1. Rebecca Freeman (Life Sciences) & Lynne Bayley (Chemistry)
Moodle: What, Why and How? Experiences from Life Sciences and Chemistry
Rebecca Freeman (Life Sciences) & Lynne Bayley (Chemistry)

2. Drivers for Change: Life Sciences
Complex assessment processes
Monitor timeliness/quality of feedback
Fresh look at online resources
Platform for innovation
Collaboration

3. Drivers for Change: Chemistry
Respond to;
NSS
Other UK and international institutions
Improve quality of feedback
Improve quality of information accessible to students
Personalise learning experience
Enable more pedagogically designed learning activities

4. Why Moodle? Coherent – all teaching material in one place
Provides a template and visual identity
Easy to access and use tools
Engagement with a wider Moodle community
Personalisation – individual user identity
Integration
Single sign on
Draws module info from SITS
Links between Sitebuilder and Moodle
Familiar theme

5. Learning, teaching and assessment Student information management
VLE
Student information management
SITS (Tabula)
Website, Student Handbook
Sitebuilder

6. How? Life Sciences Chemistry
Moodle for all UG modules, tutorials and labs 2012
Rapid mass culture change
Roll out for MSc in 2013
Chemistry
Moodle for UG labs 2012
Roll out to all UG modules in 2013

7. Moore’s chasm
Technology adoption cycle

8. Adoption strategies Quick wins/motivators Champions Basic training
Academic, Administrative, Students
Basic training
Support
Departmental resources
ITS
Wider Moodle community
Sharing experiences
User groups

9. What does Moodle provide?

10. Personalisation
Information
Roles
Groups

11. Tools Static resources Communication Assessment and feedback
Forums
Messaging
Assessment and feedback
Assignments
Quizzes
Advanced tools

12. Communication Advantages Targeted Embedded Encourage engagement Types
News forum/messages – information push
FAQs
Topical engagement – (discussion of current issues)
Project collaboration
Placement students

13. Diary Exercise

14. Assignments Integrated Electronic submission Electronic marking
Associated teaching and learning resources
Submission, feedback, marks
Groups
Electronic submission
Multiple files
Automated deadline tracking
Electronic marking
File based feedback in any format – pdf annotation, audio or Jing
Easy marking

15. Quizzes Integrated Automated marking Manually marked
Randomisation of multiple choice answers
Randomisation of questions
Tailored feedback
Quiz behaviour can be designed to meet pedagogical goals
Manually marked
Structured questions
On demand mark scheme and comment banks

16. Student feedback
“I like working on Moodle and having everything do to with the lab course in the same place. Especially for first years, having the question and answer style for the lab reports is good.”
“I preferred the Moodle style post lab to the full lab report as it was more structured and focused research and answers to specific concepts.”

17. Administration Grade management Controllable access to student data
Online and downloadable
Customisable set up
Calculations based on weighting
Viewed format (raw, percentage, 17 point scale)
Controllable access to student data
On demand and scheduled reports
Submission dates
Marking dates
Student activity tracking

18. An early evaluation A lot of tools and resources in one place
Increased the baseline knowledge of supporting learning online
Encouraged innovation
Improved information to and from students
Improved quality of feedback
Improved monitoring of information
Positive impressions from academics, admin and students

19. Discussion
Do you have any ideas for how you might use Moodle for teaching and learning activites? Do you have any ideas for how you might initiate the adoption of Moodle in your context?