The aim:

1. explore some physics concepts
2. demonstrate some teaching strategies as alternatives to teacher talk, class unison responses or individual responses
3. have some fun

This was the lesson trajectory:  Icebreakers (Role Play) > Brainstorm > Pair work on Problems, Drawing diagrams, Processes > Discrepant Event fun > Collaborative small group problem > done

1. ICEBREAKER/ROLE PLAY

As an icebreaker, a role play. Get into pairs (this was a hard concept) and one person is an eight year old and you are the teacher. Talk about the concept “What is energy?”

Then, reverse roles and talk about the concept “What is a force?” Success in some ways was noise and interaction.

2. BRAINSTORM (Pairs > Whole class)

Establish some parameters for the session.
The topic: forces. “In your pairs, list all the types of forces you can think of”
I had a set of pages with Chinese translations on them. Demonstrations, a bit of fun. We compiled our list, with as many real items as possible: falling apple (after climbing up a ladder), magnet, friction (a sliding block), push, pull.

Some formal"chalk and talk" - "consolidation"

3. MINI WORKSHEETS 1-4

1. SPEED OF A TOY CAR.
Aim: diagram drawing.  I had a toy car, and we went out into the corridor to measure it’s speed. Passed out two stopwatches.

2. ENERGY GAIN OF THE TOY CAR GOING UP A SLOPE.
Aim: diagram drawing again, and more of a full process of problem solving.

3. FOUR FREE BODY DIAGRAMS.
FREE BODY DIAGRAMS. I made an assumption that they had covered the concept of Free Body Diagrams. Started with the definition of a free body diagram (in Chinese)

Aim: FBD for Apple on a plate, Apple on a spring, Falling apple, Thrown apple

4. FREE BODY DIAGRAM OF A CONICAL PENDULUM.
Putting it together.

4. DISCREPANT EVENTS

We had a little break.

“Can you balance a coke can on it’s edge?”

The answer of course is yes, when you put a little water into it.

The question then is “Why does it do this?”

5. COLLABORATIVE PROBLEM SHEET

“If I climb up to the fifth step of the ladder and then jump, at what speed will I hit the floor?”

Students had to work in pairs, submitting one answer with full diagram, working, units . .

Working together got much much better.

The end.  Group photo and we finished.

So what?

More on this later.

The good old “I’m a filter, not a pump” keeping the not so good students down where they belong approach.  “I’ll just cater for the good students”.

A rather cynical comment from Bernard Pliers, actually on Maths education:

Evaluating the trial in the Weiman study had three dimensions

• Student engagement
• Post-test
• Attendance.

ENGAGEMENT

This fascinated me. So I reproduce in full from the supporting notes:

The engagement measurement is as follows. Sitting in pairs in the front and back sections of the lecture theatre, the trained observers would randomly select groups of 10-15 students that could be suitably observed. At five minute intervals, the observers would classify each student’s behavior according to a list of engaged or disengaged behaviors (e.g. gesturing related to material, nodding in response to comment by instructor, text messaging, surfing web, reading unrelated book). If a student’s behavior did not match one of the criteria, they were not counted, but this was a small fraction of the time. Measurements were not taken when students were voting on clicker questions because for some students this engagement could be too superficial to be meaningful as they were simply voting to get credit for responding to the question. Measurements were taken while students worked on the clicker questions when voting wasn’t underway. This protocol has been shown by E. Lane and co-workers to have a high degree of inter-rater reliability after the brief training session of the observers

E. Lane is referred to, but not referenced but is sure to be Erin Lane.

There is a diagram from one of her studies which is looking an Earth and Ocean Science class.  Physics is not the only discipline seeking approaches to improve engagement:

From: www.cwsei.ubc.ca/SEI_research/files/Geo_Ocean/Lane_QuantifyingStudentBehavioralEngagement_poster.pdf

From the report:

In the experimental section, student engagement nearly doubled

THE TEST

The test questions for this topic were agreed after the week of teaching, both instructors agreeing it was a good test of the objectives. (Whew!!) From the paper:

The average scores were 41 (+/- 1%) in the control section and 74 (+/- 1%) in the experimental section. Random guessing would produce a score of 23%, so the students in the experimental section did more than twice as well on this test as those in the control section

ASIDE: all the questions are included in the online report. They are HARD questions.

ATTENDANCE

During the week of the experiment, engagement and attendance remained unchanged in the control section. In the experimental section, student engagement nearly doubled and attendance increased by 20% (Table 1). The reason for the attendance increase is not known

What is significant

It seems obvious: pay more attention and come to class more and you learn better.  Maybe.  There is a complex relationship between interest, motivation, effort, time on task, the right kind of task (etc)

In summary: two teachers taught a well defined subject to two groups to all intents and purposes the same.  Different approaches.  They both tried hard.  One group’s results were far superior to the other.

What does this mean? you may ask.

The lecturers: Instructor (A), a successful lecturer (who had won a teacher of the year award, and had good student evaluations) and a post-doc tutored by Weiman.
Both teachers gave it their best shot

Instructor A and L.D. had agreed to make this a learning competition

ASIDE: this in itself is an astounding opportunity: an instructor (A) with a history of good evaluations etc etc agreeing to this. I reckon his/her name and identity will emerge in due course hopefully NOT on a sleazy talk show, and we’ll learn some more about this project.

The course: traditionally, a physics course is divided into topics, with some building on each other.  The first part of the course was taught traditionally.  In the study the final topic (and the subject of the study) is a complete unit, Electro-magnetism.

L.D. and instructor A agreed beforehand what topics and learning objectives would be covered

The teaching: no formal lecturing at all in the experimental section. Instead:

The instructional approach used in the experimental section included elements promoted by CWSEI and its partner initiative at the University of Colorado: preclass reading assignments, preclass reading quizzes, in-class clicker questions with student-student discussion (CQ), small-group active learning tasks (GT), and targeted in-class instructor feedback (IF). Before each of the three 50-min classes, students were assigned a three- or four-page reading, and they completed a short true false online quiz on the reading

No new gadgets were used. Clickers has been used the whole course.
Pre-reading: the only change in the control section was the requirement to read the text in advance.

The populations (267, 271): using various statistical measures these were essentially identical eg same mean (+/- 1%) in mid term exam.

What is significant here

The value of pre-reading.  Other studies show this has an effect on learning.  We could say “this is obvious” but traditionally it has been hard to convince students of the value of actually doing it – and now we have ways to encourage this to be more of a regular habit.  The online testing with self marking helps.

The aim:

• exposure to a few strategies to support active learning
• practice in English
• have fun

All these students will be teachers sometime.  The hope: just to see a small demonstration in a class with interaction could trigger an interest in teaching a little differently.

The Latest Cark Weiman study
Summary: “Science” just published (May 13, 2011) a fascinating article:  Improved Learning in a Large Enrollment Physics Class, Louis Deslauriers, Ellen Schelew, and Carl Wieman
Carl is a Physics Noble prize winner, now working in science education.  The article is on an experiment they did in physics education.
They waited until week 12 in a traditional lecture course, and then changed 1 week of class sessions. They used what they called “deliberate practice”, meaning: posing good application problems for students, letting them see if they could solve them individually, recording their answers with “clickers”, talking about their answers with 1-2 other students, and getting immediate feedback from the teacher.
With just 3 days of those changes, they had the following impact in the experimental groups:

• attendance went up 20%
• student engagement went up 100%
• student performance on tests was better (2.5X)
• when students were later asked if they liked these changes and thought they would learn more if they were used in the whole course, said in essence: “Of course!”

This has resulted in fascinating discussion in the HETL group on LinkedIn and following a Chronicle article with an appalling and inflammatory title:  “Postdocs Can Be Trained to Be More Effective Than Senior Instructors, Study Finds,”

Two other different coverages in the press:

www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/2011/05/12/interactive-teaching-methods-double-learning-engagement-in-large-undergraduate-physics-class/

www.nzherald.co.nz/the-changing-world/news/article.cfm?c_id=1502962&objectid=10725393

The article itself is three pages, has 12 references and comes with 26 pages of supporting material and detail (only online, not in the printed journal).

I still value Moodle as a Walled Garden.  I see this as a feature, not a bug.  Moodle 2 is a bit tough at first.  But I’ve taken a philosophical view: new users (or even old users) must experience it first.  Hence I do an EXPERIENCE  > CRITIQUE (DESIGN) > BUILD trajectory. And I think now (for my sanity as well as the good of the populace) it is actual essential for real and meaningful learning.  I try not to put myself in a position to do anything in less than 3 hours.  With snacks, pen and paper and space preferably.
How can you build a course in something using tools you have not experienced as a user?

Field trip to a Moodle course

I do an excursion to a coffee course:

It’s really nothing fancy: most people can find some strong feelings about coffee (either for or against) and you can see a few things in action  like forum posting, comments (in the comments block), watching a video, following a link, downloading a document and actually submitting an assignment.
Then glossary, wiki . .   maybe.

The critical question for my sessions has been “OK, put your teacher hat on now.  You’ve experienced a forum.  Of what value could this be in your classrooms”

Bullet points.  The value of Moodle for learning:

• Enhances communication
• Improves collaboration and interaction (providing some good tools)
• Enables file and link sharing.
• Saves time (Hmm!!)

Upcoming workshop: Monday and Tuesday of next week.  Four hours, including 30 minutes to get logged on and a really nice healthy afternoon tea. This time I think is the critical mass to prevent inoculation and actually infect.  Get some experience of good practice.  Build some relationships.

However, with the latest school project, bringing the science department and the social sciences online (with Moodle) I have made a course subject specific, and I am on the scrounge for some screen snaps of good Moodle courses.

I spent a week in Auckland in late March considering this question.  Moodle shut down on me.  Where better to work then Columbus Coffee

1. You need an awareness of adult education principles (not just theory thought)
   I love Kathy Sierra’s concepts and delivery.  One random link.
2. Y0u do not lecture.
   Huge debate on LinkedIn HETL Higher Education forum at the moment.  How can researchers in their field (eg forestry, aquatics or pi-meson theory) be so keen on evidence and process and so slow when it comes to Education Research on the basics?
3. You use video
4. You respect the knowledge already there.
5. You remember: YOU ARE NOT INDISPENSABLE. All the romantic words: facilitate, guide, mentor, model.  Do it.
6. Have hard edges where it counts. There can be no doubt about taking blood pressure, catheterisation, pill dosages, completeness and clarity in records.  (Just to name a few aspects)
7. Have fun.
8. . . .        use online wisely.

OK, the challenges of TIME, pressures of Goals not aligned with activities . . .
More will surface on this I am sure.

I’ve now completed a few small pilot training sessions in Moodle 2 .0. Some general comments:

The same:

Workflow: Edit mode on, the Add resources/Add activities dropdowns, the icons, Sections
Forums (the bug with Q&A forums is still there)
Groups/groupings (except for new site wide groups aka cohorts)

Different

1. Navigation in the new Navigation block is a challenge, with the navigation block, section naming, docking etc.
2. The new file system takes a bit of getting used to if you are used to Course Files in 1.9.  I have not enabled the Legacy Course Files repository.  The systems we use have no File System repository enabled.
3. Blogs are looking more like blogs now, with comments. Some users are struggling with navigation.   Unfortunately you cannot restrict visibility to course level , and you cannot view all Course blog posts by student X.
4. Gone: multiple file upload plugin, Journals (!)

New

1. Conditional release, activity completion (enables simple dependencies to be built)
2. Improved editor
3. New wiki
4. Blocks: Comments block, Course completion block, Private files block
5. Private files for everyone, including students.  And they can ut images in forum posts.
6. There are other things . . . .  have not used them yet . . .

Philosophicaly speaking I now see again the need to approach things in three stages. Much as I dislike standard workshops, I use this (linear) sequence, based on a very very simple course design.

1. EXPERIENCE: See and experience Moodle as a student.  I do a field trip to Moodle in a course on Coffee Appreciation.
2. DESIGN: Look at the design of the experience.  Critique it.  Plan a simple design for a section.
3. BUILD: Implement it in Moodle.

I now have two basic workshops on offer: Online, a Month of Moodle and a three hour Design and Build in Moodle 2.

You will notice there is nothing here about Mobile access, web 2.0, RSS.  The people I work with at the moment are not really there yet.

There is a little angst over some aspects of Moodle 2: the filepicker, the navigation, the lack of plugins, video mishandling.  But there is progress coming.

Wishist

a Improved forums

This is my top priority. It was in train for Moodle 2.1 but has gon from the roadmap now.  Most of the items in this list have a tracker items, some have code as well.

1. Save draft posts (How often do we want to write in two sessions?)
2. Subscription at the thread level (Update: requested in 2004 with a huge number of votes tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-1626 now looking like some progress)
3. Ability to freeze a thread
4. Sticky threads
5. Improved ability to mark forum posts for followup
6. Export at the end of a course
7. There are a few more . ..

Obviously the Open University ForumNG (docs.moodle.org/en/ForumNG) has a lot of these features. There has been talk of getting this into the core. (moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=137549)

b Blogs: minor enhancements

We have comments on blogs now. But

1. Need ability to restrict blogs to view by course members
2. Need ability to see a list of blogs for members of a course preferably with numbers of new posts.

Comment: Navigation around blogs has proved confusing for some.  Posts in the Moodle.org forums consistently confuse functionality of blogs with forums.

c Navigation improvements.

See image for a course navigation: we now have the navigation scroll of death. In workshops I’m finding users loosing their way. There are some unpredicatable actions.  Like when you click on a section title, you don’t go to that section.

Ideally include a simple section navigation block:

• Single section:

  ” title=”https://github.com/leizhang/moodle-block_menu_site_and_course

” target=”_blank”>github.com/leizhang/moodle-block_menu_site_and_course

There are a few other aspects that I am sure will be addressed in future versions.

d Groups: Self enrolment options.

e Clone an activity or a template function.

Backup and restore just doesn’t cut it.
Late breaking news: tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-11288 this has been started.  “A x2 icon”

f Admin email notifications

1. on account creation (e-mail to admi)
2. on self-enrolment in a course (e-mail to teachers)

(Optional to receive these of course)

g Multiple file upload

Improvement to the Add a resource > File.
Some sort of multiple file deployment option.

tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-12810 the old Flash uploader will not work now with the new files.  But something is needed.  And fix long menu links. (See above)

h Useability for admins

Less scolling to get to the “editing on” functionality, and the “Save and return” link. I like the new WordPress admin bar that appears at the top.  :

Think of the 12 most common functions this close in Moodle.  Ability to tweak the editor without server access.

i Improve media management

In 2.0.2 you cannot resize media.  May be fixed in 2.0.2+
See: tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-26697

Not strictly Moodle: Greater Christchurch Schools Network.  (Built around the Christchurch Loop)

http://www.moodleinschools.org.nz/ Moodle in Schools: MoE supported site.

ecdf Supported Moodle sites repository.  (Higher Education)

Wellington Loop Moodle.