2.4.5. BEST PRACTICE EXAMPLES
The Moodle environment provides teachers with numerous options to collect feedback from students. At Vytautas Magnus university, teachers are highly encouraged to gather student feedback because that may help to modify pedagogics to respond to students’ needs, in the meantime improving the overall quality of teaching. Moodle tools can be set up to gather student feedback throughout the entire study period. For instance, the Moodle Feedback tool (see Illustration 1) allows teachers to collect feedback from students by asking them certain questions.
Illustration 1. Feedback Tool in Moodle (VMU Moodle environment)
As demonstrated above, students are encouraged to reflect about the study material, topics covered, teaching methods as well as they are asked to elaborate on the learning difficulties and possible ways to help them to deal with them. However, the responses are not anonymous, therefore, teachers have to inform students about that in advance. Besides, depending on how the questions are formulated, this feedback tool can also serve for the purpose of student self-reflection and assist with self-regulated learning. Illustration 2 below shows an example from an online course in VMU Moodle, where the teacher can get acquainted with feedback from the student regarding the proposed questions.
Illustration 2. Responses to questions in Feedback tool (VMU Moodle environment)
In short, Moodle gives a number of different tools to effectively gather any kind student feedback. Teachers can benefit from digital technologies when collecting students’ feedback for the purposes of improving teaching methods and techniques as well as for seeking to ensure the quality of teaching and the overall studies.