Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences Learning Management Systems: Best Practice Presented by Geoffrey Hooke Senior Instructional Designer Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences

2 Tuesday, 14 June 2016 Learning Management Systems: Best Practice Outline

3 Tuesday, 14 June 2016 Session Objective  To provide practical guidelines for best practice when teaching with Learning Management Systems such as Moodle Outline  Pedagogy  Features  Activities, Tools and Modules  Appendix – StudyMate Challenge activities Learning Management Systems: Best Practice

LMS – Learning Management Systems Tuesday, 14 June  LMS: a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting and delivery of online education courses or training programs.  e.g. Moodle, Blackboard, WebCT  all share similar feature sets  this presentation will focus on Moodle as the exemplar Learning Management Systems: Best Practice

Pedagogy Tuesday, 14 June 2016 Learning Management Systems: Best Practice5  The design and development of Moodle guided by “social constructionist pedagogy” where people actively construct new knowledge as they interact with their environments  Constructionism asserts that learning is particularly effective when constructing something for others to experience.  Social constructivism extends constructivism into social settings, wherein groups construct knowledge for one another, collaboratively creating a small culture of shared artifacts with shared meanings.

Main Features Tuesday, 14 June 2016 Learning Management Systems: Best Practice6  The heart of Moodle is courses that contain activities and resources.  The main power of this activity-based model comes in combining the activities into sequences and groups, which can help guide participants through learning paths

Activities, Tools & Modules Tuesday, 14 June 2016Learning Management Systems: Best Practice7  There are about 20 different types of customisable activities, e.g.: –forums –glossaries –wikis –assignments –quizzes –choices (polls)  There are a number of other tools that make it easier to build communities of learners, including –Blogs, messaging, grading, file repositories  Plug-in activity modules can be added, e.g: –Turnitin (plagiarism detection) –NanoGong (audio functionality)

Tour: English for Health Professionals 1 3 September 2012Learning Management Systems: Best Practice8  Course Notices - Main Course Forum –all class notices here –start class with notices  Course Guide - uploaded file –use PDFs as much as possible rather than.DOCX  Healthcare Glossary – Glossary Activity –Graded activity (option for peer assessment)  Academic Word List - popup link –use popup window to keep students inside Moodle  Course Organisation – modules/weeks –Can also use weeks as main structure (e.g. Intro to Psych)  Cambridge & Medical Dictionaries – Page –Note cut and paste HTML

Tuesday, 14 June 2016Learning Management Systems: Best Practice9  Labels – in blue and red –Assists clear organisation –use Heading styles  Note systematic organisation of content and naming conventions  YouTube videos – popup links keep students inside Moodle  Forum – note 5 forum types –A single simple discussion - A single discussion topic which everyone can reply to –Each person posts one discussion - Each student can post exactly one new discussion topic, which everyone can then reply to –Q and A forum - Students must first post their perspectives before viewing other students' posts –Standard forum displayed in a blog-like format - An open forum where anyone can start a new discussion at any time, and in which discussion topics are displayed on one page with "Discuss this topic" links –Standard forum for general use - An open forum where anyone can start a new discussion at any time

10 Discussion Tasks – 10 minutes Tuesday, 14 June 2016 Learning Management Systems: Best Practice Work in teams (e.g. English, Pharmacy, Nursing) 1.Your team have been given a Moodle course as their online community. What features/tools/resources would you use to enhance your team’s productivity? What benefits could it bring to your team that you don’t have at the moment? 2.Write example activities for each of the 5 forum types

Best Practice Tips  Use the Staff HelpDesk Moodle course to ask Geoff Hooke questions and advise:  Keep all your class materials (PowerPoints, worksheets), lesson plans, links, assignments, YouTube videos etc on Moodle.  Use “hidden” folders to hide items from students  Use main course forum to communicate with your class  Encourage students to use forums to share information and discuss ideas.  Consider collecting assignments online  Consider using Moodle to host teaching teams online staffrooms  Ask for a private course SANDPIT to practice and experiment  Time spend developing Moodle tests/exams/StudyMates pays off over the long term 11 Tuesday, 14 June 2016 Learning Management Systems: Best Practice

Conclusion  It’s your Moodle not ours!  “Use it and they will come”  Common Year & Pharmacy Staff task: When you get back to your office – login to Moodle and post your Introduction to the Staff HelpDesk. Tuesday, 14 June 2016 Learning Management Systems: Best Practice12

Appendix: StudyMate Challenge activity  Let’s try the sample StudyMate Challenge activity:  Discussion Task: How could you use the StudyMate Challenge Activity in your classes? How would you setup/manage the activity to maximise student involvement and participation?  Role play a lecture StudyMate Challenge activity with this example from Atkinson and Hilgard’s Introduction to Psychology Unit 1:  Demonstration: how to create/publish a StudyMate MCQ/Challenge activity on a RTF (rich text format) document 13 Tuesday, 14 June 2016 Learning Management Systems: Best Practice

14 References  Tuesday, 14 June 2016 Learning Management Systems: Best Practice