NSW LearnScope 2007 Team Application Oodles of Moodle
NSW LearnScope 2007
Team application form
New South Wales
Oodles of Moodle for the U- Learner
‘Creating collaborative learning communities to connect with today’s U-Learners using Moodle and the integration of other e-learning technologies’
NSW LearnScope 2007
Team application form
Cover Sheet for Oodles of Moodle
Submitting/ supporting Registered Training Organisation: / TAFE NSW – Western Sydney InstituteContact person’s name for this application: / Bronwyn Davies
Contact person’s position in the organisation : / Senior Education Officer Professional Development
Contact person’s email address: /
Contact person’s phone number: / 4724 8265
Organisation’s postal address: / 117 Henry Street
Penrith NSW 2750
Organisation’s physical address: / 117 Henry Street
Penrith NSW 2750
Organisation’s email address: /
Organisation’s phone number: / 4724 8265
Highlight sector that your RTO is from: / TAFE
Office Use Only:
Date Received:Received By:
Document Tracking Number:
Submission Entered Into System:
‘In a nutshell’: your focus
Intended outcomes
· Creation of a core group of VTE teachers with the skills and experience to deliver high quality support to distance and F2F students using Moodle as one form of open source LMS and other compatible e-learning applications within Moodle
· Improved technical skills and understanding of the features, functions and appropriateness of open source LMS applications for designing , implementing and delivering VTE programs
· Development - through action- learning – of a protocol or model for using open source LMS like Moodle in the delivery of VTE that will assist in the continuing professional development of VTE practitioners.
Focus of Professional development
Train and up-skill VTE teachers in the use of Moodle as one form of open source LMS and any other interoperable e-learning technologies that integrate with Moodle to further engage VTE, Pathways and Indentured Trainee students across a wide representation of Industry groups in the VTE sector by:
· Exploring the benefits of, and the interoperability of other e-learning technologies with Moodle as a potentially flexible and sustainable open source LMS for today’s U-learner (ubiquitous learner) in the VTE sector.
· Analysing the appropriateness of emerging e-learning techniques for augmenting the delivery of education and support to students who are: geographically disadvantaged, learners with disabilities, indigenous groups and disengaged learners
· Developing skills for designing innovative approaches and novel ways for implementing and delivering learning using open source LMS such as Moodle and other elearning technologies that are interoperable with Moodle such as Adobe Connect, Captivate and other Macromedia technologies.
· Learning to assess Moodle as a potential open source LMS, and evaluate the benefits in teaching and learning to augment today’s U-Learners in VTE.
· Discovering ways in which VTE teachers can harness the capacity of Moodle and it features and functions to design appropriate learning materials to better engage their learners.
Learning across our lives’: your community of learners and context
TAFE NSW – Western Sydney Institute (WSI) is a large, complex, decentralized educational Institute, employing approximately 1450 full-time staff and 2500 part-time staff. WSI delivers training and assessment services throughout Western Sydney as well as state-wide, nationally and overseas to approximately 85 000 students each year. Learning is by classroom and distance delivery.
Project Team Members:
Project Manager: Beth Hobbs, A/Manager Educational Development Learning Technologies
Project Facilitators: Paula Williams e-Learning Development Officer (LTU) and
Gina Veliotis Project Officer (LTU)
Project Sponsor: Ron Wright, Associate Director WSI
Project Coaches: Expert users of Moodle from other RTO’s will be contacted to act as coaches and mentors
Project Mentor: Deborah Pentecost, Senior Education Officer, Professional Development
WSI Team Participants - Comprise VTE Coordinators and teachers from seven colleges across Western Sydney Institute, these include the following:
OTEN
· Health Sciences- San Eng Chen HT health) Jeanette McGuiggan (Aged Care), Erica Ashley (Alcohol & Drug)
· Child Studies - Laura Armesto (HT)
Baulkham Hills
· Hospitality- Louise O’Sullivan (HT)
Blue Mountains
· Jane Adams (Industry Officer), Hospitality Section Glenda Grice, Jim Hipwood, Julie Hutcheson, Marc Warin, Lindsay Lamb
Information & Communication Technology
· Damir Kljkucevic, WSI, LMS & Web Administrator
Nepean - Kingswood
· Tourism & Hospitality -Julie Gay (Head teacher); Tracy Chapman (Teacher Tourism & Events); Ravi Shankar (Teacher)
· Info Tech- Brian Krout (FT)
· Child Studies- Karen Daniels, Tracey Currie (HT), Leanne Wreford (FT) Leigh Hamilton
Richmond
· Bob Thurlow (IT Teacher); Ann Roberts (IT Teacher);
· Graeme Phipps (Animal Sciences Teacher); Steve McGill ( HT Animal Care)
Nirimba
· Ross Hill (Logistics)
Blacktown
· 2 teachers (Automotive)
CLI & Industry- MTA
So as to cater for both F2F and distance mode learning environments, the team will include
· Industry representatives MTA (Motor Traders Association)- Laylor Kemp
· DET personnel in schools /representation from the Centre for Learning Innovation (CLI ) Grant Casey
Learning Communities - This will be created from VTE student cohorts within the following teaching areas:
1. Animal Sciences (Animal Care, ARAZPA (Australasian Regional Association of Zoological Parks and Aquaria)
2. Hospitality
3. Children’s Services
4. Automotive
5. Health Sciences (Aged Care & Drug and Alcohol)
‘What’s working well; let’s grow it’ : building on skills and strengths
Current team skills – Cross section of elearning skills of varying degrees ranging from web.20 knowledge and open source learning management systems to Janison skilling.
Extending strengths - Engage in ongoing Professional Development and awareness of OWPFOSS (Open Web Publishing & Free Open Source Software) key issues. Building on networks with NSW Learnscope2007 and related discussions http://webconf.det.nsw.edu.au/p79854142/ and international papers surrounding the FOSS movement http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html
Current use – Many members are using webcast tools eg. Illuminate, Didasko and Adobe Connect, and LMS eg Janison. Some members are also exploring LAM’s. Hence, this team has varied knowledge or skills in e-Learning, with some members having awareness but now needing the opportunity to start exploring further and applying some of the previous knowledge in e-learning to a more constructive way of putting it altogether in one application. They now want to develop skills in Moodle for a wider group of VTE teachers across industry groups so as to enable them to provide a dynamic learning environment for students.
Learners and Participants
Team members and VTE students will be exposed to Moodle and trial other e-learning technologies that integrate in particular Adobe Connect (formerly Breeze) and other Macromedia software tools such as Captivate that can be used in their day to day practice.
Participants will trial and refine the VTE programs by engaging groups of students in using the software to augment their learning and interact with others by means of integrating blogs, wikis, podcasts, moblogging, using RSS feeds and tags into Moodle to analyse its potential interoperability with Web 2.0 services.
‘Rewire or rust’: capability development focus
Development of core skills.
· Team members will develop core skills in; problem solving, innovative thinking, communication skills and collaborative knowledge sharing and the effective usage of Moodle LMS’s to support teaching and learning.
· Understanding the basic features and functions of Moodle applications that merit further exploration of open source LMS’s when designing innovative approaches for delivering VTE programs.
· Update knowledge of current and emerging social and open source software to support the delivery of education in the TAFE/VTE sector for distance, school and work based student target groups.
· Development of online collaborative skills in using LMS like Moodle for the delivery of VTE programs across schools in NSW.
· Skills in integrating the electronic tools into the learning environment to engage students in their learning, specifically those studying in a solitary context that are geographically disadvantaged.
· Understanding open source LMS like Moodle options and application of these for the delivery of education and support to students
Professional Development Strategy
Learning Strategy / Rationale for Learning Strategy· Research and explore of Moodle as a potential open source LMS as one the options to understand connectivism via coaching and mentoring.
· Review and reflect on existing work in the applications of Moodle, including discoveries of the 2006 LearnScope project, “Connections and Conversations wiki and CLI’s “Moodle PLC Forum” on TaLe to keep abreast of current findings and issues eg Moodle Flakes.
· Collaborate in the 2007 Moodle Professional Learning Community Moodle PLC http://taleforum.det.nsw.edu.au/tale/learning/moodle / Participants will learn about the appropriateness of various LMS like Moodle applications necessary for learning in the ‘connected era’. This will be achieved through workshops and collaboration with technical and educational experts to develop greater skills in connected learning techniques.
· Develop practical skills on using the features and functions of the Moodle open source LMS applications. / Participants will trial and refine the VTE program by engaging groups students in using the software to augment their learning and interact with others by means of blogs, wikis, podcasts, moblogging, RSS feeds and tags.
· Create through communities of practice a professional development learning space using live journals (wikis and blogs) / A central professional development blog will act as the nucleus of the project and will link to all the blogs and wikis created. The central blog will contain all the information for the functioning of the project. The central blog will be connected to live journal spaces to filter ideas and thoughts about the project.
· Establish knowledge-sharing network (via action- learning), models for using LMS like Moodle in the delivery of VTE programs that will assist in the continuous development of VTE practitioners / The shared ideas and thoughts collected by the central blog will form the basis and rationale for developing a model or protocol by using the concepts and findings of the project to support future colleagues in the way LMS like Moodle is thought about and used.
‘A blinding flash of obvious’: justify your proposed project
Ongoing Strategies and priorities
This project links to strategies underpinning the NSW Department of Education and Training Strategic Plan:
§ Increasing VTE opportunities to improve employment outcomes for indigenous people, learners with disabilities, disengaged learners, including those re-entering the workforce and people living in rural and regional NSW.
§ Improving technology-based learning and infrastructure
§ Improving retention VTE students across WSI
The project also aligns with 2007 WSI Service Delivery Strategy: SRA 1 Students are committed and engaged in the learning process:
· Implement new learning options to improve student outcomes
· Position the Institute effectively in a competitive VTE market
Impact of Project.
· The core project team are OTEN and WSI VTE teachers involved in distance and classroom-based delivery. Their exploration of Moodle as a potential LMS and its applications should result in higher levels of engagement and enhanced learning outcomes for VTE students.
· VTE teachers will be better able to provide professional development and support for their colleagues in the application of this LMS to create richer learning environments for students.
Real outcomes for real learners’: engaging your clients/learners
The learners will benefit by becoming part of an interactive and dynamic learning environment that will increase their interest in their chosen topic of study and broaden their access to information.
Students will be surveyed before and after to see if their expectations have been met, engagement in their learning has increased and if assessment results have improved. The students will participate through contributing to the blog site, interviewing or doing audio podcasts, etc, to enable them to share with teachers and fellow students their findings on a specific topic. Future assessments for the core subjects may have a proportion of the mark go towards interaction within their ‘classroom’ using el-earning technology.
VTE students from across a wide area of industry involvement will engage with Moodle applications and have opportunities to interact using personal mobile devices to learn about Moodle’s features and its interface capacity to integrate into other e-learning technologies in particular with mobile applications and web 2.0 services. By familiarising students across industry with constructive ways of learning using these open source LMS’s it is anticipated that their employability skills will be increased as a result of becoming more engaged learners.
It is anticipated that the interactive features and functions of Moodle as a potential LMS and its interoperability with mobile devices especially 3Gphones with Web2.0 services will overcome the current attrition rates in the workforce by motivating students to engage with their learning. This will improve not only the retention rates across TAFE but also increase module completion rates.
‘Relationships really matter’: knowledge sharing
The integration of the project will be controlled by a ‘Central blog’ which will act as the nucleus to the team’s findings by connecting and tagging posts and providing feeds to all the new collaborative spaces relating to the moodle networks that have been created during the project using del.ici.ous.com. This will also tag and feed into Moodle PLC on TaLe which is a forum put out by CLI which is set up as a Professional Learning Community http://taleforum.det.nsw.edu.au/tale/learning/moodle
Surrounding the ‘Central blog will be moodle wikispaces which will serve as an online collaborative learning space to share ideas and thoughts about the action- based learning on Moodle that is occurring during the professional development of the team project. These will show asynchronous recordings and video clips of what has been trialled and invite discussions around the individual case examples developed during the project that will lend to further improvement and serve as proof of concept and knowledge sharing resources.
Collaboration:
· Build a Moodle learning space to capture the sharing of the VTE based on the connectivism model. Thus, each team will become a node in the network that filters into a Moodle central blog and Moodle PLC in TaLe using tags and RSS feeds from de.li.cio.us.com.
· Workshops will be conducted as part of the WSI Learning Technology Unit’s PD and showcased within the Institute. In addition, it will be promulgated across TAFE via the Institute’s Flexible Learning Group through road shows and at ICVET, across TAFE Intranets, TALs Portal on Sharepoint and TaLE.