Moodle Essentials

Introduction and background to the course

The original title of this course is eLearning and Moodle Essentials for Teachers and Course Administrators. The programme is available to all teaching and faculty support staff at Barking College, East London, UK.

The course was designed as a 3x90 minute face-to-face programme, which is supplemented with independent online learning outside of the scheduled contact time. Once enrolled on the programme, participants can take as much time as they need to work through the materials independently; the forum and regular chat session provide additional support. Participants' continued input to the course is appreciated and encouraged to support newcomers and provide fresh ideas.

There are several aspects to the course:

• skills and tools
• engagement and active learning
• more efficient course management

The course puts lecturers into the position of students and provides them an experience of a really feature-rich learning environment that should appeal to as many learning styles and personalities as possible. One of the main aims is to get staff thinking creatively: just because something is called an assignment, does not mean you need to use it that way. Thinking beyond the obvious is one of the key elements of the Essentials course. Participants are exposed to all kinds of collaborative uses of Moodle in order to demonstrate to them how courses could be managed in a way that will ultimately reduce, rather than increase, workload. Finally, the long-term goal is to gradually build a network of 'tool experts' who can run their own departmental training sessions, provide imaginative exemplars and assist in mentoring and supporting new members of staff or those who may struggle for ideas.