Today is the offical start date of my summer online course, etap687. It is a master’s level fully online course at UAlbany in the education department. If you are interested, here is a link to a tour of the course. I also have a cool prezi presentation that i am currently doing about my experiences [...]

I am using moodle to teach ETAP687 because UAlbany was unable to provide instructor-level BLS course shells for the students in this course to create their own online courses, which is a main project for the course. I created the course in Moodle so that students could see from the student perspective what moodle can [...]

…quite excited to get the course started! Not everything is perfect yet. I am in Batavia in a hotel and can’t get moodle to load. not sure why. That could be problematic. Very exited though. I am really looking forward to seeing it all come together.
did i say i was excited?

some desicisions i’ve made:

6 modules = 12 weeks
an ice breaking module = 2 weeks prior to term start.
a course information area
a class community area
location of the panes – course info on the left. no choice about the center module/topic area. news announcements top right, participants, then calendar.

This order and locations on the moodle course homepage [...]

i discovered that there is no where to “hide” documents in moodle… i have been creating documents and organizing them in what i thought were “hidden” topic areas, so that i could hyperlink to documents from other documents so they could be displayed how, where and when i want them to only. BUT, that is [...]

First i created my course information documents and tried to get them laid out in a location on the moodle coursemap that makes sense. I am using the course summary pane for that. I am having to use things in ways i don’t think they intended to get this to look and feel like i [...]

so, i am reflecting… when faced with designing this course i had to consider several things:

how long the course will be
who the students will be
and what needs to be covered

1. The course is supposed to be 12 weeks long.
2. The course title is: Introduction to Online Teaching. so i have to make these assumptions [...]

quite anxious about how moodle works. don’t understand the gradebook. or how to grade assignments. Set it up thought i think. I hate math… Am still struggling with how to assess and evaluate in a pass/fail course. I am worried about the amount of work in the course. Is is enough? is it too [...]

I am trying to practice what i preach. present, engage/interact, assess. it is harder than it sounds. Pacing, sequencing, spreading the work out over 12 weeks and making sure they have enough time to do all the activities and trying to find a balance of activities in each module… will i let them work ahead? [...]

trying to keep it simple and consistent. trying to practice what i preach.