of course,  linking to it i...