Moodle: does anyone have experience with it?

My wife, Marina, will be teaching an on-line course this spring, for which instructors are required to use Moodle. I had not been familiar with it. It looks to me like the course management system equivalent of Wikipedia: a huge free thing, under constant revision and change by its users.

This is what it says at www.moodle.org: "Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities. You can download and use it on any computer you have handy (including webhosts), yet it can scale from a single-teacher site to a 50,000-student University."

I am inquiring, because Marina is not finding it easy to get up to speed with Moodle. The issue seems to be too much information rather than too little. Hundreds and hundreds of articles, but not good indexing. One example: she is told to change the text color when she makes corrections or additions to student papers. The words "color" or "text" or "change" do not appear in the index. Yes, there are at least two Moodle textbooks published already, and on-line ask-for-help places, but so far, like so many things in the computer world, it is not as easy as one might have wished.

 

John,

I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imgaination, but I did recently develop an online course for which I'm teaching, utilizing the Moodle platform. The course I'm teaching includes online unit exams, discussions boards, research paper, powerpoint presentations and lectures.

 

Not a good system but being pushed by many schools as it is free. However, WebCT started also as a free system (at least for Universities) and now it has a much better interface and it is easier to use. It is difficult to manage in comparison with other systems and a bit buggy but you cannot ask better for free.

 

What about Sakai? It's also backed by a numer of universities.

http://sakaiproject.org/

 

We use Moodle for our fledgling DE program. It's more like an OpenSource version of Blackboard than Wikipedia. There are several vendors who customize it and will maintain it. The version we use was done by Wave Media Technologies. If you're geek enough you can just download it from moddle.org and customize it yourself -- or run it raw.

How many bells and whistles does your DE program need? I can see how a program might outgrow it -- but most teachers will only use the basic features of CMS software anyway.

Our issues out here in the middle of the Pacific have to do with the fact that computer literacy among those we serve (under-served Micronesian islanders) is low and the Internet infrastructure on many islands is non-existent or is unreliable. Right now I use the moodle for one of the BM classes I teach just for the quiz function. (A hybrid to get students used to the concept of working on the computers). But we're constantly having to adjust things because the Internet connections aren't as dependable in this part of the world.

 

John,

The community college I teach at uses Moodle. I developed an online course with it, and I use Moodle as an enhancement for my other courses.

I am also an adjunct at Andrew Jackson University and AJU uses Moodle as well.

Shawn

 

During this academic year, we have transitioned from another system to Moodle for our online courses. This was made possible in large part by our hiring of a highly capable new educational technology director. Whereas our previous service had a 1-800 customer service center, we're relatively on our own now. Our educational technology director is helping to provide the training and trouble-shooting necessary. We seem to be having good success with Moodle. Our faculty and students have responded positively.

In addition, my brother works in the Distance Learning department at Northwestern College in Minnesota. They presently are converting their online courses to Moodle, as well.

 

Thank you for these helpful comments and observations.

Marina finally got through to someone in her organization who set up their Moodling. She was told, "No wonder you're having trouble. Moodle doesn't work correctly with Safari. Switch to Firefox." "Here's an idea," she said. "Why not mention that in your documentation?"

 

They've been good (and generous)-- although we are not demanding a lot at this point.

Thank you. That site is definitely worth a bookmark. I'll take more of a look at it when I can give it the attention that it appears that it deserves.

 

Example of a Moodle site

For those who have not yet seen a Moodle site, here is one in which I am enrolled.

Also, here is a Teacher's Guide.

Russell

 

John,

Get her to download Moodle with Xampp (Moodle for windows). She can play with it on her own computer and get comfy with it while not messing with the real system at her school (even learn to do it all on her computer, then export the course to disk and upload to her school).

Geoff