Today, we had the pleasure of attending the project meeting of the Ag-Lab project, funded under the Erasmus+ programme of the EC. As a member of ISLE, we were invited to carry out a 4-hour-long training session on the use of Moodle, for the representatives of European Universities from Poland, Slovenia, Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova!
The Ag-Lab project aims to improve the quality control of agro-food products in the three recently associated EU member countries by improving upon the training of their specialists. The project focuses on the topics of veterinary medicine, agronomy, animal husbandry and food technologies.
Ag-Lab provides its stakeholders with a new approach to teaching specialised courses through laboratory practice for specialists of the agro-food sector in the partner country HEIs. This will be achieved through the permanent exchange among teachers, laboratory specialists and their EU colleagues via the Ag-Lab Moodle portal. New information, new rules, regulations, procedures will be shared in English and in national languages. Students will obtain access to the platform to find places for internships and employment.
Eummena has set up the Moodle Platform for the project, counting forty (40) members from university laboratories, that will share their courses (labs) on the platform, opening them up to students from the participating countries.
So, our training focused on the first steps needed to set up a Moodle course, along with some basic features that can be used, adding activities and files on a course. We showed how forums can be used to encourage user collaboration, how a glossary can be used to encourage contribution from the students, as well as how assignments and quizzes can be used to assess student progress.
The participants were enthusiastic to discover what Moodle can offer for them, and even colleagues that knew about Moodle already, were encouraged to use it even more to offer their students with blended-learning courses. Even for us, in Eummena, it was a pleasure to discuss with actual practitioners, scientists, that are looking to use Moodle to support educational activities that are data-intensive and challenging for their students.
As we prepare for another day filled with presentations, we are also exploring ways in which Moodle can be tailored even more, to serve the needs of such communities, in their research activities.
Story by: Nikos Palavitsinis, Eummena
