CC BY
65УДК 004.4
BLENDED LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION
USING LMS MOODLE
Zulunov RavshanbekMamatovich, Tadjibaeva Adila Ergashevna, Tashkent University of Information Technology, Ferghana, Uzbekistan
E-mail: zulunov@mail.ru
Аннотация. Статья посвящена актуальному методу смешанного обучения в высших учебных заведениях Республики Узбекистан на платформе LMS Moodle. Предлагается широко использовать такие активные компоненты обучения, как лекция, задания и тест. На следующем этапе рекомендуется использовать интерактивные инструменты - вики, глоссарий, блоги, форумы, семинары. Также рассматриваются организационные вопросы, решение которых обеспечит успешное применение смешанного обучения.
Abstract. The article is devoted to the current Blended method of teaching in higher educational institutions of the Republic of Uzbekistan on the LMS Moodle platform. It proposes a wide use of active components of teaching as lecture, assignments and quiz. The next step recommends using of interactive instruments: wiki, glossary, blogs, forums, workshops. It also discusses organizational issues that will ensure the successful application of blended learning.
Ключевые слова: смешанное обучение, электронное обучение, задания, тест, СДО Moodle.
Key words: blended learning, e-learning, assignments, quiz, LMS Moodle.
Blended Learning is a combination of traditional forms of classroom learning with e-learning elements that use special information technologies such as computer graphics, audio and video, interactive elements, etc. This learning / teaching system combines the best aspects and benefits of classroom teaching and interactive or distance learning and creates accessible and motivating courses for students. Blended learning is considered being maximum effective and flexible, since it reconciles the advantages of different forms of education and eliminates their disadvantages by combining the forms of work. Therefore, for example, students perform correspondence assignments individually. Thanks to the institute portal used for distance learning, they can receive and provide information at a convenient time for them and from a convenient computer. At the same time, the presence of full-time education keeps personal contact with the teacher and their peers so significant for the motivation of the student [1].
The learning process in Blended learning is a sequence of traditional and e-learning which alternate occasionally. The achievements of information technologies themselves promoted the development of blended learning, primarily due to the
opportunity to share information via the Internet. Exam questions, samples of project assignments, educational materials can be simply placed in the institute portal or just send the students via e-mail.
Obviously, the effectiveness of blended learning primarily depends on the proper setting of e-learning objectives and the ability to achieve these goals through a specific distance learning system. For this purposes higher education of the republic uses LMS Moodle.
The efforts of a single teacher are enough to create e-learning course using LMS Moodle. If the teacher already has ready texts of lectures, materials for practical classes and laboratory works, presentations, audio and video, they can be loaded into the tool for creating Moodle courses. It is easy to assemble an e-learning course from separate materials and place them in the LMS.
To achieve the benefits of blended learning at the institute, besides traditional means of providing training materials in the form of lectures, web pages and multimedia, it is proposed to actively use such interactive elements as Assignment and Quiz. The Assignment element allows the teacher to set assignments that require students to respond electronically (in any format) and gives the opportunity to upload it to the server. The Assignment element lets you to assess the received responses [2].
The element Quiz allows to create set of test tasks. Quiz tasks can be multiple-choice, with a choice of true / false, suggesting a short text answer, matching, essay, etc. All the tasks are stored in databases and consequently used again at the same course (or other). Quizzes can be training (showing the correct answers) or control (report only assessment) [3]. The process of creating a question bank directly in the Moodle system is rather time consuming and requires a constant connection to the Internet.
The use of an intermediate format of GIFT quizzes with the subsequent loading of the bank of questions directly into the LMS is proposed to relief the work of the teacher and create the possibility of preparing a bank of questions offline. Not to load the teacher's memory with features and special markup of the GIFT format, it is proposed to use a special template created in Microsoft Word. This template will considerably speed up preparation of bank of questions for testing. The following are the samples of using the template:
1. This template is designed to create questions with pictures and can be used in Moodle system. The description looks like a questions which doesn't require the answer.
Trial category
2. Islam Abduganiyevich Karimov was the first president of Uzbekistan. Trial category/My subcategory
3. Indicate the capitals of the countries
The comment can be added to question also. In questions for comparison of answers may be more than statements.
USA
Washington
Germany
Berlin
Russia
Moscow
France
Paris
Uzbekistan
Tashkent
4. Specify the smallest prime number
2
The text of the wrong answer in the numerical question is ignored. Only commentary is used.
This comment will be displayed in any wrong answer to the numerical question
5. How much is 2+2*2? 100% 6
This note means any number from 4 to 8. According to the standard, this should be written with a colon (6:2). Another way of writing this is: 4..8.
6. ::Title of the system:: What is the title of the system you are currently creating test questions?
You can indicate a short title of the question between double colons. Moodle
Right. It's an official name of the system Module
Right. This name is used by some Uzbek speaking users.
7. [markdown] Select season where **The Sun** is closer to the horizon:
At the beginning of the question, you can specify the way formatting the question text. Available values: markdown, html, plain
summer autumn winter spring
8. Choose from the list of mammals:
In this question, the student has to select several answers at a time. This happens when all the correct answers weigh less than 100%
30% horse -50% monitor lizzard 70% whale -50% owl
9. The prominent Uzbek poet Alisher Navoi wrote «Hamsa»
In some higher institutions of Uzbekistan Veraltest format is widely used to test students' knowledge. It is proposed to use a special macro developed in the Microsoft Word environment to automatically convert quizzes from the Veraltest format to the GIFT format and then import the questions into the LMS Moodle.
The next step of introducing the blended learning maybe the use of Moodle tools, directed at teamwork. For this, many tools have been considered in the system: wiki, glossary, blogs, forums, workshops. Here you can teach both asynchronously, when each student masters the material at his own space and in real time, organizing online lectures and seminars. In forums, you can conduct discussion in groups, assess the messages, and attach files of any formats.In personal messages and comments-discuss certain problem with the teacher personally. In discussion chats, it happens in real time. Mailings promptly inform all course participants or individual groups about current events: no need to write to each student about a new task, the group will receive notifications automatically.
The system has tools to control the quality of teaching. Moodle creates and keeps portfolio of each student: all the student answers, scores and comments of the teacher, forum messages. It allows to control the "attendance" - student activity, their learning time in the net. Eventually, the teacher can collect the statistics about the students: who downloaded what, what home assignments did, what quizzes scores got. Thus, to figure out, to what extent the students understood the topic, taking into consideration this, propose the material for further learning.
To apply blended learning effectively besides availability of technical tools, the following organizational issues should be settled:
- preparing the university's information and educational environment to support a holistic e-learning process;
- developing the methods of teaching in electronic environment, the mandatory advanced training in the field of computer technology;
- sufficient provision of e-learning with teaching materials;
- training teachers in e-learning;
- awareness of the teachers of the perspectives and the need of using the system;
- availability of the sufficient number of qualified programmers to solve multifactor objectives of university informatization.
References:
1. Larry Bielawski, David Metcalf. Blended eLearning: Integrating Knowledge, Performance, Support, and Online Learning, 2003 by HRD Press, Inc.
2. URL: https://docs.moodle.org
3. Федин А.К. Руководство по Moodle для преподавателей, 2014, СПГТУ.
