In this part of Tutor talk, I discuss issues relating to the selection and layout of different components on the Moodle course page I created for my CTTL course. You can refer to my previous article for an overview image of the course page.
My design preferences stem from my belief in the philosophies of “simple is beautiful” and “less is more”. When you’re trying hard to overwhelm an opponent or unbalance a potential customer, then other philosophies may be better suited. But while striving to teach minds of different cultures, backgrounds, and experiences, you’re not going to achieve any better results than with these minimalistic philosophies which aim to reduce the stress of change upon learners.
Based on the previous statement, my selection of Moodle page components can be categorized into the following aspects:
- Navigation-related: this mainly includes the Search Forums block, Section Links block, the Activities block, the Administration block, and the My Courses block.
- News-related: this mainly includes the Upcoming Events block, Recent Activity block, and the "Notice Board" section created in the Topic 0 block.
- Course topics: this mainly includes topic blocks 1-6 carrying the main course content.
- Learning activities: this mainly includes the Assessment and Project sections of the Topic 0 block, as well as the different forums provided.
- Socialization-related: this mainly includes the Online Users block, the People block, the Blog Menu block, and the different forums provided.
- Navigation-related: all components relating to page navigation
have been gathered into the right-hand sidebar. To better leverage screen space, these blocks were arranged starting from the shortest blocks at the top, down to the longest at the bottom. Through these navigation blocks, students can access content quickly using search, section links, category links, and course links. - News-related: rather than utilizing the usual Announcements Forum and the accompanying News sidebar block, I chose to make tutor announcements more visible by dedicating the upper-most part of Topic 0 for this purpose and labeling that section accordingly as "Notice Board". All other news-related items are gathered into the left-hand sidebar. "Upcoming Events" will show assessment deadlines. Since the "Recent Activity" block may dynamically become too lengthy and hoard screen space it has been placed bottom-most seeing as it is informative and not critical in nature.
- Course topics: these constitute the main content of the course. The strategy behind their presentation is detailed in my next blog entry.
- Learning activities: these components aim to make all assessment and project related material as visible and transparent to students as possible. And as they are challenged, students are provided forums to transparently assist each other and share ideas through.
- Socialization-related: in order to achieve synergy between class members, I aim to help introduce them to each other through the components arranged in the left-hand sidebar. These show current online users, and also - through a link - list the participants enrolled in the course. The "Online Users" block is dynamic and can become lengthy, it has been placed below the "People" block for this reason. Students can also help introduce and express themselves through their own writing by creating their blog entries and by contributing in forums.
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