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What Moodle 3.5 Brings to Workplace Online Training

Jia Zhuang 05/23/2019

The week before last week, my SME(Subject Matter Experts) just showed me some online courses she was taking, it’s a Cornell eLearning course. And she asked me whether we can have a side menu bar on the left side, I said I don’t think we can do that, it’s the Moodle defaulted setting.

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Yesterday I attended my organization’s workshop What’s new in Moodle 3.5. And I was shown that there will be a side menu bar on the left in Moodle 3.5! That’s fancy. People who attended the workshop with me, most of them use Moodle for academic purpose, a few of people like me are using Moodle for creating online workplace training.

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Even though the new Moodle won’t come out until 7/15, I don’t have any access to the new Moodle yet. I’ve already have some thought on how to use the new function in Moodle 3.5 to create more engaging and interactive online training.

Navigation more user-friendly

First there will be a side menu bar, I suppose that all the activities and resources are shown on it, learners are easy to access to the next activity instead of going back to the homepage to look for the next activity. This will simplify the instruction in introductory videos which my department has for our online training. E.g.: how to navigate after you finish the Quiz/Forum. Because the steps of returning to the home page is kind of confusing to novices to Moodle after you finish the two activities.

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Then a navigation bar will be added to every Moodle course at the bottom, includes: link to the last activity, jump to drop down menu, link to the next activity. And it won’t change with whatever course format you choose.

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Here is what confused me a bit: the current course format I use have this navigation bar already, in Moodle 3.5, will they two both exist? And are labels in the Jump to… drop down menu, too? Because currently in my training, yes, labels are there.

Branding picture header

Second: Every course will have a branding picture on the top of the course. People are also able to distinguish the specific course by looking at the branding pictures. Instead of adding a branding picture in General section in our Moodle course, a branding picture as a header in the Moodle course will help improve our training’s consistency and proficiency.

Fancy dashboard

Dashboard looks fancy now. Courses with their branding pictures will show up here instead of just showing the courses’ names. Easy to distinguish.

ZOOMOODLE!

Maybe the heading will confuse you, but what I want to express is that Zoom has its function in Moodle now! We are able to add a ZOOM activity which we can set up a scheduled ZOOM video meeting and learners are able to click on a join button to join the meeting.

How it benefit:

I think this function can be combined with the open forum function in Moodle 3.5. In the open forum, learners are instructors are able to post anything and reply to the posts.

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So maybe learners can leave their questions there, currently our Moodle courses doesn’t really have a Q&A area. Now with the open forum and ZOOM meeting. Maybe instructors can set up a scheduled ZOOM meeting to do the Q&A, answer the questions learners left in open forum and also learners are able to ask questions about the training topic during the ZOOM meeting.

Limitations:

Our current training courses are made based on break the limitations of space and time. A scheduled ZOOM meeting will require the equipment (digital: laptop, phone, computer, ipad...), internet, ZOOM app, also the most important, everyone is available at that time.

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To break the ‘time’ limitation, I’m thinking maybe we can use a questionnaire to do a survey around the learners see whether they want a ZOOM Q&A, when is the commonly available time for everyone.

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Also once the time is scheduled, we should use Announcement to send email notification to learners. Multiple times: time is scheduled, reminder of the ZOOM meeting, ZOOM meeting is started and summary of the ZOOM meeting content once the meeting is done.  

Here H5P comes!

When I was an intern in our organization’s IML (Instructional Media Lab), I helped testing the H5P in Moodle. It’s fancy, a lot of interactive activities. And before I started my current job, during the interview with my current coworkers, they asked me how interactive Moodle can be, does Moodle have a lot of activity options? At that time, I told them UMass is testing H5P now, once it’s ready, we can have interactive videos, hot spot images blahblahblah.

And now, here H5P comes!

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During yesterday’s workshop, five H5P were introduced.

  • Interactive videos

  • Flashcards

  • Image with audio

  • Quiz in one page

  • Image drag and drop

Interactive videos

Currently I use EDPuzzle to create interactive videos. Before I tried Playposit and Ted ED, Playposit is not accessible enough, Ted ED is having break down problems, I can’t upload the video from Youtube. EDPuzzle is simple, but it’s fine.

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I haven’t tried to add interactive videos to a Moodle course yet, I only used it for website online training. But now I think we can start to have interactive videos in Moodle by H5P.

 

As it’s introduced, videos we use need to be Youtube videos.

 

We are able to add 3 types of questions to the video:

  • Multiple choice

  • Checkboxes (I guess? Didn’t hear it clearly)

  • Drag and drop (I guess? I forgot)

 

Each question will have a check button, once learners finish answering the question, they can click on check see whether their answer is correct, also we are able to provide specific feedback to the learners show them some tips on answering the question. That’s cool, I can’t wait to try it out.

Flashcards

Flashcards is a combination of: image, description, type answer area and a check button.

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Once I saw the flashcards activity, I began to think about our training content, thinking about what learning objects can be transferred to a flashcard activity. Maybe it can be an activity to help learners distinguish some definition, like feedback types, bias types.

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And of course we can’t just find an image put the type’s definition below. What we can make true by flashcards is displaying case studies/scenarios in an interactive way.

E.g.:

Case study picture

Case study text with question: What type of bias is demonstrating in this story?

Type answer area

Check button

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Once they hit the check button, they can see whether they answer the type right. And if they answer it wrong, what might confused them to answer it wrong. As well as some tips on how to solve situations like shown in the flashcard text.

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Well, currently this is just a thought, I didn’t even have a chance to get a clear view of the Flashcard activity in the workshop. But if it works, our workplace training in Moodle will get improved a lot. Scenarios won’t just be conveyed by Quiz, flashcard activity also can play an important role.

Image with audio

How long is the limitation of the audio? That’s my question.

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If the time is not limited, can we make this activity into a podcast? Like some text can be demonstrated in an audio version by this activity.

Quiz in one Page

I know this may sound weird. It’s a combination of two activities in Moodle: Activity Quiz and Resource Page.

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This H5P function is like combining Quiz questions with a Page.

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Well, I was just thinking about was it like a Quiz which has description page and questions page, and arrange them into one page?

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What’s the difference between this two? That’s where confused me.

Image drag and drop

Even though Quiz have drag and drop question type, it’s only for text. Now H5P has drag and drop on an image.

Interesting. What kind of knowledge and skills we can convey and test by this function? Maybe categorize active listening skills or bias types?

Just a thought.

Limitations:

Answers can’t be documented.

We can’t see learner’s answers. So we need to avoid open questions in H5P activities, try to stay in Forum or Quiz, Questionnaire.

Can we tracking completion of H5P activities?

Yes, but we can only track whether learners have clicked on the activities.

Can H5P activities be graded?

No, they are only for participation. Which is fine, because I don’t really use a gradebook or grading anything in a workplace training.

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What’s the point of grading an adult on a workplace training…. In my opinion training shouldn’t be too pushy, most stuff in training are voluntary. So how we make sure that learners do attempt the activity?

Answer is: don’t put the knowledge or skill you seriously want to test the learners in a H5P activity. Stay with Quiz.

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Then here it comes: why we use H5P activities?

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My opinion is it prevents us using Quiz too much, it adds fun to a Moodle course, more options, more possibilities, students/learners won’t get frustrated too much by “open the Moodle course, WHAT????? Every section has a quiz??? Some even has quizzes??????

Search by a keyword in Question bank

In Moodle 3.5, we are able to search for questions with a tag/keyword in Question bank! Well, not a big thing for me. But it’s a good development, I may need it one day.

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Attention: only one tag allowed every time.

Essay can be uploaded

In Quiz activity, essay question type can be answered by uploading a file, either word or pdf or blahblahblah, you can limit the file type that learners are able to upload. Which is also not a big thing for me. Essay questions in workplace online training? Sounds scary!

Welcome open forum

I suppose open forum is like twitter, but no re-twit. Everyone who are enrolled in the specific Moodle course are able to post something there.

 

“Reveal yourself in this post” is optional. People can post anonymous. Which is good for workplace training, thinking about what if you have a kind of basic level question about the training topic, you really want to ask the instructor, but you want nobody to know that you don’t know the answer, then you can post it anonymous and un-check ‘Reveal yourself’ in this post.

 

As well as, posts “allow post bookmarking”, you can keep tracking replies to the specific post(s) of the questions and answers you are interested.

 

Open forum, if I understand it correct, we may can build a Q&A area in our Moodle training course.

Also, see the possible combination use with ZOOM in early part of this article.

 

Question:

Is it like the Announcement? What’s the difference between this two? Just because open forum may not be mailed and can be private sometime?

I still have a lot of questions about this one.

Drawbacks of Moodle 3.5:

  • Quick settings block no more existed.

  • Turn edit on/off button is moved.  

Conclusion: 

Everything above is my personal opinion on Moodle 3.5, and all my current knowledge about it is from my memory of yesterday’s workshop, some I may understand it wrong, some I may have missed, but it’s very exciting that Moodle is getting updated with a lot of new functions. That means our workplace training can also get benefited, maybe H5P interactive activities won’t benefit Moodle users with academic purpose that much, but it definitely will help workplace training get more fun, variations of activities types, break the limitations of forum and quiz.

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Future is bright, I can’t wait to see Moodle 3.5 again, YAY!

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