MA Modules move online
Jianbin Li, student on the MA in English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics
A group presentation was the first remote collaborative task I have ever participated in. We had the opportunity to work in a team which consisted of peers from different cultural backgrounds and had to discuss, negotiate and make necessary compromises. Everything was carried out online, and this included discussion forums and the sharing of ideas. Open Moodle offered us a great opportunity to develop our ability to create learning materials for teaching. We utilised several functions on Open Moodle in order to make our learning materials more engaging and interactive.
We also used Open Moodle as a platform to initiate and conduct group activities. After the module teaching finished, we used Open Moodle as a tool to evaluate ourselves and discuss issues.
Our presentation was delivered through Big Blue Button (BBB), which is an online conferencing application integrated into Moodle. We found it helpful because it allowed us to share the screens during the presentation and interact with the two tutors involved as well as our peers. Overall, everything ran smoothly as if we were presenting in the classroom. Before taking part in this assessed group presentation we used to believe that it would be impossible to present online. However, BBB made us realise that we could have a class-like experience even in a remote online environment.
