Better Learning Rates for Your Moodle Investment
Better Learning Rates for Your Moodle Investment

Better Learning Rates for Your Moodle Investment

I am not planning on re-writing a post already written by respected Moodle bloggers and screencast on Youtube, however I do wish to showcase Moodle’s Game Module.

Key points

You’ll be able to make multiple game activities in minutes if you already have questions or quizzes, or even simpler, glossaries.

No? Well, good news, glossaries are one of the easiest and quickest resources to create. It is as easy as adding the term and subsequent definition. I often set students the task of writing glossaries for topics as extended learning tasks… I then moderate their entries and hey presto, glossary done (and no, you can not really count this as YOUR investment but you can take credit for the time saving).

Top Tip: Before you created the glossary resource, do plan ahead and create categories. For example, if you are collecting Shakespearean characters, provide the Shakespeare plays they appeared in as categories. Code the entries as you / students add them. Why? Just give me a moment and I will explain.

CrosswordInvesting just 20 minutes to create a glossary, gives you access to 8 game activities. The questions or prompts drawn from the glossary you have just created. To be honest, the games may not be the most attractive, but they are flexible, very quick and easy to create, extremely functional and to a degree, quite fun. Amazing really, considering a most of the games can be created in just 5 or 6 clicks. What the heck, make 2 or 3 games and recap learning in a range of styles.

My only frustration was having to change my role to a student to see the finished game so I am hereby official requesting a ‘preview your game’ button. It would be most useful.

Now, why did we bother with categories? If you had spent the extra couple of minutes needed to create categories and to sort entries, you now get the added bonus of being able to create games by glossary category. In essence, multiplying the 8 games by a factor of ‘the number of categories’ you created. This is the kind of know-how one acquires only after the horse has bolted, and yes, I did have to go back and add categories and sort the entries. At least you get to benefit.

Without question, Moodle can be a time black hole, however, in this instance, this is some learning return on your time (Moodle) investment. The fact that our students will be having fun whilst learning is a bonus.

(Incidentally, we have had the Moodle Games Module available on our Moodle for some 6 months, it has just taken this long to learn everything else.)

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10 Comments

  1. brandon gritt

    I think the games are alright but some of them are a bit boring. For example the crossword – when you put the word you want to put in, it lets you, even if it is the wrong word. Some of the other games are confusing.

    1. Kristianstill

      I simple game amoung some of the more challenging options. I need to think through how the images are used. The glossary entry is a little obivous, yes.

  2. Kristianstill

    A number of students left comments, only on different posts – so I have rounded them up and have posted them here.

    Jayne Taylor: I enjoyed the games that you set up for us at school it was fun to play games then write down stuff and doing the cluedo file thing so please keep my comment in mind thank you.

    Jade: The games were good but it wont tell you if it is right untill the end

    Laura: The games were good but i had to go on to the internet to get some answers. The games would be great for home work it is much better than the top trump card, but maybe you could make the answers of the questions a bit easier….. and later she a comment on the correct post.

    George: pretty boring

    Shannon: It was really fun and i enjoyed playing hangman,but i found the sukudo abit hard as i didnt know what to do.

    Paige: I think that the cross word and the sudoku was really difficalt but hangman was very easy and fun.

    Lucy: i think that the sudoku and the crossword was very hard but hangman was good fun and wasnt to hard.

    Aphrael: The games were challenging but that made it even better. I did get a bit confused so I used the internet and researched. That helped. In my opinian it was great!

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