Moodle to Replace Blackboard Vista

As you may have heard from the Provost’s announcement, UNC Charlotte is officially changing learning management systems from Blackboard Vista to Moodle. Moodle is now available to all faculty, and all courses listed in Banner are available in Moodle (and Blackboard Vista). To access your courses in Moodle along with training and support resources, visit http://moodle.uncc.edu. Once you login to Moodle, you can access a self-paced Moodle training course, “Teaching With Moodle,” under the “My Courses” section, in the “Training” folder. Your “Sandbox” course for exploring Moodle is also available in this same folder, and forms (e.g., crosslisting, shared designer, etc.) are linked from within Moodle.

The CTL website also contains Moodle documentation, including FAQs and how-to guides and video tutorials. There will be Moodle workshops across the university, so just check our calendar and sign up online for a time a place convenient for you. The Help Center is available online at http://helpdesk.uncc.edu or by phone at 704.687.3100.

Blackboard Vista will continue to be available through Spring 2011, but we realize that many faculty have already started migrating courses to Moodle. We encourage you to work with your departmental colleagues, college IT staff, and the Center for Teaching and Learning to assist with your migration. Anyone who would like a training session for their entire department or college should contact the Center for Teaching and Learning to arrange a time and location that would be convenient for you.

We want wish you luck in gearing up for the new semester! If you have any questions, please let us know.

Dr. Garvey Pyke

Top 9 Things to Consider When Using Moodle

1. Use how-to guides and video tutorials, attend basic training courses in person, or complete the self-paced online course available when you login.
2. Activate your course by granting student access.
3. Send a welcome email to students using Moodle's News Forum.
4. Post your syllabus and provide basic information about how Moodle will be used in your course.
5. Complete an instructor profile and encourage your students to do the same.
6. Design your Moodle activities around the learning objectives and goals for the course.
7. Plan and develop visuals and media to enhance course content.
8. Use discussion forums to build community and engage learners.
9. Use assignments and quizzes to reduce grading time.

Instructional Design Consultations Available

Instructional design is one of many approaches to improving instruction by focusing on the course, the curriculum, and student learning. In this approach, instructors become members of a design or redesign team, working with instructional designers. The collaborative efforts can have a very broad range, including examining how a course fits into the overall departmental and institutional curriculum; defining the goals of the course while assessing needs and current status of the course; identifying course structures and instructional strategies and tools that will help achieve the defined goals; creating instructional and support materials; evaluating the effectiveness of the newly designed or redesigned course in terms of goal achievement and student learning; and establishing procedures for updating and sustaining the course.

In carrying out these efforts, instructional designers typically utilize a systematic approach generally referred to as the ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation) Model, while incorporating systemic or iterative processes characterized by prototyping, piloting, formative evaluation, and revision. If you would like to learn more about how your course may benefit from instructional design efforts, the Center for Teaching and Learning is ready to help. This is true for your face-to-face instruction or online efforts.

Dr. Jaesoon An
Instructional Design Specialist

New! Teaching Tip Sheets Now Available

The Center for Teaching and Learning has produced a series of short, research based summaries of best practices in teaching and learning. They answer such question as follows:

• Is online learning effective? Do students learn as much in an online classroom as they do in a face to face classroom? Do they learn more? What data and research support this claim?
• How do students perceive online learning? What factors influence this perception? Which methods of online instruction do students prefer?
• What methods have been effective in getting students to engage with each other and the material in an online or hybrid course?
• What are the best ways to promote effective online discussions?
• How should lecture capture be used for effective teaching and learning?
• What services are provided at UNC Charlotte for those students who need additional help outside of class in order to be successful?

If you have any suggestions for future tip sheets, please let us know. We welcome all feedback!

Fully Online Professional Development Opportunities Through Sloan-C

Did you know that UNC Charlotte has a full membership with the Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) which will allow you to take their online workshops at no cost to you? Just take a look at their listing of workshops and then send us an email to tell us which workshops you would like to attend. They offer topics ranging from faculty burnout to academic integrity to podcasting. We have received good feedback about the workshops, including faculty testimonials. Sloan-C also has other resources that we would encourage you to explore, such as their research based publications.

Good Reads: The CTL Library

The Center’s professional development library contains over 700 books and an assortment of multimedia resources for faculty checkout. You may sign out any resource for up to three weeks or make special arrangements for longer periods. Everything is grouped by categories, ranging from active and collaborative learning to online learning to visual design. Feel free to come and browse our selection in person in Atkins 149C, or you can view or download our catalog online.

Please consider leaving feedback on our Newsletter using our survey form.