One of the biggest obstacles I encountered in this teaching pilot was the lack of time we had available. In retrospect I was too ambitious with the content I was trying to cover over a five week period. It would have been enough to teach just Scratch and to leave the algorithms for later. Students are supposed to design their algorithm first and then build their computer game accordingly, however to embed the learning in context and to engage students, we teach how to programme first.
The learning outcomes for my Moodle course would be for students to;
- Develop more confidence to communicate via the online class forums
- Lead a discussion by showing an example of their work
- Be confident users and editors of the class glossary
- Be able to confidently navigate their way to a variety of resources in Moodle
- Explore the Scratch.mit.edu online community and possibly participate in the Scratch help forums
- Be confident about how to find information via the internet that is useful to develop further understanding.
Feedback from a student survey at the end of the course showed 56% of students were still not that comfortable with using the Moodle forums. This could be because it was not regularly enforced and was perhaps perceived as an extra activity. This may also explain why students did not take the initiative and lead a discussion on something new they had found how to execute in Scratch.
A sample of comments received from student’s regarding the forum, would suggest there’s plenty of room for improvement, particularly with regard to the forum’s purpose. There was a lot of sharing and discussion in class amongst the student’s about their games which did make me wonder if there was a need for the forums, especially with so few students accessing Moodle outside of class time.
I don’t like using forums as other people can see your work. I don’t like other people seeing my work
Sometimes I don’t mind using the Forums but it just depends on what the Forum is for. But they’re a good thing to have and I think we should use them more often
Pretty good easy to use
I don’t really like using them, because it kind of hard to find everything and where we’re meant to submit stuff.
It’s pretty plain but pretty dull and dumb.
67% of students found the Scratch glossary I created in Moodle useful, but only 2 students added content to the glossary.
Although only two students made use of the Scratch.mit.edu online community it was encouraging to see that the majority of students are developing confidence with finding solutions to their problems online.
