PSU

Moodle Awards

Moodle Testimonial

Dr. Moustafa Nasralla

Dr. Moustafa Nasralla

I am pleased to write this testimonial for winning the Second Place of the Moodle Award and for the great experience of using Moodle at Prince Sultan University (PSU). Starting the whole process towards winning second place in 2022 was considered an unforgettable journey. Moodle was not only a tool that I have been using to deliver my lectures, but also a unique technology that was part of my teaching lifestyle and a facilitator towards making my lectures successful. Moodle was a tremendous communication tool between the students in all sorts of activities and engagements utilized throughout the academic semesters and me. Moreover, as an Associate Professor in the Department of Communications and Networks at the College of Engineering, I found it a unique opportunity to engage engineering teaching and learning styles with such tools. The available capabilities in Moodle range from forums, online quizzes, Turnitin, and live chat sessions, to name just a few, making collaboration between students and the instructor outstanding and efficient. In fact, Moodle has helped me design the sequence and structure of my classes and assisted me in organizing my weekly announcements, topics, group activities, assignments, quizzes, and exams. One of the best available Moodle options is the grade book, which allows the instructor and the students to continuously monitor their assessments' progress throughout the semester. To conclude, I would like to sincerely thank the higher management at PSU for their continuous support and motivation to all members and the E-Learning Center for their outstanding efforts in training faculties to make use of all available technological resources at PSU.

Mr. Asamenew Bireda

Mr. Asamenew Bireda

It is an honour for me to receive the Moodle exemplary award for academic year 2021-2022. Winning the award has been a great celebration of all the hard work I have done in the course over the last four years. It is one of the greatest achievements I have made so far since joining PSU and it has a significant impact in my career as a teacher. I decided to become a teacher because I wanted to change education and make it better for students. So, I hope I can continue on this path and create positive learning experience to our students and embrace technology even more in my teaching practices. The experience from start to finish was a really relaxed and enjoyable one. This because I have been using Moodle since semester 192 and I was part of the University’s blended learning project. Being part of this project allowed me to work in close collaboration with ELC and attending the numerous ELS professional development workshops helped as well. I have done numerous activities on Moodle but the most important one is creating a standard course blueprint that can be used by all faculty teaching the course. This allowed us to create at least a common learning experience across the whole sections. Managing a course with large number of sections is not easy without the help of technology which in our case Moodle. I have also integrated external tools to help me keep my students in one portal and the integration of external web-based learning tool is something that made learning smooth in the course. The award has afforded me so many opportunities to further improve my course by integrating technology but fundamentally the education of students. The attention from ELC and management also shows that PSU strives for outstanding teaching practice. Thus, in the future I will be looking at more creative ways of integrating technology in the course and further develop the capacity of my colleagues in the department through mentorship and encouraging them to follow my footsteps. Finally, I encourage all faculty to embrace technology in their teaching practice and impart one of the 21st century skills on our students, technology and digital literacy. .

Pro.Zahirul Hoque

Pro.Zahirul Hoque

I was honored to receive a 2022 Exemplary Moodle Award in recognition of my efforts to improve students’ learning experience. Prince Sultan University’s Exemplary Moodle course Awards are designed to highlight Moodle resources that stand out as good practices that have positively engaged students and reflect the wide range of innovative learning designs across the faculty. I have used Moodle over the last two decades at several of my former universities in Australia before joining PSU in August 2021. Moodle is an excellent digital student learning platform where instructors can actively engage students in multiple activities, including discussion forums, live chat, quizzes, surveys, self-assessments, and scheduling calendars. While using the software here at PSU, I discovered two things. The first is our E-learning staff's willingness and capabilities to help and support quickly and efficiently. The second is the enormous capabilities of Moodle, which can be used to enhance teaching and assessment. A well-designed Moodle site with quality content can attract students to use the site from anywhere at convenient times on their digital equipment more often. The PSU Teaching and Learning Centre (TLC) plays a significant role herein. We must move from our traditional delivery modes to contemporary evidence-based blended delivery and flipped classroom modes that can be achieved through Moodle. PSU may consider implementing a digitalized blended delivery strategy for all courses to produce next-generation digital graduates to achieve the UN SDGs and beyond. Lastly, while we are at the ear of “digitization,” some colleagues may think that Moodle cannot support students' critical thinking/writing capabilities while taking exams. My personal use has proven that all types of questions can be set using different assessment questions. For example, Stack types for mathematical questions, MCQs, True/False, essay type(s), and calculation types of questions can be used with auto and manual marking facilities. Please visit the ELC YouTube channel to learn how to use Moodle extensively and effectively.

EXEMPLARY MOODLE COURSE AWARDS

The Exemplary Moodle course Awards is designed to highlight Moodle resources that stand out as examples of good practice which have positively engaged students and to reflect the wide range of innovative learning design that exists across the Faculty.

Criteria And Guidelines

Criteria

  • Candidates for the award must be Full-Time faculty at PSU.
  • You are allowed to enter one course only in the awards.( Your other courses will be taken into consideration).
  • Winners are not allowed to apply again.
  • Last year's first-place winners are strictly not allowed to apply again.

Guidelines

  • Your course may be in English or Arabic language.
  • Your course must include at least 7 engaging activities (e.g. forums, quizzes, Surveys, chat, calendar,… etc). In addition, the frequency & quality of activity use will be taken into consideration.
  • Your courses will be judged based on how frequent the site was used and the quality of the content.

How to Apply

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