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- Moodle usage by faculty - fall 04
- Moodle & Chef - what the students say
- Students using Moodle - fall 04
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The number of faculty using Moodle in the fall semester 04 greatly exceeded my expectations [link to article about faculty use]. To help in assessing how this went I canvassed faculty opinions using an online assessment tool hosted at Free Assessment Summary Tool site (contact mhp for the password if you'd like to take the survey). 14 faculty completed the survey in two days after the email was sent requesting participation.
| Questions | Strongly Disagree | Somewhat Disagree | Not Applicable | Somewhat Agree | Strongly Agree |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q1. Is this your first time using a Course Management System? | Yes = | 9 | No = | 5 | |
| Q2. Would you agree that it was easy for you to get up and running with Moodle. | 0 | 2 | 0 | 6 | 6 |
| Q3. Would you agree that you found Moodle intuitive to use. | 0 | 6 | 0 | 6 | 2 |
| Q4. Would you agree that students in your class found it easy to use as far as you can tell | 2 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 4 |
| Q6. Would you agree that the instruction you received was good enough to get you going. | 1 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 6 |
| Q7. We are planning two Moodle workshops in early January. Would you be interested in attending a workshop to review basic material & share Moodle experiences? | Yes = | 9 | No = | 5 | |
| Q8. Would you be interested in attending an intermediate workshop to cover Groups / Forums / grading online and other features as requested? | Yes = | 6 | No = | 8 | |
| Q10. Did you use the Weekly layout for your course - the default ? | Yes = | 8 | No = | 6 | |
| Q11. Which activity did you find the most useful in your course? | 9 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
| Resources | Assignments | Journal | discussion Forum | News Forum | |
| Q13. Are you planning to use Moodle next semester? Whatever the case, your course will *not* disappear. | Yes = | 12 | No = | 2 | |
| Q14. Are you interested in taking Moodle a stage further with the use of pedagogical tools (such as peer review workshop, wiki)? | Yes = | 7 | No = | 7 |
| Date | Response |
|---|---|
| 18 Nov | Most of te students did not use it. I think most of the problem had to do with my attempt to incorporate it into the course well after the semester got under way. I may have met with a different result if I had begun the course with it. |
| 18 Nov | I would like to be reminded how to use the test student to see how my page looks from the student's point of view. I think moodle should have an automatic feature that lets the instructor push a button to flip to a student view. |
| 18 Nov | We all loved it! |
| 17 Nov | It is hard to get them to visit the site and the email function is difficult as we have to contend with so many emails- how to motivate to use the site is biggest challenge. |
| 17 Nov | I specifically asked my students and they said it was easy (we only used it for online readings). |
| 17 Nov | Some students had problems, but I don't know why... |
| 17 Nov | I found the linear presentation limiting since I was using moodle for weekly work updates yet had selected a topics organization--which I especially wanted to keep. I would have liked greater training for moodle as I would have liked to use it for forums with students and also to allow students to post material they found interesting. students found it useful and relied greatly on it--more than on the actual syllabus i like the fact that i could track when students I logged in as I could then elucidate how much they were using and when. |
| 17 Nov | Some found it easy, others found it very difficult. Couldn't figure out how to open weeks once they had closed them. Found that sometimes articles were accessible and other times they wouldn't load. At the beginning of the semester, it was difficult to work with Moodle since dates were not visible. And it is TERRIBLY SLOW!!! |
| 17 Nov | I've enjoyed it and found it useful, and I gather that my students have too. |
| 17 Nov | Sometime password sign-in did not work. It usually did the next day, however. |
| 17 Nov | I love being able to use it and have students using it. |
| Date | Response |
|---|---|
| 18 Nov | Too bad you didn't have "maybe" options on questions 7 and 8. Giving feedback online is not intuitive to me. I still don't get it. |
| 18 Nov | I ran into a dilemma uploading docs - didn't find Moodle intuitive. But otherwise, I couldn't imagine doing my course w/out it and found the initial help for myself and for students to be all that was needed. |
| 17 Nov | I am interested in using it for Foundations of Ed- particularly with a "poster project" but need more technical assistance to see how. |
| 17 Nov | I am primarily interesed in Moodle for online readings, and I have been happy with it for that. |
| 17 Nov | I'm on sabbatical next semester :-) |
| 17 Nov | These workshops are only useful if everyone makes absolutely certain that they are NOT talking over anyone's head. It's very important to define the problem explicitly before launching into its solution. The first moodle workshop this semester was not useful because these guidelines were not followed. |
| 17 Nov | access to a scanner would be essential for my ability to have more visual material on moodle. after a while, i tended to use it in the same (rather unimaginative) manner--my own fault, and would have liked more workshops ont its potentialities |
| 17 Nov | At this point, my biggest concern with Moodle is that the default gradebook isn't very usable. I can get around that, but for the moment it's a lot of duplicated effort. |
| 17 Nov | No, but I hope to use Moodle in both of my Spring Semester classes. |
| Date | Response |
|---|---|
| 18 Nov | New Forum |
| 17 Nov | I linked to the website for the text book so students could complete activities there. I also used the grading function to grade participation and extra credit assignments. |
| 17 Nov | Sara Penhale set up an assignment that they had to complete in lab and that they then posted on moodle. It was an outline of their plan of attack on a small group project. This was new for me. In the past I've used moodle only for resources (word files, powerpoint files, web links, etc) and news e-mails. |
| 17 Nov | as i said, i used it at its minimum and need to use it to its full capacity |
| 17 Nov | Journal and Assignments |
| 17 Nov | Primarily I used resources and assignments, plus an occasional "choice" |
| 17 Nov | Syllabi, journaling |
| Date | Response |
|---|---|
| 18 Nov | Maybe, Maybe on 13 and 14. Uh-oh, I can't get out of this without answering all questions. Therefore I'm putting NO for everyone I didn't want to answer. |
| 18 Nov | Thanks, Mark, for inviting me to consider using Moodle! |
| 17 Nov | I am not sure how I might want to use Moodle in the future. The program made me select yes or no, but I am really not sure. |
| 17 Nov | My answer to 14 is maybe... I don't know what might be involved in such a workshop |
| 17 Nov | My answer to 14 actually is a maybe. I would like to talk with you and others about the full range of possibilities. Brent |
| 17 Nov | (A lot of my "no" to workshops and taking Moodle further may be more related to 1. the feeling that I can figure out what I want from Moodle mostly on my own, and 2. at this point in the semester, it's hard to say yes to anything (even something that's not until January) |
Two thirds of faculty (9 from 14) were using Moodle for the first time this semester (Q1). I was surprised by how many had actually used a course management system before. However, even though most faculty were using a CMS for the first time 86% found it easy to get up and running (Q2) and no-one strongly disagreed with the stated question. Be that as it may, 43% of faculty did not find Moodle particularly intuitive to use (Q3) and some faculty's attempts to make Moodle do what they wanted were frustrated (responses to Q5).
Most faculty (79%) thought that students in their class were finding Moodle easy to use (Q4), a conclusion borne out by the Moodle / Chef survey (link). However, a significant minority (14%) strongly disagreed with the question statement; this may have had something to do with how and when the course started using Moodle. Problems that surfaced included viewing the course from the student's perspective, navigating around the system, finding that articles would occassionally not load, and system slowness (Q5); all these will addressed in the upcoming workshop.
Implicit in the the ITPC report to faculty (April 26th 04) was the expectation that use of Moodle in the fall semester of 2004 would be low key — we were anticipating three or four faculty users — so no arrangement was made for formal training, and informal one-on-one sessions to get faculty up and running were envisaged. Even though most faculty only had an hour or so's instruction to get going only a small minority were dissatisfied (Q6). The extent to which faculty took to the new system (66% using course management for the first time) with the minimal instruction available showed the latent interest and enthusiasm for this kind of instructional technology. Our hope is that the formal workshops over the Christmas break will address the needs as expressed. Certainly, two thirds canvassed were interested in coming to a Basic Moodle workshop (Q7) and 40% were interested in attending a more advanced workshop (Q8). Judging from feedback in question 9 we will need to make sure that the workshops cover the process of integrating Moodle into the course at a level with is understandable by everyone.
As expected most faculty found the Resources activity the most useful (Q11) but there was interest in assignments and discussion fora; moreover there was a healthy interest in taking Moodle a stage further with the use of pedagogical tools such as peer review workshop (Q14). The majority of faculty are planning to use Moodle next semester (Q13) and as we gain more experience with the system and how it can be used with different classes some innovative uses will emerge.
