The Case For Moodle
presented by
D.I. von Briesen
Web Technologies Program Chair
Central Piedmont Community College
League of Innovation Host for 2006
You've heard it all before...
If you are an educator or business trainer, you have probably heard all the talk about...
- 21st Century Schools
- Social Software
- e-Learning
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But When The Buzz Dies Down...
What do you really want from an online learning system?
- Easy creation of courses from existing resources?
- Course content which can be re-used with different learners, including content from other vendors (Blackboard, WebCT etc.)?
- Learner involvement?
- Enrollment and learner authentication which is simple yet secure?
- Intuitive online learner and teacher management features?
- An active support community to help solve problems and generate new ideas?
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But When The Buzz Dies Down...
What do you really want from an online learning system?
Affordability?
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There is an answer...
Introducing Moodle!
Moodle stands for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment.
Moodle is an alternative to proprietary commercial online learning solutions, and is distributed free under open source licensing. An organization has complete access to the source code and can make changes if needed. Moodle’s modular design makes it easy to create new courses, adding content that will engage learners.
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Moodle Architecture
Martin Dougiamas, Creator & Lead Developer
Resources & Activities are at the heart of a course management system.
Moodle was designed by an educator and computer scientist, with “social constructionist” principles in mind.
“Constructionism asserts that learning is particularly effective when constructing something for others to experience. This can be anything from a spoken sentence or an internet posting, to more complex artifacts like a painting, a house or a software package.
The concept of social constructivism extends the above ideas into a social group constructing things for one another, collaboratively creating a small culture of shared artifacts with shared meanings. When one is immersed within a culture like this, one is learning all the time about how to be a part of that culture, on many levels.”
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Promoting Learner Involvement
A constructivist perspective views learners as actively engaged in making meaning, and teaching with that approach looks for what students can analyze, investigate, collaborate, share, build and generate based on what they already know, rather than what facts, skills, and processes they can parrot. Some of the tenets of constructivism in pedagogical terms include:
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Promoting Learner Involvement
- Students come to class with an established world-view, formed by years of prior experience and learning.
- Even as it evolves, a student’s world-view filters all experiences and affects their interpretations of observations.
- For students to change their world-view requires work.
- Students learn from each other as well as the teacher.
- Students learn better by doing.
- Allowing and creating opportunities for all to have a voice promotes the construction of new ideas.
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Getting Started
Forming a class is easy with Modular Design
Moodle has a “modular” design so adding the Activities that form a course is a simple process.
- Course creation privileges are assigned to the teacher.
- Select from one of three course layout: Topic, Weekly, or Social format.
- Click Turn editing on within the blank course template.
- Create the course!
In this example:
With editing turned on, the course creator can now Add activities from an intuitive drop-down list of module plug-in features.
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Features
Course Management Features: Modules
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Course Management Features: Modules
Assignment
Used to assign online or offline tasks; learners can submit tasks in any file format (e.g. MS Office, PDF, image, a/v, etc).
Chat
Allows real-time synchronous communication by learners.
Choice
Instructors create a question and a number of choices for learners; results are posted for learners to view. Use this module to do quick surveys on subject matter.
Dialogue
Allows for one-to-one asynchronous message exchange between instructor and learner, or learner to learner.
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Course Management Features: Modules
Forums
Threaded discussion boards for asynchronous group exchange on shared subject matter. Participation in forums can be an integral part of the learning experience, helping students define and evolve their understanding of subject matter.
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Course Management Features: Modules
Glossary
Create a glossary of terms used in a course. Has display format options including entry list, encyclopedia, FAQ, dictionary style and more.
Journal
Learners reflect, record and revise ideas.
Label
Add descriptions with images in any area of the course homepage.
Lesson
Allows instructor to create and manage a set of linked "Pages". Each page can end with a question. The student chooses one answer from a set of answers and either goes forward, backward or stays in the same place in the lesson.
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Course Management Features: Modules
Quiz
Create all the familiar forms of assessment including true-false, multiple choice, short answer, matching question, random questions, numerical questions, embedded answer questions with descriptive text and graphics.
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Course Management Features: Modules
Resource
The primary tool for bringing content into a course; may be plain text, uploaded files, links to the web, Wiki or Rich Text (Moodle has built-in text editors) or a bibliography type reference.
Survey
This module aids an instructor in making online classes more effective by offering a variety of surveys (COLLES, ATTLS), including critical incident sampling.
Workshop
An activity for peer assessment of documents (Word, PP etc.) that students submit online. Participants can assess each other’s project. Teacher makes final student assessment, and can control opening and closing periods.
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Features
Learner Management Features
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Learner Management Features
Managing Learners
Creating learning content is only part of what a good course management system (CMS) must do. The CMS must manage learners in a variety of ways.
Learner management includes:
- Access to information about learners in a course.
- Ability to segment participants into groups.
- Site, course and user calendar event scheduling.
- And so much more… e.g. applying scales to different learner activities, managing grades, tracking user access logs and uploading external files for use within the course etc.
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Learner Management Features
Participants
One click and you can view activity from all participants enrolled in the course. Learners create a personal profile that can include a picture, helping connect students socially in the online learning community.
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Learner Management Features
Groups
Assigning learners to a group is a common practice in education and business. Moodle allows the course instructor to easily create group categories, and determine how members will interact with each other and within various activities.
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Learner Management Features
Admin
The Administration control panel puts all important learner management functions a single click away. Teachers and Students can be manually enrolled or removed from a course. Configuration of course Backup and Restore is achieved on a single screen.
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Learner Management Features
Scales
Instructors may define custom Scales to be used for grading Forums, Assignments and Journals. Standard scales include assigning a value from 1-100% for each submission (or no grade), and indicating whether the learner was demonstrating one of three characteristics in the activity:
- Shows mostly CONNECTED knowing.
- Shows mostly SEPARATE knowing.
- Equally separate and connected.
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Learner Management Features
Grades
The Grades feature in Moodle provides a quick view of all Forum, Assignment, Journal, Quiz, Lesson and Workshop grades. The grading scale applied to a learner’s submission is shown, along with a cumulative total, on a single page.
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Learner Management Features
Grades
Viewing Assignment and Journal submissions, and adding Grades and comments, are done from a single page that displays all enrolled students.
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Learner Management Features
Logs
Monitor when and what course resources the learner has accessed. Moodle's Logs provide detailed learner activity.
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Learner Management Features
Files
Centrally locate all course resources within the Files area of Moodle so they are available when creating new activities.
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Learner Management Features
Help
An extensive Moodle Help file is a button click away. Courses include a Teacher only forum, where colleagues can collaborate on tasks and share ideas.
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Learner Management Features
Login
Learners find it easy to navigate a Moodle course homepage in their browser; intuitive “breadcrumb” links are always present. Login occurs on a familiar screen. Initial account set up may be handled by the learner or administrator.
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Experience
Learner Experience
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Learner Experience
Login
Learners find it easy to navigate a Moodle course homepage in their browser; intuitive “breadcrumb” links are always present. Login occurs on a familiar screen. Initial account set up may be handled by the learner or administrator.
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Learner Experience
Enrollment Keys
Instructors can require an “enrollment key” to allow participation in a class. Enrollment keys are provided to learners separately from the log in process. Courses requiring an enrollment key are indicated in “Course categories” description.
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Learner Experience
24/7/365... Any Time. Anywhere.
Learners can login any time, anywhere to interact with coursework, and can specify the Time Zone and Language they wish to use. Moodle has interface support for 34 languages.
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Learner Experience
Email Notification
When learners “subscribe” to forums they are notified by e-mail of new postings. Additionally, instructors can set e-mail notification for private Dialogues.
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Who's Using Moodle?
More than 1150 organizations. That's who.
Over 1150 organizations in 81 countries had registered Moodle sites by April 2004 (http://moodle.org/sites). This number is growing by about 10% each month as educators and trainers learn the value of implementing open source Moodle.
Moodle is an ideal online learning solution for:
- K-12 Schools
- Colleges & Universities
- Governmental Agencies
- Businesses & Trade Associations
- Hospitals
- Libraries
- Employment Agencies
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What if I need help?
Who will help you use Moodle?
Hundreds of knowledgeable open-source users have joined with Moodle developers in a community of learners. Meet a few new friends!
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Why Wait?
Why Not Try Moodle Now?
If your organization is ready or needs to support an online learning population, here is an opportunity to take your research to the next level. These Moodle sites are open for you to explore either as a learner, or teacher with course creator privileges.
Some Places to get started
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