Course Management with Moodle at Perins
Perins School is an 11 to 16 mixed comprehensive school in a small town in Hampshire, 6 miles from Winchester with 1000 pupils. Four years ago the school decided to introduce a Moodle VLE for the school to support teaching and learning. The initial decision to try Moodle came from the headteacher following her attendance at a conference at which Moodle was discussed.
The school is a specialist sports college and wanted to develop a VLE on which to run a cyber sports course. Initial funding to support this specific aim was provided by the Sports Trust and covered the cost of a dedicated VLE manager for one year.
Moodle provision is now part of the main school budget. The role of the fulltime VLE manager has been maintained and the focus is now on providing support and training for teachers, students and support staff. Having been set up with a very specific aim, Moodle is now a key element of the school structure and well integrated within all planning and development strategies for the school.
The school is working towards Trust status and the Moodle is a useful platform on which to make information available for parents, governors and staff and to facilitate consultation and discussion.
Strategy for whole school implementation:
The school curriculum is organised around 13 main subject areas. A strategy for a staged implementation was developed, with the decision taken to start with Year 7 and get the whole year online by the end of the 2006-7 year, including their core subject areas. This year group was chosen for two reasons:
- As new arrivals from from primary school, using a Moodle would become just another element of adapting to the new school environment
- Year 7 was also being provided with laptops for home use.
The 2007-8 year has seen Year 8 core subjects being added to the Moodle. Typical resources included on the Moodle are:
- Quizzes
- Schemes of work
- Lesson planning.
Teachers:
When the Moodle was first introduced it represented a huge shift in approaches to teaching and learning within the school and required staff to review their pedagogy. Some staff have been more willing to ‘jump in’ than others, with the two main barriers to overcome being:
- Staff not feeling confident in using the Moodle
- Staff not seeing how it can be useful for them
The VLE manager is addressing these issues through training and support, and also by showing subject staff specific ways in which they can use Moodle functionality to enhance their lessons and support learners. For example:
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By showing teachers how to create short quizzes in Moodle. The English department has started doing this on a weekly basis to assess students’ progress in reading set texts, with a short quiz each week that is marked automatically by Moodle and staff can immediately get an indication of how (and whether) students are understanding the book
- In Mathematics it can be difficult to develop resources because of the need to include formulae. Students have been using small hand held video cameras (which cost approx £30) and videoing each other describing a key mathematical concept. The process helps them understand the concept, and then becomes a learning resource for other students
- In History many of the current learning materials are paper based. Students are being involved in transferring these to Moodle resources by converting handouts, etc., into more interactive resources
- It is possible to encourage learners to collaborate and learn from each other by uploading resources or assignments on to Moodle for peer to peer feedback and review.
Parents:
Parents can obtain logins for the Moodle. Much of the site is publically available anyway, but by logging in parents are able to access information about their child(ren) and see what homework assignments they have. Parents have access to a searchable homework database created using the database function in Moodle. Teachers add homework assignments when they are set and parents are able to search for their child’s teacher and subject.
Information on healthy eating has also been made available for parents on the Moodle, with links to useful websites and a questionnaire to complete. General information about the school (calendar, prospectus, etc.,) is on the Moodle for parents of prospective students.
A key element of engaging parents (both with the Moodle and with their child’s learning in general) is the training session offered to parent on how to use the Moodle. These are proving popular with parents (with 35 attending a session in July followed by a second session with a similar number). The session starts with an introduction to Moodle and then goes onto to explain how the VLE works. The session is very ‘hands on’. Parents are asked to do activities on the Moodle and to try out its functions.
There has been an extremely good response to these sessions, with attendees providing positive feedback and offering to help upload resources to the Moodle and to train other parents.
Students:
From the start the students have been generally well engaged with and confident in using the Moodle. In the early stages ‘student gurus’ were involved in working with teachers to implement the Moodle and upload resources. This continues with funding provided to pay a small number of students to work on the Moodle over the summer to undertake jobs that teachers have said they would like doing.
Some students have installed their own Moodle platforms at home and have been known to advise the Moodle manager when they come across bugs in the system.
Students are very proactive and become drivers for change as they become used to the Moodle and have an expectation that work should be collaborative and immersive.
Other school users:
Perin’s School has set up areas on Moodle for a range of other users. For example:
- Governors have their own secure area on the site
- Support staff are able to upload letters to parents to the Moodle so parents can access them at any time.
- Feeder schools – local schools have areas set up on the Perins’ Moodle.
Challenges:
The continuing success of Moodle at Perins School depends on the resolution of a number of issues, including:
- The need for the SMT to set specific targets for the full integration of Moodle across the school, aligned with the further development of CPD to support and engage staff in the possibilities offered by Moodle
- Perins School will need to review its reporting procedures since the school uses a different MIS for real time reporting which does not integrate with Moodle
- Hampshire County Council has recently selected a commercial VLE as their preferred platform. It is not yet known what effect this could have on schools in the county who currently use Moodle, especially in terms of support from the LA.
Some issues to consider:
The Moodle manager outlined a number of points which any school thinking about adopting Moodle should consider:
- For a Moodle to succeed it has to (and be seen to) enhance and support learning
- If you are considering setting up a Moodle you need to ensure that it is properly supported. This can be internally – in which case you need to be confident that there is someone in the school who can do this. If you are looking at an external hosting and / or support provider, shop around for prices.
- Unless you are competent in PHP and MySQL (which is required to set up a database on which to run the Moodle) get support.
- Staff development is vital – involve as many people as possible, make it fun
- Set priorities and don’t try to do everything at once – start with a particular year group.
- Make time for the implementation
- Make sure you have SMT buy in
- Use the Moodle support forums if you have problems or questions - chances are someone else will have had the same problem and posted a solution [link]
Technical requirements:
The Moodle is hosted internally on the school server (Windows), with technical support provided by Pteppic. The school is in the process of auditing its IT provision and planning for the future, with the possibility that an external company may take over the hosting of the Moodle.
Links
Perins School Moodle
Guardian article including information on how Perins School involved student 'gurus' in the development of the Moodle
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2005/oct/04/elearning.technology6