Online Learning Courses

After months of sweating over a hot keyboard, we've finally got our online study skills courses off the ground - at www.texman.net. Most of that time was spent mastering the intricacies of Moodle. Well - I say mastering, but 'struggling to understand' might be nearer the mark. Moodle is certainly a powerful bit of kit as virtual learning environments and content management systems go - but learning how to use it ain't half hard mum. The courses include Writing Essays, Page Layout (my favourite) Web Design, and the very necessary trio of Plagiarism, Referencing, and Taking Notes. They exist in two forms - completely self-contained, on line and self-assessed, plus the same thing with written work submitted and tutor-assessed. It will be interesting to see which of these two proves to be the more popular. Students get a certificate of completion from City College Manchester which they can print off as soon as they've finished - and clever old Moodle even drags their exact final score out of its database and plonks it on the certificate.