Recently, Mr David Bevin (Head of Teaching and Learning) and I reflected on the implementation of Moodle at St Andrew’s College over the last  two years – something that I’ve blogged about previously here and here. This was part of a wider video recording session which included students from the Yr9 2014 cohort talking about their experiences bringing a laptop to class each day. During this recording, Rose Oakley (one of the Yr13 students who was helping behind the cameras) commented on how great she was finding using Moodle in class and also in her role as Head of Community Service. I suggested to Mr Bevin that we should include Rose in the conversation about Moodle on camera. Here is that recording:

The Community Service Page at St Andrew’s College, maintained by Yr13 Student, Rose Oakley

To the left is a copy of Rose’s page which you can visit by clicking here or on the image itself. I loved Rose’s use of the following phrase in relation to Moodle:

“Learning anytime, any place, anywhere”

This does encapsulate what we’re aiming to achieve with our Learning Management System and I am particularly pleased that we have been able to empower a limited set of students to create and manage their own pages on Moodle to promote student services at the College.

Moodle Statistics – Comparison of Feb/March 2013 and 2014:

I will blog next week about a recent survey undertaken of the students, staff and parents of the 2014 Yr9 Cohort to see how our 1:1 Programme is going so far, but for now I will touch on a couple of pleasing aspects related to Moodle usage. Our Google Analytics show an 8.5% increase in visitor numbers compared to this time last year:

An 8.5% increase in visitor numbers to Moodle in 2014 compared to 2013

What is interesting from these stats is the drop in total page views and average length of time spent during each visit. Whilst this could be interpreted in a few ways, one likely explanation is that students are becoming more efficient in using Moodle, therefore taking less time to navigate to the correct resource/activity and uploading assignments more quickly as well. With a 68% return on surveying Yr9 students about their use of computers at school this year, we were able to obtain a good snapshot of progress to date. This is the results on the question about Moodle usage in class and at home:

Responses from Yr9 students about their usage of Moodle in class and at home

More evidence that Moodle is becoming a core tool and resource for teachers and students to use in the learning at St Andrew’s College.

Many thanks to Mr Simon Williams and Mr David Jensen and their student crew who performed the filming, mixing and editing of this video – they do a tremendous job for the College.