Schedule
Sunday, June 22
7:00 PM Opening Social, The Liffey, 175 West 7th Street, Saint Paul, MN 55102
Monday, June 23
8:00 – 9:00 AM
Pastries and Coffee (Outside John B. Davis Lecture Hall in the Dayton Campus Center #29)
9:00 – 10:00 AM
Keynote: Ann Hill Duin, PhD, Professor of Writing Studies, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, Jerry Sanders, CIO, Macalester College (John B. Davis Lecture Hall in the Dayton Campus Center #29)
10:00 – 10:15 AM
Transition to Olin Hall #15
10:15 – 11:00 AM
Session 1
Olin 241: Free Google Drive-based Mind Maps and Moodle, Professor Diego Mendez-Carbajo, Illinois Wesleyan University
Mind maps are useful tools to visually structure the flow of of ideas around a writing project or research effort. This workshop: (a) introduces the concept of mind maps, (b) sets up a free Google Drive-based mind-mapping application, and (c) sets up a Moodle-based mind-mapping assignment. By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to manage the technological aspects of this type of assignment and adapt the assignments themselves to their individual courses. BYOL: bring your own laptop.
Olin 243: Using Moodle to Facilitate Reflective Learning, Jennifer Spohrer, Bryn Mawr College
Several faculty at Bryn Mawr College are using Moodle to provide students with more opportunities for formative assessment in order promote self-awareness and reflection. In this presentation we will showcase three STEM examples at varying levels of complexity: 1) bringing publisher-provided textbook supplements into Moodle to provide opportunities for self-testing and feedback in biology, 2) developing pre-lab activities in Moodle Lesson and Campus Pack Journal to prepare general chemistry students for more productive lab experiences, and 3) using Moodle Choice, Questionnaire and Moodle Quiz to help students develop metacognitive skills in geology. We will discuss each example from both a technological and pedagogical perspective and its impacts on student learning.
11:00 – 11:15 AM
Break (Coffee/snacks in Smail Gallery in Olin Hall #15)
11:15 AM – 12PM
Session 2
Olin 241: Usability Testing of Moodle 2.6, Joe Murphy, Kenyon College
During Spring 2014, we ran a series of usability tests on Moodle 2.6 with Kenyon’s students, faculty, and staff. These provide us with quantified information about the ease of use of different parts of the Moodle system, which can inform our documentation, training, and development efforts. We will discuss our testing protocol, our findings, and how we are using this data as we update to Moodle 2.6 (LAE) this summer.
Olin 243: Bringing Instructional Design Ideas to Moodle Course Design: Flip the Classroom, Ye Liu, Lasell College
In this presentation, the presenters will share some best practices at Lasell College integrating instructional design ideas to Moodle course design to improve teaching and learning. The Teaching and Learning Center works with faculty members to effectively use learning management system, Moodle, as teaching and learning tools and engage students in the learning process – before the class, in the class, and after the class. The presentation will highlight our faculty’s creative approaches to flip the classroom and encourage student-centered learning experiences with a variety of Moodle instructional tools, Web 2.0, Open Educational Resources, and Mobile Technology such as iPads.
Olin 350: Language Instruction using Moodle, Professor Julie Rogers, Professor Beth Severy-Hoven, Professor Nanette Goldman, Professor Cynthia Kauffeld, Alison Sommer, and Fritz Vandover, Macalester College
12 – 1:30 PM
Lunch at the Dayton Campus Center (#29)
1:30 – 2:15 PM
Session 3
Olin 241: Getting Started with Moodle Quiz, Carly Born, Carleton College
Getting started with Moodle Quiz can be daunting at first, so many settings! This workshop will first walk through the basics of creating simple quizzes, covering the standard question types. Then we will go into some of the more useful advanced features, including randomizing quizzes, various feedback options and using the Certainty-Based Marking. Participants will leave with a good handle on how to use Moodle Quiz and materials to help them plan their own question banks.
Olin 243: Pushing Groups to the Limit (Moodle 2.4), Paul Brantley, Davidson College
Davidson’s physics faculty wanted a single Moodle course to handle multiple lab sections from two different physics courses. In a one-hour window prior to labs, students are required to take a pre-lab quiz. After the lab, they have three hours to take a post-lab quiz. Depending on when their lab is scheduled, the Moodle quizzes must “turn on and off” based on the student’s course section. This is all possible via Moodle groups, groupings and group overrides.
In another course, a professor had three group projects scheduled during the semester. For each project, the groups and project assignment would change. The professor wanted the flexibility of moving students into and out of groups. In addition, the professor wanted each student to see only the projects assigned to that student for the groups to which they are assigned. This was done via a unique approach to use of Moodle groups and groupings.
Olin 350: Why LAE Grader is Important to Student Retention, Bob Puffer, Luther College
Hands-on with the LAE Grader (including disaggregated gradebook) experiencing its enhanced capabilities that cause more instructors to grade through Moodle (Luther’s usage rate hovers around 69%).
Hands-on with the Learning Analytics module that relies heavily on graded activities. An opportunity to experience how these two can act together as “first responders” to students who might be at risk of leaving before graduation.
2:15 – 2:30 PM
Break (coffee/soda, snacks in Smail Gallery in Olin Hall #15)
2:30 – 3:15 PM
Session 4
Olin 241: Language Lesson: Speaking & Listening in Moodle, Carly Born, Carleton College and Daniel Landau, Reed College
Language Lesson is a Moodle activity plug-in to facilitate speaking and listening exercises for foreign language classes. Students use the web-based voice recorders to record their submissions as many times as they like, and includes the ability to compare their own recording to the model or a previous recording of their own. Professors can quickly see which work has been attempted, and can leave oral feedback for students right at the point in the student recording they specify, a feature that is rare among commercial language lab systems.
Olin 243: Well, I Suppose You Could See It Like That…, Willy Lee, Carleton College, and Charles Fulton, Lafayette College
Willy and Charles will talk about how to get Moodle issues in front of the people who could fix them and debate various topics, tickets, and bugs.
3:15 – 3:30 PM
Break (coffee/soda, snacks in Smail Gallery in Olin Hall #15)
3:30 – 4:15 PM
Session 5
Olin 241: Why Don’t They Want to Come? Organizational Change: A Hybrid Implementation, Professor Diane Pike, Augsburg College
This panel of senior faculty and IT academic support staff will examine the challenges and opportunities experienced at Augsburg College as part of our ongoing efforts to implement a hybrid teaching and learning model in the graduate and adult programs. Panelists will apply Bolman and Deal’s four frames of organizational analysis to identify the barriers to Moodle’s adoption by faculty, as well as, the successes.
Time will be allotted for discussion of issues related to hybrid / blended initiatives with particular attention to the cultural, human resource, political, and structural dimensions. Our hope is to collaborate on ideas for bringing together all of the constituents necessary for successful organizational change.
Olin 243: 10 Minute Lightning Rounds
- Building a Local Network of Users/Experts From the Ground Up, Professor Diego Mendez-Carbajo, Illinois Wesleyan University
Faculty are more likely to consider adopting new pedagogical resources when they see their peers putting them to use: they can relate more easily to the application and are less intimidated by the novelty. Because individual faculty tend to make rather unique uses of pedagogical technology, building (from the bottom-up) a network of advanced users willing to share their know-how is a low-cost strategy to spread the diffusion of these practices. This presentation outlines one fruitful ongoing effort.
- Anonymous Forum Posting, Paul Brantley, Davidson College
A Davidson professor wanted the ability to set up anonymous peer reviews for written assignments. A student posts a written assignment anonymously, and then other students are assigned to review the assignment, again anonymously. The professor, however, needs to know both the authors and the reviewers for grading purposes. This presentation explains our approach in solving this need.
- Using Forums and Groups for Ongoing Journal Assignments, Carly Born, Carleton College
Rather than make a separate assignment for each weekly journal entry, learn how to use a Forum with Groups to have an ongoing conversation between student & teacher. Discussion threads are private between student and teacher, and is a single activity listed on your Moodle site.
- Propose Your Own 10 Minute Lightning Round About Moodle!
4:15 – 5:30 PM
End of Day Social, French Meadow, 1662 Grand Ave, St Paul, MN 55105
Dinner on your own on Grand Avenue or in downtown St. Paul
Tuesday, June 24
8:00 – 8:45 AM
Pastries and Coffee (Smail Gallery in Olin Hall #15)
9 – 9:45 AM
Session 6
Olin 241: Managing Copyright Compliance in the LMS: An Experiment with SIPX, Occidental College
This presentation will focus on the experience at Occidental College with the pilot use of SIPX in its Moodle environment in the spring 2014 semester. Developed at Stanford University, the SIPX service is a new, web-based technology, created to manage copyrights and deliver digital documents for the higher-education marketplace. Course creators search SIPX to determine the terms, conditions and royalty pricing for the use of copyrighted text-based content. The service integrates with the institution’s library holdings, helping to ensure that material that has already been licensed is not unnecessarily re-purchased. SIPX offers a Moodle plug-in as well as the option to simply link to content from SIPX. Students retrieve readings from SIPX via Moodle and are presented with information about any fees associated with the content, which the institution may opt to pay for themselves or require that students purchase.
How well does SIPX scale for use in a Liberal Arts environment? Who should bear the cost of royalty fees for permission to use copyrighted material? Does the transparency of royalty pricing for use of copyrighted material affect instructors’ selection of content? What impact does it have on student awareness of the economics of the marketplace for copyrighted material? Does SIPX have the potential to become the iTunes of academic content, pushing publishers to rethink their pricing models and resulting in greater copyright compliance on the part of faculty and students? It is hoped the presentation will spark discussion about the strategies employed at other liberal arts colleges for managing copyright compliance within their Moodle instances.
Oline 243: All Hands on Deck: The success of a collaborative training program in moving to Moodle, Gretel Stock-Kupperman, Viterbo University
In the spring of 2012, Viterbo University decided to move from Blackboard 8 to Moodle 2. This move represented a major change in LMS for the institution, as Blackboard had been in place virtually unchanged since 1999. 500 faculty and staff users were expected to be on the new system by January 2013, but were encouraged to start using the system in the fall. This represented a heroic training task, much of which had to be undertaken during the summer.
To meet this challenge, a group of faculty, administrators, librarians, and instructional design staff formed the Moodle Training Team. This collaborative group designed a full-featured training program to address the needs of the faculty, staff and student users of the new system. By leveraging the strengths and knowledge of the individuals on the team, over 50% of the faculty adopted Moodle in the fall and all faculty adopted the system on time in January. Members of the panel will describe the factors that led to this success, practical tips for training collaborations, and how training has been sustained past the migration process.
9:45 – 10:00 AM
Break (Coffee/Soda, pastries in Smail Gallery in Olin Hall #15)
10:00 – 10:45 AM
Session 7
Olin 241: Moodle Matchmaking: Adventures in Moodle Piloting, Kristi Burch, Centre College
Piloting Moodle with key faculty is an important step in determining which tools can effectively meet desired learning outcomes. Faculty interact with the Center for Teaching and Learning in myriad ways, but one of the most common questions that arises is, “How do I accomplish ‘x’ with my students using Moodle?” As an instructional technologist, my objective is to work closely with faculty to determine what their learning objectives for students are, and subsequently research and match appropriate tools to fit their needs.
Participants will:
-Learn how identifying specific tools within Moodle can help faculty achieve learning outcomes and increase efficiency.
-Understand the necessity and lifecycle of Moodle piloting.
-Identify Moodle tools that can be used in your own schools or teaching.
Olin 243: Badges? Do We Need Badges?, Martin LaGrow, University of Northwestern-St. Paul
Moodle 2.5 and forward offer the ability to create and share site and course level badges and link them to Openbadges.org. These badges can be used to provide alternative credentials and recognize independent and informal learning. This presentation will provide a high-level view of badge integration in Moodle, providing a brief overview of how they work and providing insight into the advantages, criticisms, and best practices of badge creation and sharing.
Olin 350: Working with the Workshop — Peer Review Reviewed, Dr. Mark Pearson, Earlham College
The Workshop module for Moodle has been present since the earliest incarnations and partly for that reason was known as spaghetti code jungle. Recently it’s been given a new lease of life, and so when a Geology Faculty came to me with a need to accomplish peer review of in class student presentations on a regular basis I had a hunch that it could do the job.
The presentation will show how I took Andy Moore’s pedagogical requirements and framed a set of moodle workshop activities and resources that implemented the non-lab part of the upper level course. We’ll look at how the student presentations and the Workshop operated and the problems involved together with grading issues. Concluding by examining whether the Workshop activity is ‘fit for purpose’ in terms of peer review, we’ll consider future directions.
10:45 – 11:00 AM
Break (Coffee/Soda, pastries in Smail Gallery in Olin Hall #15)
11:00 – 11:45 AM
Session 8
Olin 241: Flipping Learning with Moodle Quizzes, Jessica Schlueter, Kalamazoo College
For small liberal arts environments, it is often the faculty who are the innovators for new teaching-and-learning concepts such as the flipped classroom. Such is the case at Kalamazoo College, where a small group of chemistry professors have been striving toward a better classroom experience for the students, both online and off.
In this session, Jessica Schlueter will describe her experience working with two faculty members, Drs. Bartz and Stevens-Truss, as they begin to implement the Moodle quiz module as a tool in their flipped classrooms. Some of the concepts covered will include:
-An overview of flipped learning theory and Moodle quizzes
-The impetus behind using Moodle quizzes in a flipped classroom environment
-A practical guide for how to best implement the quiz tool, and
-A summary of successes & failures in the classrooms using the quiz tool for flipped learning.
Olin 243: Facilitating creative musical collaborations with Moodle, Veronica Pejril, DePauw University
Since adopting Moodle as our campus’ LMS 6 years ago, I have been exploring a variety of ways that Moodle’s tools can provide my students with a more collaborative music-making experience.
This presentation will cover some of the most effective practices I’ve employed, including round-robin musical compositions modeled after the French surrealists’ “exquisite corpse” game, employing effective peer-review of classmates’ projects with simple commenting rubrics, and delivering “seed projects” for students to complete independently, then review interactively.
The presentation will cover how these practices can be translated to other curricula spanning arts and sciences.
11:45AM – 12PM
Transition to John B. Davis Lecture Hall in the Dayton Campus Center #29
12 – 1:30PM
Open Box Lunch Discussion: Where Does the MUG Go From Here? (John B. Davis Lecture Hall in the Dayton Campus Center #29)