[Moodle] Moodle to encourage deep reflection

[Roland Gesthuizen]

A question was prompted on another forum, asking how to use Moodle to 
structure an online series of learning activities that both enhance the 
classroom session and encourage deep reflection. As a constructivist 
tool, Moodle lends itself well to complimenting my traditional classes 
when I teach my secondary school students.

There are many Moodle tools that you can use. I have several activities 
that I prepare in advance but hide a date closer to a particular course. 
I will unhide this manually then notify students of the prework using 
the news forum. I generally also add a small note in the course 
calendar. The calendar entry is automatically made by some Moodle 
activities and if the time is set to 11:55 p.m, the event will close the 
day before the class. Students respond favorably to pre-reading followed 
by a small challenge quiz, controversial choice over an issue or even a 
response to a forum post. I have likewise found the Wiki a powerful 
collaborative learning tool.

At the start of a class I will briefly draw the class attention to their 
collective or best contributions using a digital projector. This is 
important to help underscore the value of the work done outside the 
class and can become the stem for some structured face-to-face 
discussions. Does anybody else work in a similar way?