The Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) is hosting its series of advanced Moodle workshops as part of their Curriculum Conversations and eLearning Design sessions.
The first session facilitated by Dr Upasana Singh, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Information Systems and Technology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) was held on Tuesday, 14 July 2020 from 12pm to 2pm.
It focused on Moddle Quizzes and it was attended by over 100 guests including lecturers who had to resort to remote learning due to the COVID-19 lockdown.
The second session will also be held online today, Thursday, 16 July 2020 from 10am to 12pm.
Speaking on behalf of CELT, Ms Nalini Chitanand said they are dedicating the next three weeks on an intensive, more advanced profession development, focused on Moodle and using Moodle tools to design assessments.
“It is going to be our plan for the next three weeks. We have placed in the Teams the programme for the next three weeks so colleagues please refer to that. I would like to extend a warm welcome to Dr Upasana Singh, our colleague from UKZN. The sessions will take place on Tuesdays from 12pm to 2pm and on Thursday from 10am to 12pm,” said Chitanand.
She said Dr Singh will also be extending her services by creating short videos that the DUT staff can use, which will be a good resource for them.
She further stated that the videos will be based on the questions and aspects that the DUT staff will find important and necessary.
“She will use that information to create the videos. We have support from the rest of CELT. We have a great team to support the development of eLearning, specifically with respect to Moodle,” said Chitanand while introducing some of the staff members who had done staff trainings on Moodle.
She further encouraged the staff to engage in the session and ask questions in order to help the students to build knowledge about learning in the programmes.
Dr Singh shared some of her experiences designing quizzes online, looking at the settings available in Moodle.
She said when working on Moodle there are different settings one needs to consider in terms of different environments.
“We will be running through the eight common questions that we noticed academics adopting over the years. It’s basically what I will cover today. On the next session on Thursday, we will start looking at the reports analysis and the students’ marks,” said Singh, showing the guests how to create the quizzes online.
Throughout her tutorial Singh encouraged the lecturers to always consider the students when designing quizzes and ensure that they do not confuse them or put information that is too much for students to read.
DUT Educational Technologist under CELT, Ms Marie Pete said they were delighted to have someone as experienced as Dr Singh, whose got actual hands on experience with students over many years with Moodle.
She said they will continue to work with the staff one on one but encouraged staff to also make use of Dr Singh’s advanced trainings for the next three weeks.
Pictured: UKZN’s Senior Lecturer in the Department of Information Systems and Technology, Dr Upasana Singh who will be facilitating DUT’s Moodle Workshops for the next three weeks.
Simangele Zuma
