Teaching teachers about Moodle

Teaching teachers or trainers on how to use Moodle can be done in many ways. This page will give the person who would like to train others in the use of Moodle, some ideas.

The Tips and Tricks forum had a thread on teaching moodle to teachers - new users? which inspired this page.

3 hour workshop example

1. The first half of the workshop I have them login as students.

The outline of the workshops that I run are as follows:

Update personal Moodle profile
Try out the social networking functions of Moodle
- Explore interest fields
- View other users profiles
- Instant messaging

Next I get the users to self enrol into a course I have setup with a range of Moodle activities, where they get to participate in:
- a forum
- a chat
- a choice activity
- a glossary activity
- a quiz

Next I showcase integrated examples of third party content e.g.
- Youtube
- eCast (Subscription service - Local TV content from 30 TV channels that can be streamed through Moodle)
- Coursecast (lecture capture system for playback and review)
- FlickR
- Google Maps/Earth

Next we introduce the OTARA planning documentwe find OTARA is useful for planning the structure of the course.

2. The second half of the workshop we introduce participants to their Sandpit (experimental area that participants retain post-workshop).

We use a templated approach with suggestive comments prompting what kind of content could be added in the different areas (see screenshot). Each course setup on Moodle uses the template as a starting point creating a more consistent look/feel and structure (below if a screenshot of a Sandpit course).

File:Teaching teachers sandpit.jpg

We give each participant a document with a rough plan of a course that we get them to implement for practice.

The plan includes the following development activities:
- Editing/creating labels
- Creating additional labels (sub-headings)
- Uploading files
- Creating links to websites
- Creating Assignment activities
- Creating Forums

To extend our users with the use of Moodle we are developing two additional workshops, currently titled Intermediate and Advanced.

Daniel Phillips from teaching moodle to teachers - new users?

The University of the South Pacific titles

USP run similar workshops with the following workshop titles:

  1. Introduction
  2. Assessment
  3. Managing & Monitoring
  4. Increasing Student Engagement.

From teaching moodle to teachers - new users?

Dublin ideas

What has worked for me is to break the training session into two sections, one where participants login as students and the other where they log in as teachers. In all cases (be it training in Dublin or as far away as Senegal), we have allowed participants to log into our live Moodle server.

   * Create a blank course, add examples of the resources/activities your would like to demonstrate
   * Use topic 1 to host these activities, and assign topics 2 to 21 to participants by editing the topic text accordingly
   * Create 20 teacher accounts and 20 student accounts in one go using a csv bulk upload (I like the use of names above, good tip!) but be clear on what is a student account and what is a teacher account. Any ideas for names?
   * Give each person on the training course a student login as they arrive

   * Start the course by getting everyone to login in as a student
   * They can all then interact with Moodle, see each other online and so on
   * Get them to download a file, edit personal profiles, message other users, take a quiz, select a choice, upload an assignment

This gives participants experience of how Moodle is used by students, not something that teaching staff may appreciate. It also gives the opportunity for Moodle to gather data (scores, logs, assignments, choices and so on) in a live context.

   * Give the participants the teacher accounts and ask users to log in....I like to start by saying it all looks much the same except for this little button called "Turn Editing on"
   * Get them to look at quiz scores, look at log files and so on. This can cause a very nice buzz in the training room as all users now get to look at their performance and the performance of others. It also highlights issues of privacy in Moodle
   * Grading assignments is also a very useful exercise here for the same reasons but it also shows the amount of work that is required if individual feedback is required.

   * I then go on to show how to upload files, make links and set up an assignment.
   * Assignment set up is a good way to demo of how to control when activities are available.
   * I stop short at how to make quizzes as that is another workshop but I do give them the basics of what is possible such as randomised questions and so on.

The whole course takes about two hours and everyone seems to leave with something they want to try out later. We have evaluated the process and the feedback has been positive.

I know the initial set up seems like a bit of work but once it is done, the course can be reset and cleaned up easily for use again. Simply inserting a logo of the workshop/school you are in at the top of the page goes a long way too.

Eric Clarke from teaching Moodle to teachers - new users?

High school-secondary school example

I train teachers in high school to use Moodle and I would make separate accounts. Depending on what you wanted them to learn you could either give them each their own course (lot of courses and effort on your part) or set up one course (two at a push) with topics and allocate a topic to each of them - then they can do anything they want within the drop down menus of that topic section - that way you can keep an eye on what they are all doing and they could interact with each other on the course.

Either way, I would give them their own logins. (To save time you could make 15 generic logins "user one, user two" etc and upload as CSV file -takes two minutes - and then give them each one of those logins that they can personalise to their own details.)

Mary Couch from teaching Moodle to teachers - new users?

Variation for setting up reuseable generic logins

I do much the same as Mary suggests above, at the end except that instead of "user one" "user 2" etc. I give them a name and picture Bridget Bardot, General De Gaulle, etc. It does takes more time but as I think creating online communities is important for collaborative learning, I feel I have to put my money where my mouth is. Once done, I can use these generic logins over and over. Another advantage, is I can show the course without invading anyone's privacy.

Glenys Hanson from teaching moodle to teachers - new users?

Documentation