Last week I wrote a Moodle Book.
If you don’t know what that is, well, the way I used it, it’s a sequence of pages in a tool on the Brookes Virtual Learning Environment that has allowed me to set up a series of reading activities with videos and questions to ponder around curricular documents from England, Wales, NI and Scotland. Simpler than the bells and whistles of things like Adobe Connect, although I’m sure my version is basic even for the Moodle Book.
I am sort of proud of it, although Sue Cowley’s blog on making raised beds for her allotment was very apt when I read it on Friday. I got better over time.
And on Monday morning – tomorrow as I type – students will go and have a look, maybe dip into a page or two and say “meh,” I should imagine. They may persevere: it’s info needed for the assignment turned into a self-study tool from possibly the dullest class of the whole year.
My problem, really, is the Start-Stop-Carry On activity I gave them when we last met. High-tech stuff, this: a piece of A5 paper with the words Start, Stop and (you guessed it) Carry on, inviting students to say what they felt needed to be done about their module, by adding (‘Start’) or removing (‘Stop’) elements. An ad hoc evaluation.
And the the thing that came out loud and clear was “Stop Doing All This Online Stuff.”
Stop-Start-Carry On becomes Stop Nick in His Tracks. I’ve done this new one for Monday because I’ve said I would, but the students were all-but unanimous in wanting face-to-face sessions where they could. This could be because I suck at online learning environments; it could be because of the hidden conservatism of the students. Whatever the reason, I feel I have to ask:
What do we do with evaluation that goes against the grain?
nicktomjoe 