Using Moodle for Instruction

Video Transcription

Hi there, and welcome. In this lesson, we will cover a learning management system called Moodle. We will look at some of its features, strengths, and challenges. So let's get started. Moodle is a free open source learning management system that teachers can use to develop instruction. Teachers can create their own private site within Moodle where they can create learning experience for their students. Here's how it works.

Moodle is organized around courses. Courses are pages where teachers can present the learning resources and activities to students. Teachers in Moodle courses can use three different elements to address student learning. Activities, resources, and blocks. Let's take a closer look at each of these three elements.

The first one is activity. This feature enable students learn collaboratively through interactions. Online forums, for example, are a great way to learn together.

Group assignments, quizzes, or wikis can also promote collaboration. Learning the material this way can be extremely empowering by providing the tools and placing the onus on the learner to get it done. Moodle does include some activities which are considered standard, but administrators have the ability to customize and download others.

Next, resources. A resource is an item that a teacher can add to the Moodle course that will support or enhance student learning. For example, including an article that needs to be read in order to prepare for a discussion or watching a video explaining the steps of how to do long division.

They can also include such things as documents, files, simulations, or links to other websites. A resource is considered more passive than active as it provides the content for students to read or view to comprehend and then study that material. Like activities, there are standard resources but others can also be downloaded by the administrator.

And finally blocks, which are items that can be added by the teacher and appear to the left or the right of the course page. The purpose of blocks are to provide additional information or links. They give the user quick access to such things as RSS news feeds, quiz results, calendars, definitions of terms, and links to blogs. Like resources, there are standard blocks built in but others are also available.

Here are some additional points to keep in mind if you're working with Moodle. Courses may vary in size and can be used by one or more teacher. However, they can also be established to contain single lessons, complete units, or more. Students can self-enroll, or teachers can enroll their students. Upon initial setup, users are allocated roles by the administrator of teacher or student.

Courses are tagged and organized by content area category. Moodle has wide accessibility, including apps for tablets and other mobile devices. Moodle continues to grow in popularity, in part because of the following strengths. It is one of the most common and widely accepted learning management systems out there. The name recognition and the number of users alone gives it an advantage over the other LMS's.

Users really appreciate the ability to customize, and since it's an open source platform they can do that. One of the biggest hurdles of Moodle is that setting up an effective one is very challenging and can be time consuming, and actually requires some coding knowledge.

So let's go ahead and summarize today's lesson. We began by introducing Moodle, and we looked at the three elements. Activity, resource, and blocks. Then, we discussed the strengths and weaknesses of Moodle.

Here's today's food for thought. Visit the Moodle website and do a little exploration.

To dive a little deeper and learn how to apply this information, be sure to check out the additional resources section associated with this video. There you'll find links targeted toward helping you discover more ways to apply this course material. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.