An online educational portal for teachers and students in a subject department organisation

Abstract

Teachers are frustrated by the duplication of efforts and time-consuming clerical duties. These duties use up the resources necessary for doing the proper job - enriching knowledge and giving pastoral care for the students. The duty of marking attendance, entering marks and subsequently producing a global grade is an important link in the chain of school administration and hence a necessary evil. Today we are in an era enriched by useful technologies and tools that can help in the learning environment. In this paper, an already existing open-source e-Learning software platform is used and manipulated to accommodate the exigencies and specific needs of running a subject department at a post-secondary level in Malta. This project was developed for use at Giovanni Curmi Higher Secondary School. We use Moodle as a learning management system with a twist to help in the smooth and effective run of a subject department. Moodle already provides useful tools to manage learning content and interaction but fails to bring cooperation between staff. First we require the inclusion of two important data values namely - student's identity (ID) and group number which are important parameters in the administration of the subject at a post-secondary school. Secondly, Moodle is not equipped to allow for integrating the records for two separate courses. In our school, advanced level physics is delivered by two different teachers who are both responsible for their own material. At the end of each term, the grades awarded to students need to he compiled into one single global grade for the subject. Our school also considers the final grade to be composed of 50% test, 40% course work and 10% attendance. Thirdly, the correction of exam scripts is performed by a number of teachers who are assigned a mutually exclusive set of questions. We built a web service integrated with the information and data stored in Moodie, to manage the compilation and retrieval of assigned marks for the exam questions. The Head of Department can monitor the progress of the correction and finally compose the report to be handed in to the central administration. This procedure aims in providing convenient time and place for staff to carry out the duties with efficiency and commodity. Finally it is our desire to convince and urge more teachers to use the new technology in their favour while bringing the attention to education authorities that teachers are professionals and their duties can be executed outside the school buildings.