Learning and Teaching Strategy update 2008
Faculty of Education
Associate Dean (Learning & Teaching): Professor Penny Enslin, p.enslin@educ.gla.ac.uk
Title of case study: Moodle: enhancing the student learning experience and facilitating effective
teaching
Keywords: technology-enabled learning, e-learning, feedback, assessment, student
representation, innovation
Description
Moodle is used extensively in the Department of Educational Studies to enable and to enhance faceto-face, blended and distance learning and teaching on CPD, undergraduate and postgraduate
programmes. While most courses use Moodle, some provision, such as the Doctorate in Education
(EdD) and the Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) [flexible delivery] is dependent on the VLE
for delivery and support, with EdD students located across the world and PGDE students and local
tutors in Dumfries and Galloway working alongside Departmental staff in Glasgow through Moodle.
The M.Ed. (Professional Development and Enquiry) Chartered Teacher Programme exemplifies the
Department's use of blended learning, with e-courses and communications allowing flexibility and
support with a team of e-tutors enabling participants to work at a time, pace and place that suits them,
while receiving full academic and technological support.
Increasingly, the Department’s courses are taking advantage of the VLE to provide staff and students
with any-time, any-place communication opportunities that support their face-to-face learning and
teaching. Use ranges from learning management (course handbooks, timetables, core information) in
which Moodle is used as a resource tool, to its use as an enhancing tool for face-to-face and blended
provision with interactive discussion forums, online resources including e-books and podcasts, and the
support of formative assessment enabled by student-student and staff-student dialogue and
discussion.
As an enabling tool, Moodle provides staff and students with the opportunity to work together offcampus locally, nationally and internationally, exemplified in our EdD distance programme in which
students and staff meet face-to-face only twice a year. Using Moodle for the majority of their teaching
and learning in a distributed, location-independent community of enquiry, the EdD includes an online,
always available Review ‘space’ in which students engage in formal and informal, staff and student
initiated review, discussion and monitoring of their courses and of the programme as a whole.
The Department is a key contributor to the Faculty’s induction programme for new postgraduate taught
Masters courses and there Moodle is providing a platform to support a series of academic and social
activities in an innovative and supportive induction programme. Additionally, Departmental staff
contributions to the Faculty’s new PGDE programme are enabled by a Staff Support course in Moodle.
That ‘course’ offers guidance, resource and a forum in which colleagues may share good practice and
expertise aimed at providing students with a quality learning experience while providing staff with
guidance and opportunities to learn from and with each other as they work together to develop this
new programme.
Conclusion
With all students increasingly demanding flexible learning and teaching, available at times and places
to suit them, and a desire to extend our work at all levels both nationally and internationally, the
Department's deployment of Moodle continues to increase. We are now implementing plans to afford
more systematic and accessible sharing of support, expertise, good practice and innovation that
moves all of our provision beyond the use of the VLE as a resource tool - a readily available filestore to its integration as a tool to support enhanced learning, teaching and assessment in ways that are
pedagogically driven, innovative and creative and in a manner that supports both students and staff.
There are plans to increase staff development opportunities and enhance student and staff support in
the use of the VLE and associated learning technologies via online Moodle resources and activities,
and a more systematic way of sharing materials developed is now being discussed.