This site is rarely updated. benbrophy.com is more up-to-date. - Ben
Initial impressions of Moodle
Setup and administration
Installation was bit more complex than I'd expected, but it took me less than an hour, including re-learning how to set up a MySQL database.
The Administration pages are well done. I've set up classes, monitored user registration, and designated people as as instructors and creators (creators can create new classes as well as teach them). It's been very simple. I can see the are setting for working with institutional data, which i haven't touched. There are fewer than 10 users on the local installation, so I can't say how well it work for 10,000 users. But generally, I'm pleased.
Class sites are session based. When setting up a class you are asked to decide whether to set up the class based on weekly sessions or based on a number of topics. Then when you get to your class, you treat the sessions or topics there as buckets to fill up with resources (e.g. weblinks, documents, etc.) and activities (quizzes, assingments, more bleow). I've sketched out a proposal to tdo session based class setup in Stellar/Sakai. It really simplifies the process. On the down side, I think it would be hard to use Moodle for "project" sites rather than class sites.
Tools
Choices
Sort of a one question survey, using a radio button. I found myself wishing I could string a bunch of these questions together in one package, and that I could add short text boxes or other types of questions.
Survey
I was all excited to set up my survey, but it turns out I'm given the option of 5 pre-built surveys that can add to my site. They are basically class evaluation surveys, plus a survey for students to describe themselves. If I a degree in education I would probably better understand these surveys and how to use them, but their value wasn't immediately clear.
Assignment
This assignment gave the option to accept a single file as the submission. I could grade student submissions. The only way to grade was using a dropdown box full of numbers - defaulting to 100! Why not have a text field and a little validation? I imagine this would get pretty taxing if I had a large class.
Chat
The chatroom looked like it could be handy for distance courses. It's just not my style though. I've never seen a lot of value in any chat tool.
Lesson
Seems to be a way to build a branching "walk through" of a topic. I haven't tried building one yet, but it looks interesting. the initial screen of options is pretty intimidating - luckily there are a lot of help icons to to help me along.
Glossary
What's really nice about this glossary tool is that students can add entries as well as the instructor, and rate eachother's additions. Kind of a social constructionist wikipedia.
Workshop
This is an interesting tool for allowing students to do peer reviews. it is fairly complex compared to most of the other tools in the site. it's great to have the option of using a tool like this.
So all in all I'm quite impressed by Moodle. I'd like to dig into the tools some more when I get the chance. The UI was often a bit jargon-rich and complex, but still quite usable. I need to look into changing the default appearance, but that looks quite doable.
Tags: moodle