iSean

okay, i’ve used Moodle daily for a week now and it’s growing on me. i started using Moodle after many years of using Drupal and phpBB together. i erroneously assumed that Moodle would be similar to those other 2 tools. with regard to customizing the site, i think it is similar so my prep work was pretty much what i am used to when starting a new course. however, when it came time to have my students join my class that’s where i hit my first problem. Students can just sign up on Moodle like they do for Drupal, phpBB, and most other open source tools. this was a problem for me as i had to individually add each student. i have 16 students in this grad class so i had each student email me so i’d get their critical info to join them up. however, thinking ahead to a semester where i have 75 students potentially and that’s a huge deterrant to me.

next, i was trying to set up the forums to use and i wanted 2 groups of students. with phpBB the permissions issue is very clear and the process seems very intuitive to set up (at least to me). with Moodle, the forums originally get configured out in the main Moodle site above the individual course level. you then go in and configure each specific forum in the course. i did what seemed natural to me and my students could start a discussion and respond to each other, but they couldn’t reply to threads i started. i eventually figured it out while my students were away at lunch so that i could have some forums for whole group discussion and some for individual group discussions. i’d still like a way to make a discussion starting post and have it automatically start a disucssion in each group rather than repeating the process for each group i have.

the grade book is not intuitive. i have to physically add an assignment resource in order for a field to get added to the grade book. so, how do i add participation, for example. i also have a blogging activity using blogger.com . . . how do i add each blog assignment to the grade book? i am sure there must be a way to do this, but currently it seems as though i need to physically add an assignment called blog 1 and another that will be called blog 2, etc. — and each time i do this a page will be created that will look like my students are supposed to submit a file on the assignment page and that’s not what i want them to do as i use blogger.com and Google Docs for all assignments. hmmm.

finally, i like creating a folder of resources for each day and topic in each day (this is an 8:30 – 3 class each day so it covers much). however, i can put resources in the folders, but i cannot put links. that sure would be nice just to make things more organized. unfortunately, links cannot be places in folders — only files can go in folders. maybe i’ll get used to doing things the right way, but i would prefer a tool that i am not forced to compromise on what i think is the best way to present the curriculum. that being said, i am going to use Moodle for the next week to finish up this class and then i’ll have the rest of summer to decide whether to switch full time to Moodle or whether to switch back to my old tools.

i am teaching a 2 week graduate course starting the week after next. considering that it’s just a 2 week course, i figured i’d try a new tool. so, instead of my typical combination of Drupal and phpBB . . . and even the gradebook in Blackboard, i am going strictly with Moodle to see how it’s working these days. i fiddled with it back in 2006, but that was 3 years ago. i quickly installed it last weekend and i have been playing around and it seems much improved over what i was trying back in 2006 (and i ran it on my own server back then — no more of that). a nice thing about Moodle versus my other tools is that much of the settings stuff i did with my current tools took me much time to tweak just so for an education setting. with Moodle, the default settings seem ready to go — that is, permissions for my students are already set and groups are easy to create, etc. Moodle is obviously education friendly (duh).

i plan to write about my adventures with Moodle keeping a keen eye on how it differs from the current open source tools I am using. i might even throw in some comparisons with the new Blackboard NG, which my university is testing this spring. i am using the Assignments, Assessments, and Gradebook features in BB, so i’ll have a little bit to compare with Moodle. i worry about how much i’ll figure out in the next week+, but i also expect that i’ll have a student or two in a district who uses Moodle and i’ll use those students are resources. if not, that’s what the documentation and trial-and-error are for, eh? ;~)