I found this assignment very useful and relevant for my current teaching. It was great to get feedback about my chosen design and theme: an app-style interface.

I have found that Moodle can be difficult to use in terms of is aesthetic appeal. There are other LMS sites like Google Classroom and Schoology that I feel are more intuitive and attractive to younger students, but since Moodle is the chosen LMS of my current school, I wanted to explore Moodle and get to know more of its built-in tools. I wanted to try an ‘app-style’ interface that was appealing and attractive, and immediately intuitive to students who are used to this mode of opening tasks (like they would when opening apps on their iPhone/iPad/smartphone etc).

I played around with several themes and picked on that created an orange-and-blue ‘look’. I was very appreciative and receptive of the feedback I received from other students in the course. While they were very positive about the interface itself, they indicated that it was hard on the eyes and could perhaps prove difficult to use for those with vision problems. I took it to heart and found a theme that produced a grey-and-light-blue colour theme. The response was much more positive, and I agreed that it did indeed look better.

This feedback has actually forced me to look more critically at the Moodle pages I currently use in my teaching. I have subsequently made some changes to my Biology 12 course and it does look much better!

I also enjoyed the experience of giving advice and feedback to students who wanted to try out some of the ideas that I used in my Moodle page. I was able to assist several students who wanted to try using tables like I did, or change to themes that were more appealing.

Overall this was a very positive experience, and the constructive feedback and discussions involved in the production of my Moodle site was very useful going forward in my current teaching and use of LMS sites.