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A Note from John S. Lucas

cial thanks to Jane Ewart from the IES Abroad Barcelona Center for submitting these photos!

March 2

arcelona

As you know, our main priority is that Moodle be used as an eective teaching tool. This ye

we have added more interactive modules to Moodle so that faculty can engage students

outside of the classroom. These include the Forum, Workshop, Chat, Choice, Wiki, and Hotp

modules. This month, Id like to feature a few interactive uses of Moodle that encourage

interaction between students and faculty.

Students in Wolfgang Bialas Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll: The Impact of Pop Culture on the

Regina Fitzpatrick, the instructor for Introduction to Irish Language and Culture, has found a creative way to use

Moodle to track her students progress in learning the Irish language. She uploads recordings of Irish conversatiin Moodle so that students can listen to Irish pronunciation and learn vocabulary relevant to the curriculum. The

students use Audacity to record role plays in Irish using the new vocabulary, and upload the recordings to Mood

where Regina can access and evaluate their eorts. Regina listens to each students recording with them and

provides feedback.

Using a Glossary to collect student reections in Berlin

Using Audacity for language learning in Dublin

This method is particularly useful for Reginas course because Irish is not the everyday spoken language in Dubl

so students have limited opportunities to speak the language aloud and improve aural comprehension. Studen

in this course have enjoyed using this new technology, and doing oral rather than written assignments.

Dear Colleagues,

Modern Metropolis course write questions and comments about the reading assignment in Moodle before each

class. This creative use of the Glossary module allows students to see each others responses, and allows Wolfga

to guide class discussion based on the students entries, summarizing their reections and raising concepts that

they might have missed.

Using Hotpot to test student comprehension in Paris

Trc Long V Trn uses the Hotpot module in his Business French course to test student comprehension of coursmaterial. He writes 20 multiple choice questions that give concrete situations and ask students to identify the

concept being represented. After class, each student must answer 10 of these questions, which Hotpot random

selects from the 20. That way, students can complete the quiz more than once and see dierent questions. This

allows students to come to understand what content they have mastered, and what they need to review in mor

detail. Trc Long also uses Hotpot to administer graded quizzes throughout the semester to ensure that studen

keep up with course material before the midterm or nal exams.

I hope that these ideas inspire you to use Moodle to its fullest potential! If you nd another creative way to

engage students in Moodle, remember to contact your Regional Educational Technology Specialist to learn

how to submit your course for the Most Creative Interactive Moodle Activities contest, part of the Moodle

Faculty Development and Incentive Program.

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Featured Moodle Module - Quickmail Block

New Modules/BlocksAdding a Trip Planner Widget to

Your Site!

Chat Module:

The Chat Module allows smooth, synchronous text

interaction. Chats can be limited to group members o

roles, or be for anyone in the course. Prole pictures ca

be included in the chat window. The Chat Module

supports URLs, emoticons, embedded HTML and

images. All sessions are logged for later viewing.

The Quickmail Block adds a link to an interface that has a check box list of all stude

in the course and a mail composition text area. Teachers can select some or all of t

students to email. This enhances the messaging system by allowing teachers

communicate with a specic subset of students. To add the Quickmail block to

course, click Turn editing on. Click the drop-down under Blocks and sele

Quickmail from the list.

Trip Planners allow students to get information on

traveling from one destination to the next. Some public

transportation websites have Trip Planner widgets

available to add to your website. Simply go to your citys

local transportation website and search for the trip planner

widget (if available):

Copy the embedded code for the widget.

Add an HTML block to your Front Page/course. Click the toggle HTML button in the editor.

Paste the widget embed code and save.

Choice Module:

The Choice Module simulates a single question poll.

can either be used to vote on something, or to get

feedback from every student. The teacher sees an

intuitive table view of who chose what in the activity

Students can optionally be allowed to see an

up-to-date graph of results.

This newsletter was sent to provide the latest information for IES Abroad Moodle.

IES Abroad Chicago

33 N. LaSalle Street, Chicago, IL 60602-2602Phone: 1.800.995.2300

The image above shows how Quickmail will appear when added to a course. Both links are described as follows:

Compose: takes you to Quickmail's email composition page.

History: takes you to a history of all your emails sent by Quickmail in the current course.

Emails are sent to students personal email addresses. Any replies are delivered to the senders email address. Quickmail h

an attachment option available but is limited to one attachment per email and teachers can attach course site les on

These les are not removed by Quickmail and will remain in the History.

Sydney Trip Planner:

http://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/tripplanner/index.html

arcelona

March 2

London Trip Planner:

https://www.t.gov.uk/widgets/

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New Moodle Course Themes!

Although the Front Page theme cannot be edited, new

course themes are available for your convenience.

Moodle Course Themes provide a "skin" to completely

change the look and feel of your course. Weve recently

added seven new colorful course themes in Moodle.

To select a theme for your course:

In the course underAdministration, click Settings

Within the Generaltab, scroll down and click the drop-down next to Force theme

Select a theme from the list, scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save changes

mocha_them

leather_bindgolden_globes

healthnavy_bubbles

grey_brown magenta_them

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Role Assignments in Moodle

n Moodle there are roles (e.g. Guest, Center Administrator, Teacher, Student) and there are role hierarchies (e.g. Syst

Level, Course Level, Front Page). Roles are assigned within the various role hierarchies to provide each user wit

specic set of permissions in the Moodle site.

In Cerberus, users are assigned a role in their proles to provide the appropriate permissions in Moodle

These roles are automatically synced to Moodle:

Moodle contains non-syncing roles that give Administrators alternative roles to assign if needed:

Roles are assigned within the following three hierarchy levels in Moodle:

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Using Moodle for Beijing Student Affairs

Our IES Student Aairs sta provide services and support to students in order to enhan

student growth and development while studying abroad. The Beijing Student Aa

sta, which includes Joe Wood (Student Aairs Coordinator), Josie Wang (Student AaAssistant) and Travis Thompson (Resident Advisor/Moodle Assistant), have added helpf

content to the Student Aairs Moodle page including Google Maps, an orientaton vide

sign-up sheets, and more!

Students benet from our Student Aairs page by being able to get the information th

are looking for from our oce at any time of the day. Since there are only two sta peop

in the oce during working hours, we think of Moodle as a way to pass on that info whJoe WoodStudent Aairs

Coordinator (IES Beijing)we cant be around to update students. Information also ows in the other direction

students are able to give us feedback more easily. Since we are a resource for what is

When we are working on the Student Aairs homepage, we are using the same idea that we used for the IES Beiji

homepage: more content means more usage and more usage means information is more successfu

communicated to all students through Moodle. With that in mind, we try to think of things that would dra

peoples interest to the site. This is where the interactive neighborhood map and photo contest came from. W

thought that these were things people would look into on their own.

also think that making everyone feel like Student Aairs is committed to using Moodle makes a signica

dierence. We do this starting with orientation. Students nd as they arrive that other than an orientation schedua group assignment, and a Log on to Moodle how-to-guide, all other resources they need have to be obtain

through Moodle. The idea for the orientation video came from trying to make the page more manageable in t

beginning. Content on the site was starting to build up and we didnt want students to be overwhelmed to t

point that they wouldnt look at any resources the rst time they logged on.

Once students are using the site regularly, we want to make sure it continues to happen. We looked at all of t

major ways in which we interacted with the students (e.g. housing arrangements, travel info, extracurricular even

and we try to use Moodle to communicate that information instead of through traditional means. I think on

Student Aairs departments start getting into the habit of looking around their oce and thinking about ho

Moodle could do it better, it becomes very easy. This is where our homestay map, travel information, and eve

sign-ups came from. We still believe that for getting major information to students we have to communicate wthem by word-of-mouth, mass text message, and email in order to reach everyone. In this respect Moodle has ll

the spot of our email notications. Once our Moodle page is used fairly regularly, we encourage students to give

feedback on what they would like to see. Most recently, we put the work order for student room repairs on Mood

(using the Feedback activity) and we are creating a Lost & Found forum for the center.

We asked the Student Aairs Coordinator, Joe Wood, how Moodle has been benecial

students studying abroad in Beijing. His comments and tips are below.

happening around Beijing, students also get information about interesting things going on around town as long

t doesnt conict with info already on the homepage.

All of the resources we have accumulated on the page are time-intensive the rst time we did them, but on

earned it becomes very convenient to do. The reason Moodle works well is because email notications and conte

on the site is more reliable at disseminating information than text messages, phone calls, posters, and in person. F

better or for worse, students are dependent on the Internet, and that makes Moodle a good mechanism f

reaching them.

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Using Moodle...(continued)

One thing I would add: when your site becomes more active, you run into the problem of ooding inboxes wi

notications and students start sending Moodle to their junk-mail box. The Moodle Assistant should make sure t

settings are such that students only get emails about events they have replied to. Also, using the Choice Activinstead of using Forum post replies for sign-ups will cut down on email notications.

If it helps, here is what we believe are the main keys to getting a Student Aairs page o the ground:

1. Use Moodle during the semester from beginning to end

a) Sets the tone and students buy into those expectations

2. Demonstrate commitment to integrating Moodle in all activities

a) If Moodle isnt going away, students will adapt to it

3. Use content and required information to drive more hits

a) Multimedia makes the site more interesting and less daunting

4. Once in the site, have information that will keep people on the site

a) You can come up with a few ideas at rst, but later this can be driven by student demand. You can

add whatever resources they come asking about.

5. Make a habit of using Moodle for future tasks and continuously get feedback on the site

Beijing Student Affairs Orientation Video

The Beijing Centers Moodle site contains a New Student Orientation video which was written, directe

edited and produced by Travis Thompson (Resident Advisor/Moodle Assistant). The video was also lme

by Travis Thompon featuring Joe Wood. You can view their Student Aairs

Orientation video here: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzQyNDgwMzIw.html

The video is also located on the Front Page of our Moodle Learn Resources site:

https://moodlelearn.muat.iesabroad.org

International Technology Terms!In this months IES Moodle Newslette

well take at look at how technology

terms can be written in dierent

languages!

Hindi French

mgaoctet

Japanese

The technology term of the month is:

megabyte - A megabyte is 1,024 kilobytes and precedes the

gigabyte unit of measurement. Large computer files are typically

measured in megabytes. For example, a high-quality JPEG photo

from a 6.3 megapixel digital camera takes up about 3MB of

space. A four minute CD-quality audio clip takes up about 40MB

of space, and CDs can hold up to 700MB of space.