This summary was provided by Molly Frendo, Associate Program Leader in MSUE’s Children, Youth, Families and Communities program, on her use of Moodle to create and enrich an online learning community of youth mentoring volunteers across Michigan. Molly wrote this summary for use in the annual report of eXtension, to be released early in January, 2010.
Using Moodle through eXtension has significantly elevated the level of our programming. We have volunteers serving across the state of Michigan who need to be able to collaborate with one another, access the same resources, and work to further our program’s goal of enhancing the planned youth mentoring programs in the state. These volunteers dedicate one year of their life to serving their community through AmeriCorps, and Moodle has helped us to increase our AmeriCorps member retention. Members use Moodle to participate in collaborative regional teams, easily planning service projects together and supporting one another through their service year. As the manager of this program, Moodle helps me to better support members through a streamlined system of communication, posting research-based best practices and sample documents, giving access to program content experts, and monitoring members’ level of participation at any time. We are able to see how members are using the resources and how frequently each individual accesses the course – and then compare it with their individual monthly progress reports.
Michigan State University had a visit from eXtension fellow Jerry Thomas in October; during that time, I had the chance to show him our Moodle course. Jerry shared with me that to his knowledge, we are using Moodle in a way that no one else is through eXtension. Our Moodle course is less of a class and more of a virtual community. We have thought creatively about using tools developed for traditional online teachers to better support volunteers. Tools like quizzes, discussion boards, scheduled chats, surveys, and wikis are very helpful in team building, training, curriculum development, and evaluation. Our volunteers were required to spend at least two weeks reviewing the resources and doing the quizzes on Moodle prior to our face to face training; this allowed us to focus on skill building rather than knowledge transfer, therefore making more effective use of our in-person time. Further, Moodle has helped us to continue to build the skills developed at training throughout the program year.
