moodle

Selecting and organizing the material

If you're like most instructors, you love your subject and the idea of sharing information gives you great satisfaction. However, you have probably noticed that it's easy to overload your students, or to give them materials in a way that tends to confuse them. How can you avoid overloading and confusing your students?

One of the most effective ways to do so is to make sure that you base your selections of instructional materials on course outcomes and on the learning objectives for each unit. Keep in mind what you'd like your students to be able to do after they complete the course. What is the basic, enduring knowledge they will take with them after the course is over? What kind of fundamental change do you want to occur in terms of the student's abilities? What kind of new skills will they be able to perform?

Once you answer these questions, you will have a list of learning outcomes. Keep them in mind as you select the instructional material you wish to use in your course.

It is often convenient to develop a map or a diagram that connects your learning outcomes with the course materials and the assessments you will use. Consider what you want your students to learn, and how you'd like them to perform. Also, you shape the sequence you will build and how you'll present the materials.

It is often convenient to develop a map or a diagram that connects your learning outcomes with the course materials and the assessments you will use. Consider what you want your students to learn, and how you'd like them to perform. Also, you shape the sequence you will build and how you'll present the materials.

Using forums to present your material

We'll start with an approach that is very easy to implement, which is ideal if you're just getting started and need a solution that would be good for all kinds of e-learning, including mobile learning and guided independent study.

I've used Moodle for about four years, and in that time I've found it to be an exceptionally useful, high-functioning and user-friendly learning management system (LMS). In my view, the one deficiency in its suite of resources is that it is less than intuitive in the way it enables  administrators, teachers, and learners to create, integrate, manage, and deliver images, audio, video, animations and other media types.

Enter Packt Publishing's Moodle 1.9 Multimedia by João Pedro Soares Fernandes.

I opened my copy of the text with a high expectation that it would be an informative and practical reference text. Why? Packt Publishing have been providing Moodle reference books for some time now, and their texts are usually either very good or excellent.

Now read on...

Moodle has evolved from an academic project to the world's most popular virtual learning environment. It is designed to help educators create online courses with opportunities for rich interaction. Its open source license and modular design means that people can develop additional functionality.

Moodle 1.9 Multimedia is a new book from Packt that helps Moodle users integrate multimedia elements effectively. With this book, written by Joao Pedro Soares Fernandes, readers will create instructional materials and utilize Moodle resources and cutting-edge tools to interact with their audience.

Moodle 1.9 Multimedia provides complete information about the integration of multimedia elements such as audio clips, links to pages off-site, YouTube videos, and animations to an e- learning course. Users will learn how to create and edit images, drawings, and screenshots, which can be blended into their e-learning courses. Basic procedures to create and convert various learning video formats or download and publish videos from online video-sharing services will be explained.

With this book, users will create multimedia elements such as interactive floor planners, online maps, and timelines using Web 2.0 tools. Multimedia elements can be integrated in quizzes and lessons to make e-learning courses more interactive. They will also learn how to use software such as HotPotatoes and JClic to assess interactive exercises that are created and blended in the Moodle course. Real-time applications such as the Online Phone service and Desktop Sharing will help students interact on a common Moodle platform.