Luque-Moodle as a Complement

7/29/2019 Luque-Moodle as a Complement

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used to design a great variety of engaging language activities that would cater for

visual, auditory and kinaesthetic leaning styles.

2. The use of chats and forums would foster communication among students of differentgroups and shifts, develop their social strategies and create a sense of community, a

very important factor for students who were starting their university life. (Figura, C. &

Jarvis, H. , 2007, p.450)3. The design and development of Moodle is guided by the social constructionist

pedagogy (Moodle. com) i.e., students constructtheir knowledge as they interact with

the platform and their peers and the teacher acts as a facilitatorbecause, with the use

of different activities, s/he leads students towards the objectives and goals of the class.

4. Moodle is user-friendly for both teachers and students and only in rare occasions doesit crash.

Furthermore, by having the possibility of using a virtual platform, freshers would be able

to develop their computer skills or, as Kern (2006) puts it, their electronic literacies (i.e.

computer literacy, information literacy, multimedia literacy and CMC literacy) (p. 196)

which would help them fulfil university assignments, develop strategies to learn and improve

English, and most importantly, acquire learning autonomy. Moreover, the use of the platformwould provide students with complementary material that would make them revise the

vocabulary, structures and language skills practised in class in different ways.

Using Moodle Resource types to Teach English Language and Grammar

Moodle supports a range of different resource types that allow you to insert almost

any kind of web content into your courses (moodle.com). Many of these resources,

namely labels, files and web pages were very useful when designing the online course for

the Introductory Course 2009 at the School of Languages, UNC.

LabelsLabels are text and images embedded directly among the other activity links in the

course page. Labels allow both, teachers and students, to visualize the structure of the

course in a clear way. In our course, different types and sizes of labels were used to

facilitate students use of the virtual platform. For example, in the first two boxes, or

sections, that contain useful resources, the labels used were colourful and big to catch

students attention. In the language and grammar section, all the labels were in green and

blue respectively whereas for the exam practice section the red colour was used . Various

sizes were used to differentiate titles from subtitles.

FilesThis resource type allowed us to link documents from our desktop computer. In thisway, we were able to include pdf documents with the course syllabus, the language and

grammar schedules, and model paragraphs and letters taken from Writing Compositions

books. With this resource type, we could also attach Power Point slides shown in class

for students to review at home.

Web pagesThis resource type allowed us to link different web pages from the public web.

In the Language section, linking web pages was very useful to review vocabulary, learn more

functional English expressions, practice listening and extensive reading. In fact, to help

students revise vocabulary items learned in class, we linked sites containing crosswords and

vocabulary games from well-known textbooks such as the New English file. Moreover, many

sites related to asking for/giving directions, checking in/out at a hotel, shopping for clothes,ordering food, etc were linked to help student learn more expressions related to functional


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English. Finally, to provide students with extensive listening and reading activities related to

the topics learnt in class, we linkedaudios from the BBC Learning English resources such as

6 Minute English, How to and Welcome to London and then either designed a

listening comprehension activity or linked the listening activities provided by the BBC site.

To practice reading skills, we added links to Beyond the Postcard or Welcome to London

(also from the BBC site) which included real texts together with appealing readingcomprehension activities.

In the Grammar section, many videos were inserted in order to teach a particular

topic. Links to lessons already developed were included so that students had the

opportunity to listen to the theory once more and at the same time be exposed to different

accents and varieties of English. Besides, other videos that showed how the language is

used in real communication were also part of this course. In that way, students were not

only learning grammar, but practicing listening skills at the same time.

Using Moodle Activities in the Language and Grammar Class

Moodle contains a wide range of activity modules, many of which were used to buildup our course.

ChatsA Chat module was placed at the very beginning of the course. This module allowed

students to have a real-time synchronous discussion via the web. This seemed a useful

way to get a different understanding of each other and to get to know some classmates

whom students had not met in class. The mode of using a chat room is quite different

from the asynchronous forums because only when connected at the same time, could

students participate in the same session.

ForumsThis activity can be really important as it is where most discussion takes place.

Forums can be structured in different ways, and can include peer rating of each posting.

Although the teacher can impose subscription on everyone if they want to, we decided to

leave that decision up to the students. As it was a forum created for socializing, only

students who were interested could subscribe. By subscribing to this forum, participants

received copies of each new posting in their email. There was also a forum for specific

questions and doubts at the end of each unit and everyone subscribed had the opportunity

to profit from the answer the teacher gave.

JournalsThis module is a very important reflective activity. We designed a journal in which

students could reflect upon some aspects of their learning process and write their entries

as the course developed. As students could edit and refine their answers over time, eachentry included the date in which it was written, so that they could see their progress. This

answer was private and could only be seen by the teacher, who could offer feedback and

a grade on each journal entry.

SurveysMoodle provides a number of verified survey instruments that have been found useful

in assessing and stimulating learning in online environments. Up to this moment,

teachers are not able to design their own survey. However, we found the standard surveys

clear and complete enough to get a general view of students opinions about the course.

They eventually help us to improve the course and meet students needs more effectively.

In doing so, we could learn about our class and reflect on our own teaching.

Quizzes


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This module allowed us to design and set quiz tests. One type of quiz included was

multiple choice exercises in which students had a variety of options from which to

choose. This activity was used to practice different aspects of the English language and

grammar. In fact, at times students had to choose the appropriate meaning of a word, the

correct phrasal verb or the equivalent sentence for a word transformation exercise. In the

case of the Grammar section, a multiple choice question was used to choose the correctword order of adjectives or adverbs.

Another type of quiz was cloze where students typed the correct answer. This was

also very resourceful to make students practice prepositions, collocations and verb

tenses.

A third type of quiz was matching. This was used in the Language section to make

students match phrasal verbs with their definitions, specific lexical items with their

synonyms or antonyms or verbs with their appropriate collocation. In the case of the

Grammar section matching was used to make students match a word with its part of

speech, a verb with its pattern or a tense with its use, for example.

Finally, True/False quizzes were mainly used to practice listening and reading

comprehension with the linked texts in the Language section. True/False quizzes werealso used to practice error detection and correction. Different sentences containing

students most common mistakes were displayed so that learners would spot the mistake

and determine whether the sentence was correct or not. The correct answer appeared

afterwards in the feedback box so that students could confirm their predictions.

All these quizzes allowed multiple attempts since they aimed at practicing. Each attempt

was automatically marked, and students could do it again if they felt it was necessary. In some

occasions, we chose to give some feedback, whereas in others, we just showed the correct

answer.

AssignmentsAssignments allow the teacher to specify a task that requires students to prepare

digital content (any format) and submit it by uploading it to the server. Typical

assignments include essays, projects, reports and so on and this is why this resource was

so useful in the Language section. In fact, thanks to the virtual classroom students had

the possibility of further writing practice: by attaching a word document containing a

writing assignment students had the chance of having their paragraphs checked online.

WikisA Wiki enables documents to be authored collectively in a simple markup language

using a web browser.

"Wiki wiki" means "super fast" in the Hawaiian language, and it is the speed of

creating and updating pages that is one of the defining aspects of wiki technology.

Generally, there is no prior review before modifications are accepted, and most wikis areopen to the general public or at least to all persons who also have access to the wiki

server.

The Moodle Wiki module enables participants to work together on web pages to add,

expand and change the content. Old versions are never deleted and can be restored. In the

field of language teaching Wikis are usually used to enable students create a joint

composition. This can be great fun and motivating but the only drawback is that teacher

cannot edit students work afterwards and therefore the Wiki may contain many language

and grammatical mistakes. This is the main reason why, considering the learning stage of

our students and the great number of them, we have not used Wikis in the present Online

Introductory Course 2009.


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Conclusion and Further Directions

New technology usually challenges us to do things differently than before. There is risk,

because it means doing something for which the outcome is uncertain (Bates, A. W & Poole,

G., 2003, p.52). In fact, changing our ways and means of teaching is a great challenge and it

implies lots of time, training and effort, however, in most of the cases the outcome is positive

for both students and teachers. This was the case of the implementation of Moodle for the2009 Introductory Course: more than 250 students actively used the platform during and after

the course (specially for the March, May and July final exams) and most of them responded

positively to this new complementary tool. Nevertheless, many students did not make use of

the platform because they were not informed about it, they did not know how to use it or they

lacked the necessary means. In the future, therefore, informal workshops on how and why to

use the platform for blended learning may be implemented to promote the use of technology

for learning EFL from the start.

Reference List

Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003) Effective teaching with technology in higher education:Foundation for success. San Francisco, CA: Josses-Bass

Figura, K. & Jarvis, H. (2007) Computer-based materials: A study of learner autonomy and

strategies. System, 35, 448-468.

Kern, R. (2006). Perspectives on technology in learning and teaching languages. TESOL

Quartely, 40 (1), 183-210.

Moodle www.moodle.org
http://www.moodle.org/http://www.moodle.org/

Luque-Moodle as a Complement

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