Brief:
Get to know Moodle as a work tool (8 hours)
By now you might have noticed that Moodle is your “campus”. It forms the platform on which all your study material is delivered and it also enables you to talk to your fellow students and tutors via the Forum. The sooner you figure out how Moodle works, the better! So, that is what this Lesson Task is all about.Choose a metaphor/concept/analogy that illustrates how you see Moodle with all its different elements and areas. Use a pencil and paper to draw this. Make an effort with this assignment and dare to be creative. Try to steer away from the obvious i.e. a pirate’s map or physical campus.
Our first test assignment of the year threw me for a loop right off the bat. We were asked to figure out what Moodle was, and how it works. Learning and navigating a campus in real life can sometimes be tricky, but for me it quickly became clear that it held no candle to Moodle.
Let`s get started
I was to choose a metaphor/concept/analogy of how I see Moodle and illustrate this with a hand drawn sketch. I was also to write a detailed report, showing how my work process has been, and how I ended up at the finish line.
Since the task specified the need for creativity, I decided to start on my own, without any research into Moodle or Google. I simply clicked around on anything I could click and tried my best to find out how the gears worked. This method has worked for me in the past, but I must admit, I got a little discouraged and frustrated when I kept getting lost, and not quite understanding the mechanics of it all. I found it confusing with the shared forum for all the students, full time, part time and all the semesters. It got even more complicated when I tried to figure out if a particular thread had anything to do with my course at all. L.Ts and CA put together with AW00 and v2, I honestly had no idea even after reading all the different material I found in there, what was actually my mission. Recognising my frustration, I quickly jumped to pen and paper instead and started creating a mind-map .
Work process
I did this in a different order than I have previously worked. Normally I start with analysis, research and inspiration, followed by workshops, then sketches and mind-maps. My reasoning for changing the method was mostly because I really wanted to get an honest and real idea of what my first impression was. The assignment was How do you see Moodle, so there is no right or wrong answer. Tho, I think I also should have drawn a big labyrinth, as that is how I was feeling on day 1. However, after spending the next days on Moodle, and a lot more clicking, I think I started getting a bit more handle on it.
Next up I browsed the internet and checked out former students’ deliveries, and found many different takes on the task at hand. Some were even similar to my initial sketches. I decided that even tho I now understood the platform better, I still felt like my first thoughts of what it actually was, had not changed. I went back to my pencil and tried to make my gaming analogy feel more Moodle-like, adding some people and a slogan that I feel was fitting.
The concept behind the Tetris game is that the Mac is the Forum, foremost and center. The tetris pieces are the students and teachers, and we all have to work together to reach our common goal, in this case, putting the pieces together to form a whole.
End result
In order to convey it without the drawing getting too messy, I needed to add color, something I`m not too familiar with in hand-drawn material. So that became a coincidental learning step as well. I decided to remove the slogan as I felt it abundant and cleaned the drawing up. I used pencils H and 2H in addition to color pencils and ended up taking a photograph, as my scan app made it quite blurry.
The sum of it all
I think this assignment is a perfect first-week task, as we have to learn the forum in order to succeed in this class. It was a big learning curve and caused me some frustration, but in the end, I finished my task and learned a lot along the way. What I spent the most time on was report writing, going through examples, checklists and re-writing my own in order to try and follow the guidelines. I found it tricky as it wasn’t your usual job for a client, it was more of a personal journey. I am quite happy this is our first assignment, as I cant wait to get feedback and learn to get a hang of this report writing.
Research:
I spent a lot of time in Moodle itself for my research. Checking how former students handled this assignment and how my own class attacked the problem. For the rest of my research, Google was my friend.
https://books.google.no/books?id=EfILEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA51&lpg=PA51&dq=moodle+analogy&source=bl&ots=9r5hQsgncv&sig=ACfU3U0zgMoHFAlAdJx6eIEjaL584n33eA&hl=no&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwift-3Mwrb1AhV5RvEDHRieAzUQ6AF6BAgSEAM#v=onepage&q=moodle%20analogy&f=falsehttps://www.grammarly.com/blog/how-to-write-a-report/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAoY-PBhCNARIsABcz771lGz3ZbX1fHXy2RMmfTuNuihb-FHId_bu6mJn4eydkZ5iWlVL2Cv8aAnIAEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.dshttps://linnjeanetter.wordpress.com/2020/08/17/moodle-illustration/