| Problems
found in my classroom and
solutions
Here come the fourth part of my
presentation. Not only the advantageous found in my teaching
using Moodle, some problems were found both in teaching
procedure and outside the class.
Moodle
need high quality server and consume so much database on the
server computer
Moodle was developed to be run on the
net and it needed a server to store all the data. However,
Moodle consumed so much database and it could not be installed
in any free web hosting in the Internet. Firstly, I decided to
pay for a commercial web hosting service to begin using Moodle.
Moodle ran on that server badly since the limitation of the
database size available for a customer account. If I needed to
use more database on the hosting server, I needed to pay more
than the previous one for ten times.
Therefore, I decided to created my own server. I was lucky to
get some helps from some computer experts and finally, I had one
high quality and huge database for my Moodle at home. It
works for 24 hours a day and it has served my students
continuously more than 5 months without any collapsing.
The
Internet was not stable and fast enough to use Moodle
Previously, my class was completely
dead
when the
Internet was down or too slow. Moodle was unable to be accessed
and I had to conduct my second plan using other off - line
documents passing them through the server to my students. It
solved some problems during the class but it made my class went
slower than I had planned. Therefore, I
decided to connect another high speed Internet ISP to be a
second way to connect to the Internet in case the one in the
university was down or too slow. It cost some payment but
it was worth to complete the teaching plan.
The
English language functions on Moodle did not exactly match my
students language abilities
Firstly, I've set all the Moodle to
be English language online classroom. However, my students faced
their hard time to use it and they felt that using Moodle was
difficult because of their English skills were low and they could not
understand any English function on the Moodle.
Therefore, I decided to switch the Moodle
to be mainly Thai language website. In my opinion, I
preferred to assess my students' abilities in what they had been
trained in the class as required in the curriculum more than
others. Therefore, I used Thai in any command and instruction to
make sure that they understood their assignments. However, I
added more English language instructions occasionally to
practice them in this term around the end of their course.
My
students had no money to pay for using Internet in the Internet
Cafe to submit their assignments.
It was a really big problem since the
university tried to provided a self-accessed centre which
contained 60-100 computers for all the students in the
university, it was not enough and some of my students had to pay
for their assignment. As soon as I realized their problems,
I allowed my students to use the computers
in my lab in their free time, lunch and in the late afternoon.
If they found any free computer in any time, there were all
allowed to use it.
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