Moodle doesn't encourage good course design.
Interesting post by James Clay and it gives me 2 thoughts. Should we change the way we start people off on Moodle so course design comes first and then some mechanics. The other thought is could we write a wizard (or some such thing) that leads people through the big picture design of their course and then helps them populate it with appropriate elements?
"With this feature, educators can use, tweak, or completely redo any video lesson featured on TED-Ed, or create lessons from scratch based on a TEDTalk or any video from YouTube. How? Just plug the video in and start writing questions, comments, even quizzes - then save the lesson as a private link and share with your students. The site allows you to see who's completed the lessons and track individual progress. It's still in beta, but we're so excited about this feature we had to share."
Plagiarism, appropriation, standing on the shoulders etc. Part of an online spat about running a course that actively explores 'plagiarism' as a form of writing.
"One explanation is that students who plagiarized did not have high confidence that the system would detect the plagiarism in their writing," he says. "A second explanation is that the students who plagiarized were, for lack of a better word, desperate." n=bugger all (via @Dakvid)
Suggestion of a license to make writing available to libraries. Idea seems reasonable on the surface but wonder if it will become divisive, especially the institutional sub-set.
Possibly worth investigating. This system has a charge but there are also writings about the same thing at http://mrschwen.blogspot.com and search for 'response'.
"Feedback, group work and a visible papertrail are all effortless gains. Display student work for class discussion, comment on student posts as feedback; set homework to post short peer critiques; devise project tasks requiring reading multiple peers' work and synthesising an overview with linked references."
"Like reading, writing, and arithmetic, web literacy is both content and activity. You don't just learn "about" reading: you learn to read. You don't just learn "about" arithmetic: you learn to count and calculate. You don't just learn "about" the web: you learn to make your own website. "
"...students may be asked a question like 'Are you a runner?' when they log into the learning-management system. If a student checks 'yes,' he or she will thereafter see ads for a certain brand of running shoes on the home page."<--quick Troy write a plugin for Moodle!
"Teaching people 'how to' write an essay in Word, or 'how to' use shortcuts in their browser, or 'how to' use hashtags in Twitter is the same as giving them fish, rather than teaching them how to fish."
"...a series of brief statements that attempt to capture what is generative and productive about online teaching, course design, writing, assessment and community."
A map of competencies and skills that a group of Mozilla stakeholders (including Doug Belshaw) thought was important for getting better at reading, writing and participating on the web. Organised under three headings: exploring, building, connecting