A reflection on building my first virtual learning environment

Over the past few months I went on an adventure that I believe has fundamentally changed the way I teach. Through the use of Moodle, I have created my first LMS unit of instruction. What follows is a reflection of sorts on the design and pedagogical decisions that I had to make as well as the theoretical foundations that I established to guide my thinking through this process. I also want to share with you some of the pitfalls that I ran into so that you may avoid my mistakes, should you embark on a similar adventure.

Some LMS’s are aesthetically pleasing and have a bunch of cool features for the teacher to take advantage of, and some are rather utilitarian. Often times, teachers won’t be part of the decision making process when a LMS is adopted for their district. At the outset of my design, even before my LMS was chosen, my chief objective was to use it as a ‘launch pad’ to discovery for my students. I did not want to limit myself to the tools provided within Moodle, I wanted to construct the most effective learning environment possible. I found out that this wasn't any one tool, rather it was a conglomerate of tools.

With this in mind, I set out to have a distinct structure to every lesson within the unit. This is why every unit has three parts to it. These parts have consistent names so that my students are familiar with what their expectations will be. Even though the content changes and evolves, students are supported by a good class structure which limits unfamiliarity.

One thing that any online course designer should keep in mind is to keep things simple. LMS design takes a TON of time and effort because since the lessons are scripted so tightly. Focus on big ideas and supplement those ideas with engaging activities for your students. Perhaps my greatest advice is to make activities open ended for students. The internet is a vast resource so there is no need to limit exploration with ‘seek and destroy’ lines of questioning. Challenge their creativity by allowing them free reign of their learning experience and they will surprise you with how engaged they will be with it. As educators we have a tendency to restrict learning environments, for fear of students learning in the wrong way. Perhaps the wrong way is the right way that we never thought of.

TechQuest Project Evaluation

Before I get to my evaluation, I wanted to share my first attempt at giving feedback using Jing. As part of our paper swap, Shawn and I utilized screencasting to provide each other with feedback on our TechQuests. Click the image below to view my critique of her work:

It was great to finally implement part of my TechQuest. Although it wasn’t on student work, I believe the premise is the same. I really learned a lot by receiving Shawn’s feedback in this manner as well. Namely, teachers will need to be taught how to create their screencasts.

I experienced this as well. How a teacher would normally speak to a student in a one-on-one conference will not translate well to screencasted feedback. The ‘umms’, ‘ahhs’, and pregnant pauses are no no’s. However, it would also be ineffective to script a screencast. So really, a big challenge of mine going forward will be iron out a technique that best integrates screencasting into the grading/review process. I realize that many of my issues can be better addressed once I’m able to implement it in an authentic situation but it never hurts to think ahead.

What stinks about how I created Shawn’s feedback is that she can only listen and watch me interact with her paper. Especially in a format like Google Docs or Word, it may be more effective to use the comment feature to directly tag specific areas of the document. This way, changes could be made immediately rather than watching/listening to the screencast and then making a whole batch of changes later. This would ensure that all areas of concern are addressed individually rather than being buried amongst others.

Most likely this could save time on the teacher’s end as well. Why mention grammatical mistakes in a screencast with it would be much more effective to just put in a comment tag saying “consider revising” or something more specific to the situation. When communicating a more complex idea, the teacher could create a short screencast and then link the student to it via a link in a comment tag. I believe this would better help the student because it’s directly connected to their actual document.

Establishing this process will have obvious growing pains initially because I plan to implement the feedback loops as soon as I get back to the classroom. It needs to be implemented from day one to have the most effect and this will be overwhelming. Personally, I foresee having an urge to downscale or even do away with providing feedback via screencast if I get frustrated with the amount of time I’m spending on it. For the sake of the project, it will be critical to continue to innovate rather than give in.

In the future, I think I’ll approach my TechQuest’s from the viewpoint that I will never quite finish them. Much like all things in education, my TechQuest will need to be constantly revised in order for it to continue to be advantageous to myself and my students. Therefore, when selecting a future TechQuest it will be important to pick serious on-going problems of practice.

Getting help and advice from peers/colleagues is invaluable as well. My SIG group members offered perspectives that made my project better, and hopefully more adaptable from teacher to teacher. Replication is a very important part of lesson planning to me. So in the future I will want to keep in mind that I’m not only designing strategies like this one for myself, but for my colleagues as well.