Issue 11, Spring 2006
TELL @ ELI Archive

Vocabulary Building in Moodle

Indeed, the Moodle Glossary is a powerful tool that can be used for purposes beyond those commonly assumed when it comes to online glossaries. We are going to look at two aspects of the Moodle Glossary: ways to create collaborative and student-centered activities with Moodle and the auto-linking feature that helps incorporate an existing glossary into other online activities such journal and forum postings.

How it works

It is easy to add a glossary once you have your Moodle classroom set up. Simply choose the Glossary selection from the drop-down menu and follow a few steps to finish the settings. Apart from other handy features, those settings allow you to

• have your students post glossary entries or restrict this privilege to yourself only
• auto-link the items in the glossary to other activities in your Moodle classroom
• have your students rate each other's entries or do so only by yourself
• have your student comment on each other's entries or once again be the only one to provide feedback

What can be posted to Moodle Glossary:

• words with definitions, parts of speech, examples of use in sentences, and any other related info (any class that incorporates vocabulary building)
• concepts learned in class with extended definitions (literature, culture, academic interaction, writing classes, etc.)
  

Auto-linking

This feature allows automatic linking of glossed words in Moodle forums or journals. As soon as a forum or journal post is submitted, the glossed words become highlighted and linked to their definitions (show me how it looks). Here are a few examples of how it can be used:

• An instructor can post stories/sentences with the glossed words to a Moodle Forum or Journal. Since those are automatically highlighted and linked to their definitions, the reading can be more fluent and focused on the target words.
• Students write stories/sentences in Moodle Journals or Forums using the glossed words. They can read each other's stories/sentences and respond meaningfully to each other. The glossed words will be available for definitions and examples in this process.

Creating collaborative and students-centered activities

Moodle has been created with the constructivist theory in mind. Hence, one can look at Moodle as a tool for collaborative and student-centered learning. Moodle Glossary is not an exception among other Moodle features. Here are some ways to make collaborative and student-centered learning happen:

• let your students create their own class glossary by adding their own words (possibly from a given bank of words). This can be done in small groups too, which will help ensure the accuracy of entries
• let them leave comments to each other's entries
• let them rate each other's entries according a set of criteria
• have them write stories/sentences in Moodle Forums or Journals with as many words in the class glossary as possible. Then let their classmates read the stories/sentences and rate them according to the number of target words, comprehensibility, or any other set of criteria
• Course quizzes and exam can be focused on words that students chose to add to the class glossary.

TELL@ELI Issue 11, Spring 2006

Copyright © 2006, University of South Florida.
English Language Institute
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