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MoodleMoot Australia 2017 hit Sydney from 26-28 September & here’s what happened!

October 2, 2017

One of the biggest MoodleMoots organised by Moodle HQ – MoodleMoot Australia 2017 – hit Sydney last week, from Tuesday 26 September – Thursday 28 September, at Sheraton on the Park.

Dubbed as #MootAU17, this conference brought together our Australasian Moodle community – coming from all Australian cities, Japan, Fiji, Malaysia – and all the way from the US as well.

For three days, Moodlers gathered to learn from presentations, masterclasses and workshops, got to know each other and network through social activities and collaborate on current and future Moodle projects.

Of course, a big announcement from our chief Moodler during his keynote address also added excitement to this year’s Australian Moot.

On that note, let’s look through the three days that were MoodleMoot Australia 2017!

Day 1 – Masterclasses

As per our regular schedule, day one of MoodleMoot Australia 2017 was all about masterclasses.

Our Moodlers were provided with the option of attending 2 x half day workshops, which included:

  • Developer Hackfest – ran by our New Features Lead, Damyon Wiese, this workshop covered a variety of topics, including how recent and upcoming features in Moodle impact plugin and interface development;
  • Mobile Learning Masterclass – organised and facilitated by our Moodle Mobile team member, Dani Palou, all the way from Barcelona, the workshop took a look at content creation, assessment approaches and communication from the Moodle Mobile lens. Dani also provided updates on what’s coming in the future for the app.
  • Introduction to Moodle Masterclass – Chad Outten, from our Moodle Partner, My Learning Space, facilitated this masterclass, helping teachers and users new to Moodle through a beginners session on how to use and get the best out of our Moodle sites.
  • Moodle Course Design Masterclass – Our Head of Education, Tom Murdock, came all the way from West Virginia, USA, to run this new masterclass where he introduced key concepts from our new Learn Moodle curriculum. The workshop considered four common learning frameworks and highly effective teaching patterns and Moodle tools for each of them.

The Masterclasses were all well received and popular! So much so that some of our Moodlers wanted to clone themselves to attend them all.

After a long day of learning, Moodlers were then treated to reception drinks, where we got the opportunity to share our knowledge and network. That concluded day 1 of #MootAU17.

Day 2 – A “breaking news” keynote address and plenty of Moodle presentations

A sunny day welcomed Moodlers in Sydney for day 2 of MoodleMoot Australia 2017. After being refreshed with coffees, Moodlers filled up the venue eager and ready to listen to our chief Moodler, Martin Dougiamas, deliver his keynote address.

But before that, we officially acknowledged the Traditional Owners of the land we stood through a Welcome to Country by Uncle Raymond Davis. This special ceremony was captured live through Twitter and Facebook, which you can view today still.

And what a keynote it was! In case you did not hear, the breaking news from #MootAU17 was our new investment partnership announcement with Education For The Many.

From there Martin talked about how the investment partnership will help fuel Moodle’s key projects and advance our mission of empowering educators to improve our world and essentially, making education accessible and a basic right for everyone.

A video of Martin’s keynote will be available soon. You can subscribe to our MoodleMoot Australia news updates or follow us on Twitter @moodlemootau to be the first to hear when it is available.

After much excitement, we continued Day 2 of #MootAU17 with a number of presentations from our Moodlers. You can check our program to see what the lineup was, but here are a few tasters:

  • The Syria Crisis Response and Moodle presented presented by Dilshan Annaraj (World Vision International)
  • Office Integrations (Google Drive – 3.3 Feature) presented by Damyon Wiese (Moodle HQ)
  • Avoiding the Negatives: What we can do to get better outcomes! Presented by Colin Fraser (Dept Education and Child Development S.A.)
  • Peer to peer interaction in the online learning space presented by Thomas Molloy (UNSW)
  • Moodle as a Conference Organization Tool presented by Prof. Gordon Bateson (Kochi University of Technology)
  • Moodle Sub-courses for Dummies presented by Richard Wallace (Chemlearn)
  • What do learners really want? Using Moodle to transform the student experience presented by Christina Del Medico (Navitas)
  • Evaluating the feedback options in Moodle presented by Mark Bailye (Blackboard)

We were also very lucky to have had a visit from our own MoodleCloud hero to talk through all things MoodleCloud. Here’s a little snippet of our MoodleCloud hero. Of course if you need his assistance, you can visit him at https://moodle.com/cloud

Another exciting preview that happened at #MootAU17 was showcasing Moodle VR by our very own John Okely. Moodlers were treated to a demonstration during the breaks on how QuizVenture can work with VR!

Closing off the day time activities, a Learning Analytics Panel of our own chief Moodler, Tom Murdock and Damyon Wiese, along with Moodle Partner representatives – Grant Beevers (Moodlerooms) and Andrew Boag (Catalyst IT) answered many questions about how Inspire will work in Moodle 3.4 and other updates on this important feature.

Just before our social event for the Moot, Professor Hideto Harashima, from the Moodle Users Association, took the time to update Moodlers on projects coming up and how the Association’s calendar project is coming along.

Our second day was completed with a conference dinner and a quiz master challenge, complete with Moodle questions….just to test how well our Moodlers know our learning platform!

Day 3 – last day of #MootAU17

The third and final day of #MootAU17 started with another keynote address, this time by design expert and University of Sydney senior lecturer, Dr Lian Loke.

In case you missed our previous announcement about Dr Loke, her presentation looked at human-centred design approaches to interactive technologies and spaces.

Dr Loke captured the audience as she challenged how we should deconstruct or disrupt the way we think about doing everyday things, from turning your heads and flexing your hand, to discover another, perhaps more innovative ways of designing anything, including within the technology space.

Of course, we then moved on quickly to our streams of Moodle presentations, which you can again check out on our program online.

Here are just some that were presented on Day 3:

  • Didn’t We Just Do This? 7 tips in 7 minutes for a smooth upgrade – for teachers! Presented by Margaret James (Navitas)
  • Using Moodle to create Learning Objects via Moodle Quiz Templates presented by Scott Hallman (Otago University)
  • Re-engage your learners presented by Dan Marsden (Catalyst IT)
  • Virtual classrooms in Moodle with Zoom presented by Andrea Scheuringer (Navitas)
  • Quit Education Redesign: tailoring online learning for health professionals and community presented by Filly Potter and Margarita Gregov (Quit Victoria)
  • Moodle Quizzes: 5 Tips for Better Design presented by Stephen Lock (Monash College)
  • Assessing the assessment options in Moodle presented by Mark Bailye (Blackboard)
  • Transforming Lives by Transforming our LMS interface presented by Emily Takayama (Monash College)

We then took a slight turn from our normal community panel! Our Chief Moodler took to the stage to gather a wish-list from the audience on the top things Moodle HQ should focus on.

What are your thoughts on this?

And that concluded MoodleMoot Australia 2017 for another year. We love seeing these tweets about the Moot, and if you have any others don’t forget to post them using #MootAU17.

Also, check out our Twitter moments for this year’s event to get more previews of what happened at #MootAU17.

If you missed out, not to worry – we will see you in Queensland in 2018 or you can find another Moot near you in the meantime on our website.

Thanks to many Moodlers who make this and all other conference a success! See you soon at another Moot.

Special thanks…

To our generous supporters for #MootAU17

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