ETBI-News-Summer-2016-web

Innovative Practices
Using Moodle at BIFE
By Seán Cryan, Tutor in Law, Business and Accounting at Bray Institute of Further Education
Moodle is a Virtual Learning
Environment (VLE). A technical
name for what is essentially
a website that allows educators to
share resources with students, conduct
quizzes and receive the submission of
assignments and deliver feedback.
It was introduced across Bray Institute
of Further Education last year. I had
heard of it before though, it had been
around for at least 10 years. I knew
the Open University ran their courses
through Moodle and a lot of Irish Universities
too, so it had a reputation. I was
actually excited to see what it could do.
I had been using an array of cloud
computing technologies; technologies
like dropbox, google drive, share point,
twitter and a personal website which
managed the job adequately. But they
lacked something. When it came to
the digital submission of assignments,
marking and giving feedback they didn’t
quite fit.
and time, 11.55pm proving very effective.
After this date and time, Moodle
gave a report showing who had submitted
their assignment and who had not.
Moodle also offered a range of other
options to help manage the whole process.
But the real power of Moodle is in the
grading and feedback process. I could
open the students’ assignment through
Moodle and start annotating it. This
was made easier by using a frequently
used comment feature contained within
the software.
The grading criteria was set and it
required me to enter a mark for each
criteria. When the assignment was corrected,
I could release the grades and
the annotated feedback back to the students,
who were automatically notified
by email. Moodle also generated helpful
reports like the class grade book. This
automatically showed a breakdown of a
student’s grade and identified students
that had overdue assignments. Likewise,
it showed any assignments that
had been submitted but not yet graded.
So I am a fan, especially as it’s free,
open-source software (https://moodle.
org) for anyone to use. There are things
that still bug me about it, but it’s rare
to find something that is perfect for
everything. After rolling it out across all
classes, it has streamlined the assignment
and feedback process and created
a new way to connect with students.
It took some head scratching before I
got to grips with Moodle but when I did,
I introduced it to the students.
Students were to access their assignment
brief through Moodle, and for
good measure, I asked them to click an
acknowledgment button to confirm that
they read the brief and noted the submission
date. They were also required
to submit the completed assignment
through Moodle and they would receive
feedback and their grade there too.
There was no need for the assignment
to be in hard copy and it could be submitted
from anywhere with access to
the internet. I also set a deadline date
Tutor Sean Cryan and students using Moodle to work on assignments
Section 1 | National and European Events issue 3 – 2016 ETBI 27