Katherine D. Harris

Moodle in the Literature Classroom

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During my first experiences with the Incubator Classroom in Fall 2007, I gleefully took up the project of converting a standard Introduction to Graduate Studies course into a technology-driven classroom where students received laptops when they walked through those double doors.  This course typically offers practical information about performing research and practicing the art of literary criticism.  We used most of the standard tools in the Incubator Classroom:  portable tables and chairs, ClassSpot software, laptops, SmartBoards, the data projector and the document camera. Menko Johnson, the Instructional Designer attached to the Incubator Classroom at that time, also suggested that I use Moodle to manage the daily activities of the course:  posting documents, creating a glossary, posting to discussion boards, keeping a blog, running exams, keeping track of grades, running classroom polls, and constructing a wiki. Moodle also had the double benefit of showing me “use” reports: these are reports that show when students have reviewed a document, a reading for a particular day for instance.  Students also knew that I had this ability – a panopticon of sorts. 

We chose to work with Moodle because it is flexible according to my needs, unlike Blackboard, which was the CMS at that time.  Moodle also runs exclusively on the Incubator Classroom server, which meant that both Mr. Johnson and his colleague, Trent Tanaka, could personally control the environment (i.e., the back-ups and the set-up).  In addition, Mr. Johnson helped me design the look of my Moodle course site. After all, a visually clean site is much more likely to be used by students.

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In addition, since Moodle is an open-source product, there are no subscription fees. As with all open-source software, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Tanaka could re-write some of the background script to make the software work better for my purposes. 

Ever since that first semester, each time I have worked in the Incubator Classroom, I have chosen to use Moodle instead of our university’s content management system, even without the aid of Mr. Johnson and Mr. Tanaka, who have moved onto other positions at different universities.  I continue to use Moodle in the same way as described above; however, I have learned when to use certain elements and when to excise others for fear of overwhelming students.  For instance, this semester the Gothic Novel and Horror Fiction class took advantage of the glossary element on Moodle to create extended definitions of various characters, keywords and other prominent ideas from our course discussions.  Students were awarded a series of points for their contributions. In fact, those students who wrote the most efficient and thorough entries became the standards by which other students wrote their future entries.  In other words, the learning became viral: I commented on the entries, pointed to some excellent ones, and requested that the next set mimic the qualities of those entries.  Students also used those entries to further explain concepts in their final projects and to study for the final exam. 

For the Gothic Novel and Horror Fiction course, students were also asked to contribute to a discussion board on a weekly basis.  Because discussion boards often become one-way conversations (only responding to the prompt) and to ensure that students were reading each other’s writing (to make it all matter), I often opened a class session by requesting that students comment on each other’s discussion forum posts for that week.  The original posts were graded, but the responses were not.  I had 100% participation on students responding to each other.  In fact, they enjoyed seeing and admiring each others’ work. Eventually, they also learned how to offer criticism of and suggestions for improving posts.  on Weblocal hospedagem de sites

This component offered students a less formal way to craft our online learning environment but without as much formality as the glossary entries.  At the conclusion of the semester, each student posted his/her final project to the discussion forum in Moodle. All students expressed an interest in reading or seeing those final projects and Moodle offered a quick, easy way to distribute them. Student Amirissa Mina writes that “Moodle was great because it provided us with a forum to discuss class topics and also provided a site for all of our work in one concise spot.” Elisabeth Achen writes that “I also loved how we the students could connect with each other, inside and outside of the classroom through Tidebreak and Moodle.” Student Kimberly Troutman writes that “the use of Moodle was very intimidating at first, having to post your writing is posting a piece of yourself, and having the rest of the class be able to read and comment on it was a difficult idea for me to get used to, however, knowing the rest of the class would be able to see my writing, it made me want to make sure my writing was really up to par.  Being able to see what other students wrote also gave me greater perspective on whatever novel we were discussing that week.” Student Amber Fujita also extols the benefits of Moodle: “I really dig moodle as well. I like posting to online forums where students and teachers can comment. I feel like moodle helped me improve my grade.”

Because I have had practice with Moodle in the Incubator Classroom, this past semester’s use of Moodle was fairly seamless and without technical issues.  However, due to the lack of IT staff and an Instructional Technologist, I was hesitant to venture too far from what I already knew would work. The use of Moodle was invaluable and always had been every time I use the Incubator Classroom.  To maintain this pedagogical tool, though, the IC requires technical staff and an Instructional Technologist (like Mr. Johnson) to guide faculty. The IC server space is also completely necessary to maintain Moodle and all of the past course materials. 

To end, here is a final statement about the Incubator Classroom by one of the Gothic Novel students: Kimberly Troutman, a student from the Spring 2010 course in the Incubator Classroom writes that “when I first walked into the Classroom, I was a little afraid.  There was so much technology!  When Dr. Harris told us to go grab a laptop, I was intrigued.  The classroom ended up being very cool.  We could rearrange the furniture to fit with our particular class with ease, and being able to do so created a better learning environment because it created greater class discussion.  The laptops were great, because we could look things up on-line to back up our points or give visuals of whatever it was we were trying to convey.”

For an official description of Moodle, see the Moodle online documentation.

In addition, Moodle offers a comprehensive introductory video: