Wednesday, January 7, 2009

My Reading 01/07/2009

In the Middle of the Curve: Archive of Moodle Posts
My company is proceeding to implement Moodle for several training courses. I searched for information about Moodle and realized that Moodle has been popular because it is a free open courseware and it is easy to set up.

As far as I have observed in my company, Moodle is truly the ideal learning management system for us because it saves the cost and helps facilitate the corporate's Elearning. However, I do not agree that my company just throws off this new project without any plans or considerations. First, I have not seen that my colleagues or trainees are eager to establish the interaction and collaboration in their learning. Second, I have not seen that the learning materials are well prepared to put online. Third, I have not seen that the instructors can fully accept this kind of learning style. For the first point, as mentioned above, one of the biggest features of Moodle is that it fosters online collaborations and the interactive activities, such as using forum, chatroom, journal and Wiki. If our trainers have been satisfied with current static delivery and not realized the importance of interaction, using Moodle does still not improve the progress in Elearning. I propose that it is vital to foster them the new ideas of effective learning and teaching. Both trainers and trainees need to be aware of the fact that integration and application of technology and the Internet to their courses does not give them trouble, but offers simple and safe solutions to deliver the materials. For the second point, actually the training materials are not well organized, no matter hard skills or soft skills. Most instructor-led courses are delivered with static manual and orally descriptive experiences. Sometimes, they may have interactive activities, but they are just feasible in face-to-face courses. To successfully implement Moodle, the trainers are supposed to re-design questions and lessons, establish the database of past exam papers and activities for students. For the last point, in the traditional learning environment, instructors just need to prepare for the class in advance; as the class finishes, all of the learning activities are done. Nevertheless, in online learning, instructors' support, response and feedback are very important, because learners are allowed to post their questions, ideas and journals online and they need to be reviewed by the instructors. Therefore, we have to consider that do those instructors want to make more efforts in trainees' learning. Are they willing to provide more information and develop more activities for the trainees after class? This is quite a new challenge for the instructors.
I look forward to seeing the achievement in my company.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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