While there are plusses and minuses for using any tech tool, there are some very strong reasons for using Moodle to supplement a face-to-face class. Here are the top five:
1) Say “So Long” to popular excuses for late assignments – By requiring students to submit assignments through Moodle, there is an indisputable record of the date and time that assignment was submitted. No more searching through email records to find an assignment that was supposedly emailed to you on time.
2) Let students check their grades online – One thing that students universally like about any LMS system their professors use is the ability to check their course grades at any time. Moodle’s Gradebook can be used to maintain both for in-class and online assignments. If you currently maintain grades in Excel, an import tool makes it easy to transfer gradebook data into Moodle so that students can find out what their grades are without emailing you. Moodle’s Gradebook has a simple interface but offers powerful functionality including weighted grades, feedback to students, and assignment categories.
3) Communicate with your class easily – Moodle’s built-in communication tools make it easy to get timely messages and announcements out to students. With the News forum, you can post updates and news about your class. If you need to cancel class due to bad weather, change a due date for an assignment, switch classrooms, or inform your students about other changes, the News forum provides a space to do that and automatically notifies your students via email. You can also email students and groups privately or en masse with the Quick Email feature.
4) Manage, change and update course documents on the fly – Post a syllabus online and your students can download it multiple times, print it out if they want to, or move it onto a mobile device. All course documents can be accessed 24/7, revised easily, and augmented with digital resources like graphics and multimedia.
5) Answer frequently asked questions once, not multiple times – In addition to reducing or eliminating all of the calls, emails, and visits from students asking when an assignment is due, when a test is coming up, or what a grade is, you can also post and clarify other important information about your course in Moodle. In addition, you can provide a forum for students to ask questions to each other. Often, questions about assignments or projects can be cleared up by a classmate. If you notice that students are struggling with a particular assignment, you can post helpful information in a central forum where all students will see it instead of having to respond to lots of email asking about the same thing.
Contact information, office hours, and other relevant information can be posted also.
The idea behind learning management systems and course management systems such as Moodle is to make it easier to manage and run a class. Why not take advantage of some of the built-in tools to help you do that.
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