Building Online Communities in Moodle (and Beyond)

Dr Stuart Sims

10.00am to 11.00am

Using both theoretical models and practical tips, this session will explore community building in online learning. Inspired primarily by the Community of Inquiry model by Garrison, Anderson & Archer (2001), the importance of Social, Cognitive and Teaching ‘presence’ will be explored. This will involve practical examples of ways you can support the engagement of your students. We will cover ways to get the most from the new Moodle templates, incorporating social media into your teaching and getting the balance right between asynchronous and live activities.

Session Aims

The aims of this session are to:

• Give practical tips on how to help your students feel more connected to you and each other

• Draw on theoretical models to better understand this practice and why other ideas may work

• Engage with a range of Moodle and social media tools that can support learning in the new template