Weiblinger

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Moodle Action Plan: A MAP to Engagement and Interaction Executive Summary

Brashear’s computer science program provides a unique setting for this case study. Brashear is an inner city school that strives for excellence for all students; however, the magnet program attracts students that are not necessarily interested in computer science. Students of various skills in the magnet program create a pacing issue that must be considered along with student interest, or disinterest, in content. Likewise, inner city issues, such as attendance also contribute to learning management issues. Moodle, a web-based learning management system, can help. In what ways can Moodle increase engagement and interaction? Moodle contains a series of tools that can be used to spark student engagement and interaction including: assignment, choice, forum, glossary, quizzes, journal, and wiki. I integrated Moodle by replacing traditional paper assignments with digital versions. I focused on three activities: journal, glossary, and forum. The first activity, the journal, replaced a tired paper version. Students indicated in a perception survey that the warm-ups were boring. More students enjoyed the Moodle-based warm-ups, as indicated by the post-Moodle survey. The new warm-ups were more engaging and more students interacted with the class to get the answers. The next activity was a glossary where students could store HTML tags along with examples. The final activity was the implementation of two different styles of forum. The first forum required a student to post a question, and then other students would respond with help. The second forum required students to complete a rough draft of a Photoshop project and then post it for communal feedback. Interaction was required and engagement was obvious as the students focused on the task at hand. Even though Moodle required more work, about three-quarters of the students voted to keep using Moodle. Moodle can be used to meet the needs of all learners. Moodle’s environment supports competencies of ISTE’s NETS for Students such as those that require creativity, collaboration, and digital citizenship. As a learning management system, Moodle was designed to aid in personalized learning. Moodle’s functionality in my curriculum must be continually assessed. The Six Steps to Continuous Improvement of Student Learning provides a framework for how I plan to revise Moodle in my classroom. This study is only one step in the journey to better education. My next steps include experimenting with quizzes, choice, and wiki tools, as well as web quests before I revise my curriculum and incorporate Moodle on a broader scale next school year. Moodle will help my class to keep moving forward.

**Background**

Brashear is an inner city high school focused on meeting the educational needs of all learners. Recently, Brashear was awarded a bronze medal for academics from //US News and World// which considered three factors, the proportion of students above average on state assessments, the proportion of economically disadvantaged students, and the proportion of students taking college preparatory courses such as AP classes. Brashear is also home to the computer science magnet. In theory, students from across the district with a particular interest in computer science can attend Brashear and complete courses in various computer related disciplines with the expectation of preparation for computer related majors in college. However, in practice, only a small portion of students enrolled in the program are truly interested in computer science and its related fields. Too often, the magnet program is used as a vehicle for attending Brashear from other neighborhoods, regardless of interest. Additionally, some students are less motivated to work than one would expect because they do not need to pass magnet courses to graduate or remain in the program. This creates a problematic class dynamic for computer science courses. For these reasons, it is especially important to create courses that are engaging. My focus groups for this case study include three groups of tenth grade students in Computer Science 2 (CS2), as well as, one group of Computer Science 3 (CS3) students who are primarily eleventh graders. The CS2 students, especially periods 1 and 9, are usually quite focused and most students finish their assignments on-time. The CS3 class is not very focused and does not immediately jump into a project. Results for this study will be compared to the typical pattern of progression achieved by previous year’s students and learning trends established by each group throughout this school year. Managing these students of various skills and interest is a challenge, especially considering the urban setting. Task completion rates are not balanced because of the variety of skills. For a given project, some students may only need one period to complete the project, while other students may need three days to complete the same project. Absence from class can further aggravate the disparity; usually slower moving students tend to also be the absent students. One trick to motivate student participation is to create engaging lessons. However, creating an engaging lesson is different with children of the digital era. In //Connecting to the 21st-Century Student,// an article on Edutopia, author Josh McHugh points out that students are not just more wired than previous generations, but also conditioned to retain and analyze data differently. Modern children expect to interact with technology. McHugh further discusses one of LeapPad’s rules for success, the seven-second rule. Lessons must have interaction at least every seven seconds (McHugh). While it would be difficult to do in a traditional classroom setting, the implication is clear; students need more frequent interaction to hold their interest. Students in these courses also have a broad range of interests that need to be considered when creating projects. Traditional teaching methods do not offer the flexibility needed to make assignments engaging and interesting to a broad range of students. Moodle offers hope. Moodle is a learning management system, LMS, that was first distributed in 2002. It was created as a means to properly host online learning communities. Since then, an active open source development community has continued to contributed time and ideas to make Moodle even better. With Moodle, a course is hosted on a web site and managed by a teacher. Students can then log into this site and participate in a variety of interactive components designed to teach skills and deepen knowledge (Chavan, and Pavri). In what ways can Moodle increase engagement and interaction? Though Moodle is not content itself, its setup tends to encourage activities that are more engaging and interactive. Some tools that Moodle provides include: assignment, choice, forum, glossary, quizzes, journal, and wiki. An assignment is a task, often with resources, that must be completed. Choice allows for the creation of multiple choice questions which could be useful for a review or to get class feedback. A forum is a collaborative discussion area; one student posts a topic and others submit responses. A glossary is a repository for vocabulary or content jargon that students can submit words to and read. Quizzes can be built in an electronic form similar to their paper counterparts. Journals are text submission pages. Finally, wiki's allow for group creation of a written project (Rice, and Nash 18-21). A good recommendation for the implementation of technology is to find an activity or lesson that you were planning to do already, and adapt it to an available technology. This reduces the initial investment of time in learning the technology, and a successful activity will eventually end up being less work with better results. While it would have been ideal to try all types of Moodle tools for this case study, it would have also been impractical. It was important to integrate Moodle into the current curriculum. This allowed me to focus on the tools instead also worrying about new content as well. For example, I used journals to replace notebook entries. I then started to post assignments on Moodle, while simultaneously still providing assignment sheets in order to provide a transition for the students. Then I started adding other components as activities. Forums were a nice tool for collaboration, and the glossary gave the students a place to store tag information. What really mattered in this study is student engagement and interaction. I gauged these qualities through both observations and surveys of student perception.
 * Moodle**

My initial survey indicated that students were mostly bored during warm-ups. Warm-ups typically consisted of a stated objective and a question that had to be answered. After giving the students some time to write their warm-ups, I would then review the answer and then allow them to login and work on their projects. Many students would not actively participate in this form of activity. They would wait for the answer, and write it in their notebooks. Moodle’s journal tool allowed me to change this system. I took the same, or similar, warm-up questions and posted them in Moodle as journal activities. The students were then required to respond by the half-way mark of the period. At that point, I would pull up the results on the computer and note any student that did not submit an answer; I would talk to these students later about their participation. In the mean time, students would answer the question, and then get right into working on their projects. At some point during the period, preferably close to the end, I would then review the answer. Not coincidentally, more people were eager to volunteer the answers, regardless of whether the answer was right or wrong (which I consider to be a compliment to a secure learning environment). Though a modest change, it seemed to work. Post-Moodle survey results indicated an increase in interest during warm-ups. Next, I used the glossary tool to create communal pool of HTML tags that students could reference. Students were required to contribute one tag with a description and appropriate example. Some students enjoyed this and created several extra entries. Then final tool that I implemented was the forum. As an experience forum user, I have used forums to research vast topics such as computer repair, health questions, and potential purchases. It had not occurred to me that my text-message savvy students may not have been exposed to forums. I introduced forums in two different ways for the CS2’s and CS3’s. For the CS2’s I used the forum as a location where students could ask each other questions to help with projects. When a student would ask me a question, I would encourage her to post it to a forum. Then I would encourage students to respond to the question. Students found this to be a great way to help each other. On the next lesson, I had not initially created a forum and a student requested that I create one for posting. With the CS3’s, I integrated the forum as an essential part of their project. They had to create a fictional product that could not conceivably exist. Then they were required to use PhotoShop to design a mock-up of the product. Once the students created an initial draft, they had to post it to the forum so that other students could make suggestions for revision. During the first day of this project, the class was slow to get started; they had a difficult time imagining their project. Once they settled on their topics, they seemed very eager to post their rough drafts and offer their suggestions to others in the forums. While not all of the results to the perception survey were encouraging, the final question clearly defines their attitudes toward Moodle. When asked to “Keep Moodle” or to “Go back to our old ways,” no class had less than 72.2% of students vote to keep Moodle. Personal conversations with the students indicate a perception that Moodle really is not that different than what they have been doing. However, I have noticed a difference. More students truly participate in the warm-ups, and the class as a whole is working faster and more cooperatively.
 * Integration**

Moodle can be used effectively to meet standards. Moodle’s learning environment encourages engagement and a communal learning environment. ISTE’s NETS for Students are a set of core competencies that students should learn. The first competency, Creativity and Innovation, was used in my lesson on applying Photoshop techniques. Students were required apply existing knowledge to create original works. The second competency, Communication and Collaboration, was realized using Moodle’s forum tool. In particular, they had to “a. Interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media.” The forums also provided a proving ground for the fifth competency, Digital Citizenship. By using the forums appropriately, the students had to be respondsible, act positively toward technology usage, and exhibit leadership. The final competency requires using a technology system, like Moodle, effectively ("iste"). Universal Design for Learning, or UDL, is supported via Moodle. Because Moodle is on a computer, users can enlarge the text inside of the browser, or have speech software read the contents to the user. It is intriguing that Moodle can help in less obvious ways. For example, one student with notoriously poor handwriting commented on how he like that he could type his answers. Additionally, I had a quadriplegic student last school year that would have benefitted greatly from this learning environment. The student had an aid write her warm-up answers into her notebook. She had use of only one finger but could type via a mouse. With Moodle, this student would have been able to type her own answers and engage the class better. Personalized Learning is an education model that stresses personally meaningful instruction. Personalization has two components, needs and wants. Personalized learning should meet individual students personal learning needs while providing enough flexibility to engage students in activities that they are interested in completing. My Moodle activities had a hint of this education model, but did not incorporate it completely. Students were allowed to select their topic for Photoshop creation, but goals were not tailored to meet individual’s needs. Moodle can serve as management system for serving these needs; however, I am not ready to incorporate such changes. In similar future assignments, I could provide an adaptable rubric that would stress different goals for different students. Assessment is a cyclical process. The Six Steps to Continuous Improvement, developed by AQIP (Academic Quality Improvement), demonstrate the cycle that the assessment process should follow. I identified my goal of increased engagement and interaction via Moodle. I then listed several objectives such as increased time on task and increased collaboration. I then defined the approach and measures. For example, I used forums to increase collaboration and required a minimum number of postings and responses. Students will receive their project grades and I will adapt Moodle to better fit their needs. At this point, the cycle starts over again, and I define new goals ("e-Inside"). In what ways can Moodle increase engagement and interaction? Many. I have only had a chance to try a few of the tools in Moodle and the results have been great. At first glance, Moodle does not seem to be a big change from the regular classroom setup. My students have noted that things do not seem any different with Moodle, but I have noticed a difference. My planning time increased a little, but this was offset by reduced clerical times. More importantly, the class has been learning more efficiently. Students are more engaged with warm-up questions. They have more time to complete their projects during a period, which means that they finish lessons faster. Finally, they are more likely to participate in collaborative learning exercises. The percents express their satisfaction:
 * Moodle Effect **
 * Next Steps**

Period 1: 72.2% Keep Moodle Period 4: 77.3% Keep Moodle Period 5: 73.3% Keep Moodle Period 9: 88.5% Keep Moodle

“Should I keep Moodle?” is no longer the question. Instead, I now must consider “Where do I go next?” I must continue with the assessment process and continue experimenting with Moodle’s features. Experimentation is important because I plan to rewrite my classroom routines and curriculum over the summer to incorporate Moodle. I need to experiment with quizzes, choice, and wiki tools built into Moodle. I would also like to try other activities such as web quests to determine their viability. My class will keep moving forward.