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The
development of VLE Moodle activities for KS4
Chemistry |
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School: Leek
High School |
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Fellow: Peter Calder |
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Email: pacalder@btinternet.com |
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Final report: |
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The project’s initial target was to develop assessment material, interactive lesson material and promote the use of Wiki’s for the use of Year 9, 10 and 11 students studying at Leek High Specialist Technology School. Material being developed was suitable for OCR Gateway Science/Chemistry at the Higher Level.
I originally started to develop assessment material, mainly in the form of multiple choice and matching questions for the 4 Gateway Chemistry Modules in Core and Additional Science. This was generally easy to do and over the year I produced around 400 questions for the 32 topics.
Multiple choice questions that were developed had a standard format with a stem indicating the question followed by 4 appropriate responses. For each response feedback was given, so that if the student gave the wrong answer the feedback given indicated a way forward. Students could attempt the question twice, if successful at the first attempt they would score 1 mark. If successful at the second attempt they would score 0.9 marks – i.e. the second attempt if successful reduced their mark by 10%.
A lot of time was spent in developing the feedback material - students in years 9, 10 and 11 trialled the material as it was developed.
Material that was being assessed was closely matched with the material in the Gateway Science textbooks. Matching questions were mainly directed at matching the word with its appropriate science meaning. Words that were assessed were again taken from the course materials.
At the completion of each test students were given instant feedback with their scores being generated by the computer very quickly. In general students enjoyed the experience, they welcomed the immediate feedback and instant score retrieval increased student motivation levels.
To aid teacher use of this assessment material a booklet containing all questions with answers was also produced. An electronic copy of this booklet together with all the assessment materials was put on a CD together with instructions indicating how to put the material on Moodle, this was placed in the back of the booklet. |
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The second project carried out was to develop resource material in the form of lessons. Lessons generally contain subject material together with assessment material. Students would be asked to interrogate the material, their understanding of this material was then assessed using a variety of suitable questioning techniques. Computer generated feedback was produced on student completion of the material. The Moodle lesson module was, I felt difficult to use and I decided to develop lesson plan material using Adobe Captivate 3. This software package produces material which can be easily saved on a CD and comes in the form of flash videos.
Again a standard format was used. Power point materials were developed matching course material present in the OCR Gateway Science textbook. This was then adapted by Adobe Captivate 3 to produce flash video material. Assessment material covering the student material using the quiz facility in Adobe Captivate was then produced. The whole package was then converted into SCORM material which was then loaded directly into Moodle. Student comments on the use of this material was generally favourable,
At the time of writing around 10 lesson topics have been produced and they have been produced for the more difficult OCR Gateway Chemistry topics. All these materials are on the CD Rom.
Students use of Wiki’s proved to be problematical and after many difficulties it was decided that development would no longer continue.
In general production of Moodle source material proved to be straight forward.
A lot of time was spent in avoiding copyright material, so I developed a lot of graphic material by making extensive use of Chemistry Office and Photoshop.
In order to widen the scope of this material I am in the process of contacting other Moodle users and will offer to send them the materials produced. Staffordshire LEA are interested in the project and I have offered to donate all materials to the Royal Society of Chemistry who are intending to develop similiar material intended for use on their VLE.
I do intend to develop the use of a Moodle web site with the domain name Chemoodle . This is currently being undertaken and should be up and running by the beginning of the 2008/2009 academic year.
Whilst doing the project I have begun to integrate the Java Applet Jmol into the source material. Jmol is a molecular graphics package which is designed to show a 3D structure of molecular structures that can be rotated and manipulated. Jmol can also be integrated into Powerpoint presentations via the use of the add on Live Web. |
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Overall conclusion |
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This project has been challenging and time intensive. Much of the developmental work has taken a considerable amount of time as a lot of it was done by trial and error, resulting at times in a high frustration index. |
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Although producing Moodle quiz material was straightforward not all browsers used (ie, Firefox etc) were suitable and gave differing results. Lessons developed using Adobe Captivate resulted in a steep learning curve but results were promising. Use of J mol produced materials that could be manipulated by students had impressive results. |
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Is there a future for Moodle Assessment material? |
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As a Gatsby fellow I welcomed the opportunity to produce materials given the financial assistance but time was limited and progress was much slower than anticipated. By the end of the project Leek High students will have 24 hour access to all developed materials, appropriate use of these materials should aid in improving academic attainment.
Resource materials, I feel, are more likely to be developed by commercial enterprises assuming that the VLE market develops. The process that I carried out is very time consuming and the majority of Science teachers will not have the time or the skill to develop these resource materials. |
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NOTE |
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SCORM = Shared Content Object Reference Model - is a collection of standards and specifications for web-based e-learning.
VLE = Virtual Learning Environment |
