Facilitating interaction

We know that human brains are designed for social interaction and that considering information (including that in your curriculum). To leverage those realities of cognition when planning course, units, and lessons, faculty can include interactive activities into their Moodle classrooms.

The TLIC at GCC supports a variety of Moodle tools to facilitate interactions.

Prompts

For several years, the TLIC has been encouraging faculty to spend time crafting prompts. One of the resources we have used to do this is Harvard University's Project Zero. That site maintains a library of protocols and prompts designed to guide teachers and students into more focused and purposeful interactions than "post and respond."

Find the "Improving Discussions" page on the "Moodle Users" classroom

Forums

The default tool in Moodle to facilitating discussions or interactions in a forum. There are several types that can in added to any classroom, but the default is a threaded discussion.

  • You can see what forums look like from a student's point of view or a teacher's on the page "See How Forums Work" in the "Moodle Users" classroom.
  • The TLIC also recommends faculty enable "Whole Forum Grading" to make it easier to grad students' participation.
  • In Moodle forums, one does not attach a files to a post, but adds a link to it using the ATTO text editor; the steps for doing that are available ""Attaching" a Document to a Forum Post or Reply"

Padlet

Padlet is an online platform for interaction. It works similar to a forum in that the instructor adds an artifact (these can be any of a variety of files including PDF, links to videos, or images) and students can respond. The best Padlets are focused by a good prompt. The great advantage of using Padlet is that posts and replies can be done with audio or video as well as text.

  • These slides introduce you to Padlet at GCC.
  • A "consumer" version of Padlet is available, but it is best to have both you and your students create accounts on GCC's installation of Padlet. Directions and links to sign up are on the "Padlet Accounts" page.

OU Wiki

Wikis are type of interaction in which groups of students create a single document. I often use wikis to help students answer questions; for example, I will sometimes create a wiki with the questions from the end of a chapter, and assign students the task of answering them or improving or extending the answers someone else started.

There are two wiki tools available in Moodle, we recommend using OU Wiki. 

Perusall

Perusall is a group annotation tool. Instructors add items (documents, web sites, videos, images) and students highlight selections (or drop markers in video timelines), then add text that gives their responses.

Others can add annotations and everyone can reply to each other's in conversations. The text editor does include an html editor and the conversations are displayed on the margins along with the item added by the instructor.

Other tools we have for facilitating interaction:







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