Initially students made extensive use of the Moodle site. At the start of each lesson I would encourage students to first Log in to Moodle and we would work through the lessons together. Students would have two screens open Scratch and Moodle and then follow accordingly. This method proved to be quite successful however, without being directed to the lessons students were less likely to access them. This screenshot from the Activity Log shows that students viewing of lessons decreased as they became more absorbed and confident using Scratch.
How often did students access Moodle from home?
Student’s participation outside of class time was not as plentiful as I would have liked, as we can see from my results below. I invited students to meet online one evening a week via Illuminate in a virtual room but no one took me up on the offer. I also wrote letters to parents when students were away sick offering ‘one on one’ remote help but again my suggestions were ignored.
How well did students contribute?
Contribution to the forums was not as active as I had envisaged but there was a lot of discussion and sharing going on in class. One student who I teach virtually, was initially very keen to interact with my face to face class but then he was away sick for a week, away another week with a Gateways programme and then the exchange between my students and this student started to wane. This was a real disappointment for my face to face students as they had been very excited to have a distant student onboard and spent time introducing themselves to him in the forum which was not reciprocated.
Below is a snapshot from one of our first forums;
