Tag Archives: student success

Moodle: Personalized Learning Designer (PLD)

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Pop-quiz! Answer the following:

Are you trying to keep up with student reports so that you can message at risk or failing students and encourage them to attend office hours or seek tutoring?

Are you watching your participants list to find and reach out to students who have not logged into the course or participated recently?

Are you trying to make sure students with an excelling grade have additional opportunities to further challenge them?

Are you wanting to find a way to get back a few hours of your life each week and let the PLD do some work to help you?

Open LMS - Personalized Learning Designer
The PLD can provide differentiated instruction that is more personalized to the student.

Many of the essential steps in helping your students succeed take a lot of TIME!  The Personalized Learning Designer (PLD) will help you by completing these tasks for you, thus giving you back this time to focus on your teaching!

Give some of these rules from our PLD Cheat sheet a go:

A student has not logged into the course in the previous x days.Event: Recurring Event (daily)
Conditions: User role check (student) & Course login (has NOT logged into course, x)
Actions:  Send email
Quiz or assignment not submitted (*note this rule uses course completion settings)Event: Quiz or assignment submitted 
Conditions: Activity completed
Actions: Send email
Students with 69% and below after midterm EMAILEvent: Specific date and time
Conditions: Course grade range
Actions:  Send email
Send students to the syllabus when the FIRST enter the courseEvent: Course start date
Conditions: Course login (NOT logged in / 30 days)
Actions: Go to activity
The PLD can be found within your Course Administration menu.

Want to learn more or see it in action? Come to our PLD Workshop on 10/29 at 11am.

Upon completion of this workshop, you’ll be able to:

  • Design automated interactions with students and personalize their learning.
  • Create rules using the Personalized Learning Designer to assist with course management strategies.

Do you have PLD rules that you found helpful? Tell us about them in the comments!

Keep an eye on the CTL Calendar for upcoming workshops. The next one will be 10/29 @11am on the PLD. If you can not make the live workshop – it will be recorded AND/OR I have an online version of the PLD workshop in Moodle for you!

Building Community in an Online Class

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Building a sense of community with online learners.

Sometimes things are easier said than done!  How do you make a connection with students and build a community – when you never see them?!  Unlike face-to-face courses, you don’t usually get to meet (in person) your students in an online course.  How can you help make your online students feel comfortable and confident when interacting with the course, fellow students, and the instructor?

Luckily, we have a few ideas on how to help instructors to build class community in their online courses.

Why?

A lot of research is out there that concludes that when students feel connected and apart of a community they are more likely to be successful in the course.  Courses that have community and promote a constructivist and/or social context approach to teaching and learning lead to increased student success rates.  

What

Activities that help build a sense of class community (early the course) fall into three general categories:

  • Social Activities which focus on self-expression
  • Cognitive activities which focus on academic and professional goals.
  • “Getting Started” activities that allow students to become familiar with the course and technology.

Each of these types of activities develops social presence, promote learner engagement, and opens communication (oscqr.org, 2019).  

How

  • Use an icebreaker to start off your course!
  • Post a question in a forum – first student answers the question and asks the next – this continues until all students have answered and asked a question.  Instructor answers the final question.
  • Create an informal open [Zoom, Google Hangouts, Moodle Chat] space where students can meet and discuss course-related topics.
  • Update your profile page and ask/assign your students to do the same!
  • Participate in all the introductory and getting started activities!  Instructors should model what they would expect students to share.
  • Use a positive tone!
  • Use Digital Posters for Online Community Introductions

Explore further

Jones, P., Naugle, K., & Kolloff, M. (2008). Teacher presence: Using introductory videos in hybrid and online courses. Learning Solutions.

McIntyre, C. (2004). Shared Online and Face-to-Face Pedagogies: Crossing the Brick-and-Click Divide. Educational Technology, 44(1), 61-63.

Russo, T. C., & Campbell, S. W. (2004). Perceptions of mediated presence in an asynchronous online course: Interplay of communication behaviors and medium. Distance Education, 25(2), 215 – 232.

Widmeyer, W. N. & Loy, J. W. (1988). When you’re hot, you’re hot! Warm-cold effects in first impressions of persons and teaching effectiveness. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80(1), 118-121.

Early Outreach Tool in Moodle – Pilot Opportunity

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Exciting news! Early Outreach is partnering and collaborating with Academic Technology in programming courses in Moodle to auto”magically” send notifications to at-risk students. The Early Outreach Tool will look for students whose course grade are below 70% at weeks 3, 5, and 7 and will send notifications from Early Outreach for support. The ultimate goal is to reach out to students early and often and provide the proper support so they are successful in their course.

Why would I want this Early Outreach tool in my Moodle course(s)?

The PLD will check grades at weeks 3, 5, and 7. If students grade range is between 0% and 70% the student and early outreach will be notified.

The EO Tool will check grades at weeks 3, 5, and 7. If students grade range is between 0% and 70% the student and early outreach will be notified.

If the Early Outreach tool is successful you would no longer need to manually review your Moodle gradebook and make referrals to early outreach. This saves you time and ensures at-risk students are identified early and often. This is a win for instructors and a win for students!

What is the Early Outreach tool going to do and what do instructors need to do?

The “Early Outreach tool” will send an email and force an alert on your course to all students who have between a 0-70% course total at specific times during the year. The tool will check student grades on Monday at 8am on Weeks 3, 5, and 7 of the Winter term. The email/alert will communicate to students that they are at risk based on current course total and requests they meet with Early Outreach for support.

What do instructors need to do:

  • Nothing you are not already doing!!!
  • Keep an updated Moodle gradebook. Understand alerts go out Monday at 8am – it is essential the gradebook be accurate in order to target truly at-risk students.
  • Communicate with me if you find anything not working or if you have any concerns or questions.
  • Share any feedback on how the implementation of this tool impacted students.

Want more info?

If you would like to learn more about how we are using PLD to program early alerts or have other questions – please feel free to ask me! I would be happy to review the tool and student experience and answer any questions you may have.

Interested?

Just let me know (steevesk@lanecc.edu)!  I will need to know what Winter CRNs you would like the tool implemented.