Initially students needed regular guidance on what to do next and where to find the information on the class Moodle site. Brophy, J. (1998) recommends, when involving students in constructivist pedagogy, they will need plenty of guidance initially.
Czerkawski, B., (2012) encouraged me to examine my strategy for engaging students in our Moodle class. I was hoping to develop a game-like setting using conditional formatting to motivate students by channelling them through lessons and quizzes. In reflection, I realise I’m a long way from achieving that outcome. The reason for that misperception may be that I focused too much on the learning outcomes rather than motivating play. This leads me to ponder how might I strike a good balance next time around?
Immediate feedback is a good motivator (Czerkawski, 2012) and although I was meticulous in terms of responding to student’s comments in the forum, factoring in descriptive automated feedback throughout the ‘lessons’ could have stimulated more interaction. My level of understanding for the content was a limitation here and I’m sure the next time I get to teach this unit, I will have a clearer idea of how to structure the lessons and conditioned responses.
The need to embed learning outcomes throughout the course, rather than as an ‘add on’ to the digital environment, as determined by Czerkawski, (2012) is something I didn’t feel I achieved well. This was evident with the lack of participation by students to contribute to the glossary and to lead an ‘expert’ forum. Furthermore, because time was a pressing issue (in order to get students competent enough in programming to complete their assessment) I didn’t make the Moodle components compulsory.
However, it terms of how successful the students learned programming, I was very happy with their efforts and results which I discuss in detail in Evaluating the Learning Process and Learning Outcomes.
