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Mastering Course Vocabulary

Familiarity with the vocabulary used in a course is a fundamental pre-requisite for understanding and processing course content. How do students develop the language used by experts in a field? How can instructors facilitate the process?

One way is through the use of instructor- or student-created course glossaries. At its basic level a glossary can be used as a word list for the class. When the glossary is created by the instructor, the student's role is reduced to memorization and recall. To invoke students' higher-order thinking skills, the instructor can ask students to create their own glossaries, and/or to comment on glossary entries.

Activities

Some of the ways instructors can have students use course glossaries are to:

  • have students create their own glossaries or submit terms and definitions to a common glossary;
  • enable students to submit comments about existing glossary entries;
  • ask students to evaluate glossary entries; and
  • link terms used in text on the course site to their glossary definitions.

Teaching Tips

When instructors ask students to contribute to a glossary, it is good to explain the expectations:

  • Describe the goals.
  • If the glossary entries will be graded, explain the grading criteria.
  • Create sample entries so that students have a model.

Technologies

Instructors can use the Moodle course management system's Glossary activity to create and enable students to access a course glossary. The advantage of using Moodle is that students can also create glossary entries, display images, and comment on the entries of their peers.

Examples

We created the example scenarios below to illustrate how instructors might use course glossaries to enhance students' learning. See an example Moodle Glossary in Figure 1.

a screenshot of a Moodle Glossary page

Figure 1: A portion of a Moodle Glossary page. See the full page.

a screenshot of a Moodle

Figure 2: A portion of a Moodle "Adding a new Glossary" settings page. See the full page.

Adding a New Glossary Activity

An instructor could set up a glossary in Moodle by following these steps:

  1. Turn the editing mode to "On."
  2. Select a Glossary activity under the "Add Activity" drop-down list in your course site.
  3. This will bring you to the "Adding a new Glossary" settings page. Here you have choices about the glossary that you are creating. To get an explanation of various options, select the question mark icon next to the question.

Contributing to a Collaborative Glossary

An instructor could ask each member of a class to contribute to a Moodle Glossary at least one unfamiliar term that he or she encounters in the class and comments about at least two terms that have been defined by others. To set up this activity:

  1. Choose the appropriate settings on the Moodle "Adding a new Glossary" settings page; see the settings we chose in Figure 2.
  2. With these settings students can create Glossary entries, rate each others' entries, and add comments.

Rating Glossary Entries

An extension to the above activity is to add another Glossary which would include those definitions that were rated most highly by students. To set up another Glossary:

  1. On the Moodle "Adding a new Glossary" settings page, choose "Main glossary" as the "Glossary Type."
  2. Import those entries that were found exemplary to the "Main glossary."

Linking Terms in Forum Posts

An instructor could enable Moodle Glossary terms used during Moodle Forum discussions to be linked automatically to their Glossary definitions and encourage students to use the terms in their Forum posts. He or she also could give them extra credit if they use the Glossary terms in their Forum posts correctly. Linked terms in posts will be highlighted, so they are easy to pick out (see Figure 1, in which the word "Object" is linked to its Glossary definition). To set up automatic linking:

  1. On the Moodle "Adding a new Glossary" settings page, choose "Yes" after "Automatically link glossary entries."

Related Resources

Last modified Tuesday, 19-Jun-2007 15:30:24 CDT