Moodle

Draft

Definition

Moodle is a popular LMS that is based on socio-constructivist concepts.

The reasons for its popularity relies in DSchneider's opinion on the facts that:

• The underlying teaching model comes very close to the way "it is done" in a typical anglo-saxon graduate presential course, i.e. students are active participants, have to do a variety of sometimes open ended assignments, group work, have to use teacher-preparred resources, etc.
• The system is quite stable and not too difficult to use.
• It has a nice user community that increasingly contributes to extensions.

See also: LAMS (Lams can be integrated with Moodle)

Discussion

• DSchneider doubts that a typical course found on a randomly chosen Moodle installation is truly socio-constructivist. They are most definitly not very constructionist, e.g. on-line student activity is often reduced to forum activities and uploads.

• The system is a bit slow, though version 1.9 is faster than 1.7 - Daniel K. Schneider 13:35, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Links

Moodle

• http://moodle.org/

Help with Moodle

• Moodleblog.org

Other

• Sloodle, a Second Life skin :)

Useful extensions

• LAMS (to implement CSCL scripts and other guide learning designs
• The new nwiki module (not tested yet), but the default Wiki is not good enough in various ways.

References

• Dougiamas, M. & Taylor, P.C., Interpretive analysis of an internet-based course constructed using a new courseware tool called Moodle, Curtin University of Technology, [1]

• Philosophy (retrieved 16:40, 20 April 2006 (MEST))

• moodle china
• The application of Moodle courses in China [2]
• Brendan Moloney,Timothy Gutierrez. (2006) An Enquiry into Moodle Usage and Knowledge in a Japanese ESP program. PacCALL Journal Volume 2 No. 1 Summer 2006, Pp. 48-60. pdf