Our Moodle Education team will be facilitating interactive workshops for teachers at the upcoming MoodleMoot Global Online 2020

Earlier this year, the whole world went into lockdown and many teachers were faced with the task of moving quickly to online classrooms. Here at Moodle, we’ve been doing our bit by keeping our Learn Moodle Basics MOOC open continuously since March, allowing anyone new to teaching with Moodle to get started and receive support. In order to enable the team to upgrade the site ready for Learn Moodle 3.9 Basics later in the year, the MOOC will draw to a close on June 22. But the learning won’t stop!

From 6 – 10 July, MoodleMoot Global Online will offer a wide variety of presentations and workshops, just as at our regular Moots. With so many educators pivoting to Moodle in recent months, we particularly want to hear from Moodle-using teachers keen to share their experiences and tips about teaching online, and we also want to continue the Moodle learning begun during the MOOC. We spoke to Education Manager Mary Cooch about how educators can participate and get involved in MoodleMoot Global Online.

Moodle HQ: How do you think this online MoodleMoot will be different from the face-to-face Moots you’ve attended before?

Mary Cooch: I think this Moot will have a much greater focus on teaching: educators new to Moodle have been delivering classes online for months now; they realise the benefits, but are aware their skills are still limited. We thought it would be helpful to offer some basic (and not-so-basic) sessions during the Moot to encourage them to continue and develop their practice further, beyond lockdown.

Moodle HQ: Can you tell us about the workshops you’ll be running?

Mary: Along with Community Manager Helen Foster and MEC Co-ordinator Anna Krassa, I’ll be doing one workshop a day, for the five days of the moot, covering topics relevant to  Moodle newcomers as well as long-time Moodlers.

On the first day we’ll do a beginners’ “Get started with MoodleCloud” session. We noticed early on in this period that there was a huge surge in new MoodleCloud users and hope this might be helpful to anyone who’s got a site and needs to know how to set it up.

We’ll follow that up with a “Get started teaching with Moodle” session. Of course, we can’t do Moodle justice in one hour! But we can at least point people in the right direction and share some useful resources to help you take your first steps into online teaching. Later in the week, “Engaging learners with Moodle” looks at specific ways you can motivate learners, while “Teaching trends and Moodle” explores gamification, flipped learning and other popular strategies – but with an objective eye!

We also hope Moot attendees with teaching experience might be interested in our “Tour of the Moodle Educator Certification program”, a new program available from Moodle partners.

Moodle HQ: Thanks, Mary. Anything else you’d like to say?

Mary: Just that, from a personal point of view, the presentations I have always found the most interesting are the “Show and tell” type, where we learn how educators are actually using Moodle in their own organisations. These invariably prompt lively discussions and spark inspiration – so please – if you’re thinking of presenting about your own Moodle teaching –  then do go for it!

You can submit a presentation proposal for #MootGlobal20 through the Moot webpage until June 14.

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