Moodle 1.9 Teaching Techniques [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

It is my pleasure to review another e-book from Packt Publishing called Moodle 1.9, Teaching Techniques by William Rice and Susan Smith Nash. This review is based entirely on my personal point of view. I am not an expert in Moodle. I undertook this project in order to learn more and improve my knowledge of the subject, both from an active learning perspective and from a future teaching perspective.

Moodle 1.9 Teaching Techniques was first published in January 2010. There are 11 chapters and at 216 pages, it makes for fairly compact reading. Who is the book aimed at? Well, the overview states that it is suitable for university and professional teachers. There is an assumption that you have knowledge of the Moodle platform's basic features, and that you have "some proficiency" with Moodle. This book is not intended to be used as a guide on how to use Moodle per se, but as the title suggests, it is a comprehensive guide on how to adapt the many and varied features of Moodle to customise and personalise your course design. One of the facets I liked about the book is that it guides you from the teacher's point of view and also gives you an insight into how the modules are viewed from a learner's point of view. Moodle 1.9 Teaching Techniques aims to show you how to get the best from Moodle and at the same time, shows you how to construct high-quality, durable and relevant courses, which will perfectly suit your students' needs.

The building blocks which permit you to shape and form your highly individualised courses are outlined clearly within the introductory chapter. The authors use excellent screenshots and diagrams to guide the reader through the process of the key tools within Moodle and provide an abundance of useful tips and advice. In particular, Chapter 2's focus on using the Forum as a key tool for organising all the instructional content, was very useful reading for me. Click on the link and you can download a free preview of Chapter 2, called "Instructional Material".

Chapter 4 on Assessment was enlightening. Students might be fearful of the terminology, but in Moodle, Assessment is much more than simply checking up on how you are getting on. This feature can boost a student's self confidence and can create independent learners. For example, Moodle provides ample opportunities for creating quizzes, which can be taken by students in short spells or specific timed slots in order to assess how they are doing. Good screenshots provide a useful guide to how to utilise Asessment to its maximum potential.

I enjoyed reading about the Wiki feature in Chapter 6. The authors outline the reasons why the Wiki is useful to achieve learning objectives. The ability to create individual student wikis is a welcome capability within the Moodle platform. I got a bit lost in some of the sections, however, and this is where some Moodle proficiency is assumed by the authors.

Useful tips and guidelines were given in Chapter 7 Glossary Solutions. I was particularly interested in the "schema" building involved in the Glossary function. Each course can only have a main glossary, but with many secondary glossaries. When a Glossary is created, a Database of individual entries is automatically created. Clear screenshots are provided to facilitate understanding and tips about including memory aids for the Glossary proved to be of a very helpful nature. One of the main advantages of including the Glossary in a course design is its constant presence on the sidebar. It can be made into an interactive activity and the "Random Glossary Block" feature is also useful. New information is updated every time students log on. As a student of Moodle learning myself, I find this constant update to be particularly beneficial as a means to keeping an eye on the "flow" of new information.

Great tips are given for how to maximise the Choice activity function. Polls and debates can be easily created to make a lively teaching aid. This function also makes choosing teams for activities much easier and also allows for feedback polls to ascertain whether the pace of a course is good for students.

The final chapter of Moodle 1.9 Teaching Techniques highlights the Portfolio Gallery solution. I really liked the notion of "dialogical imagination", which can ensue from "reaction videos" found in Youtube and often posted on FaceBook. Moodle now has an inbuilt facility to integrate social networking sites such as FaceBook and Twitter. RSS feeds can also be easily implemented as well. This all makes for a very powerful, engaging and highly interactive teaching and learning platform. Indeed, the terminology used is "ubiquitous learning"This chapter contains some excellent tips on how to engage students in creating exciting writing projects for an e-portfolio. A sample assignment on "My Hometown" is highlighted by the authors. I found the notion of a "capstone" experience or final project to be of great interest. The theme of collaboration plays a big role in motivating students to do their best.

At 216 pages, Moodle 1.9 Teaching Techniques makes for an easily managed read and offers some invaluable tips and insights into how to design a unique and personalised Moodle course to maximum effect. As a platform for teaching and learning, Moodle certainly satisfies the growing need for "ubiquitous learning", which comprises of e-learning, mobile learning and hybrid delivery, both synchronous and asynchronous. I certainly learned a lot from a fairly inexperienced Moodler's perspective, but I found some of the explanations were a bit too complex for my limited knowledge. This book should satisfy the more experienced Moodle user's quest for how to implement a successful and dynamic course design and indeed provides invaluable tips that can be applied immediately.

Moodle 1.9: Teaching Techniques: Creating Ways to Build Powerful and Effective Online Courses by William Rice and Susan Smith Nash (Packt Publishing, 2010) guides the reader through using forums, chat, assessments, wikis, glossaries, Moodle's choice activity, workshops, and e-portfolios in online classes. Moodle 1.9 presents its teaching philosophy at the beginning, and all activities are in line with that philosophy. In this way, the book is not a random collection of things one can do with Moodle, but rather course elements that one can adapt to foster interaction and active learning. Examples are mainly from art, but the authors make suggestions for uses in other fields.
At the beginning, the authors are clear that this book is not a "how to use Moodle" book, and that information might be a bit off-putting to those who do not feel they have mastered Moodle. However, anyone who has ever used Moodle even a short time will be able to follow the information in this book and make use of the instructions. The instructions are very clear with multiple, clear screen shots to guide the reader.
This book doesn't go over the obvious ground of how to make quizzes in Moodle or how to set up discussion boards but rather gives the reader insight into the various options Moodle makes available in creating learning activities. The learning activities presented are not the tried and true, "use a wiki for a group assignment" suggestions but rather "off the beaten path" sorts of assignments such as creating individual student wikis for note taking and then evaluating those notes to see if students are on track regarding learning objectives for the course.
One shortcoming of the book has to do with editing. There are some non-English sentence structures and some font inconsistencies that are slightly confusing. Also, in the preface, there are pronoun of address switches enough to give the reader whiplash. Those distractions end, though, by the beginning of chapter 1. A second possible shortcoming is that what seems to be one of the most important course elements, effective course design, isn't covered until Chapter 9: Course Solutions. Perhaps there are logical reasons for putting such a crucial element in the middle of the book, but it would seem that the reader may wish to have the course design framework in mind as he or she considers different activities available in the Moodle platform.
On a personal note, for me, the last two chapters were the most valuable. The guidelines, instructions, and suggestions for setting up workshops and galleries can accommodate projects from many disciplines, giving students an audience throughout the creation of a project and into the display stage. For faculty using Moodle as their course management platform, this book will provide helpful suggestions and indepth instructions on how to get the most out of Moodle.

When I began reading this book I was expecting to learn a bunch of "real-life" classroom applicable examples of using specific Moodle features. While it did list many of those examples, it really focused on learning theory and creating a positive learning experience and community. The book mentioned many educational psychologists and philosophies of teaching and learning. Each time the authors explained a feature or gave an example of classroom use of a Moodle feature they also reminded the reader to make sure the activity was tied with the course outcomes and the learning objectives.

I thought the discussion about learning styles and effective teaching practices was interesting as my education has been in technology and not k-12 education. One thing I liked about the book is that for each feature example the authors gave a variety of ways to accomplish the same thing, giving the reader an option if they prefer one way or the other. Another thing that the authors provided were tips or recommendations on using each feature. For example, effectively running a chat and chat etiquette, taking the fear out of assessments, how to create and maintain exciting and engaging forums, etc. I guess you can call it "best practices" of the Moodle features.
Paths

One note to mention is if you're expecting to come away with created activities as you follow this book you should have some basic Moodle experience. This book does not go into step-by-step, detailed instructions for most of the modules. However, this doesn't necessarily mean you have to know Moodle already in my opinion. This book did a good job of convincing the user that Moodle can create a learning community that is easily adaptable to different learning styles and offers some great teaching strategies to accomplish this.

Drawbacks

As with all of the other Packt Publishing Moodle books I've read I wish the screenshot images were in color. Another thing I noticed is a difference in our district's Moodle (v 1.9.7) settings page for some modules and the screenshot images in the book (I believe the Choice activity looked a *bit* different). I was also made aware that the Gradebook is out of date. As always, take into consideration the frequent updates.

In the end, I enjoyed the book and learned the most about having an "effective" course and what that even means. As I mentioned earlier, I am a techy person not a teacher, so I am at a point where I need to understand more about theory and teaching and learning strategies. This book had me nodding a lot and just "made sense" (if that makes sense!). It put things in perspective as each and every activity was tied with the course outcomes and made me aware of some of the things that are needed to create an effective learning community such as student confidence, fear of assessment, feeling comfortable with their peers, etc. And don't get me wrong I am talking about the "theory" stuff because that is what I'm interested in but there are many cool ideas and tips to using the modules.