by scoring posts. Encourage more active engagement by assigning groups of students as moderators for different topics. Wikis A class wiki can be used to create a shared understanding of the ideas under discussion. After each discussion, students should be encouraged to share their notes on the course wiki for other students to learn from their perspectives on what was important or interesting. At the end of the semester, students will have a synopsis of the entire class to take with them. Roles and capabilities In a theory course, the collaborative construction of knowledge and artifacts is the most powerful method for engaging students. Students can create activities, artifacts, and other materials for each other, developing their critical-reasoning abilities through the creative development of learning materials for other students. In a theory course, you can override the student role at the course level to enable students more permissions throughout the course, then set role overrides in those areas where you need to restrict their access. This encourages students to actively construct the course web site for each other.
Capstone Course Capstone courses are usually focused around a final project that requires students to demonstrate what they have learned during their course of study. In graduate school, these courses are focused around a thesis or dissertation. In undergraduate study, students are expected to produce a paper or other artifact. These project-based courses present challenges for both the instructor and students. Students need to be able to apply skills they may have learned several years ago, and may have not used since. Instructors need to ensure the project is stimulating and interesting. Moodle can provide activities to meet these challenges: Assignments You can help students structure the task by assigning a set of deliverables over the course of the semester. Each deliverable should be a one- or two-week project you collect with an assignment. For example, if students are writing a paper, you could collect an annotated bibliography, a subject proposal, an outline, a couple of early drafts, and a final draft. Messaging Use messaging as a private feedback channel so students can discuss their work. As they work on each section of the project, they will need to ask questions about the assignment and their performance. A record of all discussions is kept in the message history for each student.
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