Join the dots

Well the tickets for the Australian Moodlemoot are on sale, the registrations are steadily flowing in, and overall its so far so good for what will hopefully be the biggest Australian Moot ever. In my unofficial role as Community Advocate on the planning committee I’ve done my best to keep everyone remembering what the main ingredient of the Moot is – people. Granted, the potential size of the Moot has meant that we’ve had to go for a larger venue with better facilities, which has driven up the price to be more than previous Moots (but still cheaper than most other comparable conferences going on around the country), but the essence of the exercise remains to be a way to bring the Moodle community together for a couple of days of collaboration, information, fun and learning.

This then brings me to the real subject of this post, which was inspired by Tomaz Lasic’s recent post on communities and pedagogy, namely the Moodle Masterclass we’re running the day before the formal Moot starts.

Firstly I have to fess up that the idea of the Masterclass wasn’t mine – that credit goes to fellow Moodler and NetSpotter Phil Marriott. We were talking about Moodle workshops, and how they are all well and good, but they rarely take Moodle to the next level. After talking it through a little more, we realised that most of the training we’ve seen (and a good chunk we’ve delivered) has been too focused on Moodle the tool, without doing enough to show the teaching and learning methods which should be the thing which drives the technology – not the other way around. While there are plenty of good reasons why we have delivered training in this way (primarily because that’s what clients pay us to do), we thought there had to be a way of taking the learning process for Moodle to the next level beyond the ‘basic training’ stuff.

It was then Phil’s idea to run a workshop that was a blend of pedagogy and technology, and to run it in a way that was hands-on (walking the constructionist talk). This then led us to work out what the ingredients needed to be.

The ingredients

To start with, we needed someone who would be inspirational in their pedagogy, who would be so far from the ‘dump and pump’ methods of teaching so disappointingly widespread that it would make participants really think about how they could incorporate new tricks into their teaching methods. This worked in perfectly well with our international keynote Curtis Bonk, a world leader in progressive pedagogy, and by his own admission a complete novice at Moodle. The latter point was exactly what we wanted, because it meant that the pedagogical approaches would not be influenced by a ‘Moodly’ way of thinking. Pedagogical knowledge: check.

Secondly we needed a Moodle guru, someone who was known as being not only a gun Moodler but also an engaging public speaker, and moodle.org’s Julian Ridden, who many Moodlers would have already seen present at various conferences over the years, was kind enough to get on board. Technical knowledge: check.

The final thing we needed was something for the group to do. The basic plan we came up with was to get Curt to share some inspirational and thought provoking educational ideas, then get Julian to put a Moodle slant on this showing how some of these ideas could be translated into reality using Moodle and other tools if appropriate. This just left us with one thing missing – a topic. We didn’t want to let all participants (who would be working in groups by the way) have to scramble around trying to decide what topic was in their common sphere of knowledge, so we decided that we’d come up with a topic in which (hopefully) everyone could be considered at least reasonably knowledgeable. This would also let us come up with a list of standard content to start with, which would hopefully cut down on the chances of people coming in pre-armed with dead sexy content that looked awesome but really didn’t add much from a teaching and learning perspective. The topic we ended up choosing for this was… well that would spoil the fun if I let that one out of the bag, you’ll just have to wait and see

Source: http://www.tpck.org/

Wait – Where have I seen this concept before?

It was only after reading Tomaz’ post that I realised that what we are attempting to do is create a ‘perfect storm’ according to the TPACK model (shown), and then throw people into it and see what comes out the other end – we just hadn’t made the connection to this simple and yet powerful model.

This didn’t really change anything, it was just a nice bit of serendipity that the ‘gut feel’ we’d been going with was (probably subconsciously) lifted from something that was already well known.

The target audience

One question which took some discussion was whether we should make this an open session for people who had never seen Moodle before, and there was some feeling that we should let them in. I disagreed with this because I wanted to spend as much time in the ‘eye of the storm’ as possible, and I really didn’t want the workshop to be slowed down for people who had never used Moodle before. That’s not to say we’re not looking after Moodle newbies (there are workshops running on the last day of the conference specifically for those who have never used Moodle before) but the Masterclass is just that – a place where good Moodlers can go to become great.

Its also worth stressing that this isn’t for one particular group of educators. Regardless of whether you’re teaching in a school, lecturing at a Uni or TAFE, training at an RTO or using Moodle to deliver education to employees at your organisation, the aim is to be as inclusive as possible.

So, will it work?

Well that’s part of the great unknown of learning. Julian, Curt and I have already got the ‘bones’ of the day worked out and will be spending time over the next few months refining the structure of the day, with the aim of getting everyone involved and making the most of the opportunity. We are also planning on releasing any courses developed during the session to the Moodlemoot delegates and later to the broader community as examples of innovative Moodle practice. But will it be a roaring success? Who knows. My personal feeling is that some part of the success will be in the planning beforehand, but an even bigger influence will be the willingness of those on the day to actively participate and make this event be what we believe it can be.

Tomaz and I seem to keep coming back to the same focal point in most of our recent discussions, that the most significant thing about Moodle is the community. The people are the product, the people are the knowledge, and the right people put in a room with catalysts like Curt and Julian have the potential to showcase Moodle is ways that we haven’t even thought of yet. The only question left is whether you think you are the right kind of person to be a part of it all on July the 11th.

PS: Tickets to the Masterclass can be purchased separately from the Moot or at a discounted rate with a full registration, but be quick – this workshop has limited places to keep it manageable and early indications are that they are going to go pretty quickly, which has been great to see.

PPS: I’d love to hear ideas, suggestions, questions and criticisms of this model if you care to leave a comment.