| Abstract |
Griffith College is a private third level institution which was established in 1974 in Dublin, Ireland. The college grew over the next thirty eight years to its present size with in excess of 8000 students on the Dublin campus and satellite campus in Cork and Limerick. There are also many partnerships between Griffith College and other colleges and universities in both Europe and Asia. Currently the college provides professional courses in accountancy and is also validated by HETAC1 to provide level 6, 7, 8 and 9 courses across a diverse range of subjects and disciplines. These include Business, Law, Fashion, Computing, Design and Architecture. This case study examines how the introduction of moodle was incorporated into the college in 2005. The change heralded a change to a blended approach to teaching and learning. A description of the change In 2005 the directors of Griffith College decided to implement a course management system (CMS) called moodle. It is similar in function to Blackboard and Webct. A course management system provides the lecturer with a platform where all teaching material, class announcements and faculty news can be posted by lecturers without any prior knowledge of computer programming. Traditionally lecturers photocopied all notes and distributed them in class. The change to moodle would avoid this as notes and teaching materials could be posted on moodle in advance of each class and students could download the notes themselves. The directors also wanted lecturers to integrate moodle into their teaching and learning pedagogy, driving traffic to moodle using quizzes, forums, live chat rooms links to journal and many of the other functions assessable using moodle. This case study will evaluate, critique and analyse how this change was implemented and how this change has impacted on the lecturing staff at Griffith College. |
