Sunday Morning Moodle

Everyone has their own routine on Sunday morning. For me, it is time to update my teaching plan for the next school week, and work on assignments and online activities in Moodle - and today write a post for my blog. As the school year draws to a close, this morning I reflected on the work that I have put into Moodle this year for my IB Math SL Year 1 course.

I now have a complete course for year 1 (pre-Calculus) fully built out in Moodle. This includes all assignments, online activities and questions, and links to all supporting materials. The biggest chunk of work was related to building the question bank in Moodle to support the course. I just checked and my current question count is over 400 in the Math SL question bank. If I roughly estimate the average question takes me 15 minutes, then, conservatively, I have put in an extra 100 hours of work outside of school developing Moodle content - just for Math SL. And, I teach two other courses that require Moodle updates!

The good news is that (1) the Moodle content dramatically improves the ability of my students to retain and review content from the course, and (2) the work is now done at a level of quality that I am happy with - I won't have much new/redo work for this course next year.

So, looking back, it took a lot of time to get to this point. It has actually been a 4 year investment (with many 100s of hours of practice and improvement) since I started working with Moodle for my courses in Japan. But, I enjoy working with the technology, and I am now (finally) quite competent at using it.

Students Appreciate Organization & Planning

I have found that one of the things that students appreciate (and recognize) most is a well-planned and organized course. Here are some student survey responses to the question, "What are the best things about the course?":

• The course is phenomenally structured. It is clear and well organized with time to work in class that is hugely helpful. The learning is great!
• The organization and the fact that I know what is due the next day and the following month via Moodle.
• Everything is very organized and clear. There is a lot of things I can do to review and I never forget past lessons. I also have never had math so clear!
• I believe the best things are the organization of the topics and the structure of the class. The pre-made notes and the explanations are very convenient and helpful as well as the time that is usually left after the lecture is over.
• The course is difficult but extremely well planned and we've kept pace, giving me more confidence in how prepared we'll be. 
• Everything is always perfectly organized (I love the way Moodle is set up and the daily class notes) so that we can plan ahead and get feedback before, for example, turning in the first drafts of the IA.

Students expect teachers to have their act together - and they know it when you don't (trust me, I have heard them talk about some teachers who are clearly planning by the seat of their pants - not kind). They appreciate it when you do your job well and are the first to point out (to other teachers) when a teacher is dropping the ball.

Teachers really should take the time to get their courses superbly organized (at least one week in advance). Their students know the difference between well planned and not.

Practice & Timely Feedback - Online Assignments in Moodle

Students appreciate timely feedback on their work and know that they need to practice to get better at math. Feedback not only allows them to know whether they understand something but it also motivates them to continue to improve. One of the ways I provide practice & timely feedback in my math classes is by using Moodle online quizzes.

The daily online activity focuses on content from the current topic but always includes review problems from past content. Review problems are randomly selected from over 400 existing problems (2-3 problems a day turns into a lot over time). I do this in both my Algebra and IB Math SL courses. An example question in Math SL is shown below:

Teacher View of a Moodle Question - Student cannot see correct answer.

As you can see, this student spent approximately 12 minutes working on this problem - with repeated attempts prior to determining the correct answer. Students can retake assignments multiple times until they get a perfect score. Not surprisingly, they spend a significant amount of time outside of class working on mathematics - and they truly enjoy it. They also appreciate the fact that they are getting constant reinforcement of concepts. There will be almost no additional review of material needed prior to our upcoming end-of-year assessment because they have been reviewing the material all year long! Feedback from students in a recent survey:

I also like the fact that in most tests there tend to be some review problems, which, again, forces us to go back and review previous material and have it always "fresh" in our minds (I wish this was done in more classes).

I really like how the quizzes are set up because even though it does take some time to complete them, they really do help and it serves as a sort of review and challenge. I also like how you can go back to the questions you missed and work on them. 

The downside...it takes time to develop the Moodle questions! If you don't enjoy technology then it's probably best not to start down this path. If you do enjoy technology and are interested I am always looking for collaborators to help extend my existing question banks and to try them out at other schools.