Jill Bailey June 6th, 2011
Principal, Nanaimo District Secondary School
355 Wakesiah Ave, Nanaimo B.C.
V9R 3K5
Ms. Bailey,
I am writing to you to propose that we incorporate the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS) into our school. What follows is a brief explanation of our need for an LMS, what Moodle is, why I believe that it is an asset and a good platform for our school and what resources we would need in order to make this a reality, including an estimate of the costs associated with it.
Why do we need an LMS?
A LMS allows teachers to support their learners in ways that other tools and technologies cannot. A well-used LMS can extend the learning that happens in the classroom and allows students to genuinely engage in coursework in their own homes. An LMS is more than just a website; it is a secure forum where teachers and students can learn though collaboration and authentic activities. The Premier`s Technology Council`s report states that technology will play a pivotal role in the lives of learners in the 21st century. The role of technology in the 21st century is to “… better access to learning objects, teaching tools, and information.”(Premier’s Technology Council Report, 2010). The report goes on to articulate the needs of students for constant assessment and immediate feedback and how technology can be used to fill these needs. An LMS is an example of a technology which can accomplish these tasks to the benefit of both students and teachers alike.
What is Moodle?
The name Moodle is an acronym which for “Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment”. Moodle is a modular, open-source LMS which, amongst other things, allows teachers to support student learning in or outside of the classroom. It allows teachers to communicate deadlines and expectations, students to collaborate with each other and their teacher, parents and students to seek course resources and teachers to assess and monitor progress. Furthermore, its socio-constructive design allows students to learn in through inquiry and discovery (Brandl, 2005). By incorporating Moodle into our school, I do not envision that it will replace classroom instruction, but rather enhance it greatly as it can afford our student opportunities which are not available in a traditional classroom. As an example from my own situation as a language teacher, I can see my students posting podcasts of their spoken French and then reflecting on them and possibly using a forum to discuss how they did and how they can improve. Oral French can be extremely difficult to accurately assess in the classroom, so Moodle allow for more frequent assessment of and greater feedback to my students.
Why choose Moodle?
While considering which LMS would best suit the needs of our school, I drew upon the SECTIONS framework for evaluating LMS by Bates and Poole (2003). The SECTIONS model evaluates LMS in terms of students, ease-of-use, cost, teaching and learning, interactivity, organizational issues, novelty and speed. While many LMS offer comparable features (Al-Ajlan, 2008), Moodle stands out being that it is open-source, meaning that anyone can download it freely and modify it. Perhaps its greatest asset is the large, online community of support where technical issues and design questions are quickly answered (Al-Ajlan, 2008).
Having had the opportunity to explore Moodle for myself, I was impressed with several of the features that it offered. First, I was able to change the language that the platform uses. As a French teacher, I really appreciate that my students would navigate the system and submit assignments in French. Second, Moodle allows me to generate quizzes that students can complete and submit for marking. To have this ability would allow me to have my science students read a lab and test their understanding of it prior to doing the lab the next day. Finally, the social forum allows students to collaborate with each other on an assignment of project. This forum can be quite powerful in that students can negotiate their ways through difficult concepts, such as a film study or a verb tense. These features afford possibilities for both me and my students that are difficult to realize in the classroom setting.
What would Moodle cost the school?
In the era of declining enrolment that we face, our school’s budget continues to decrease year after year, making it difficult to buy and implement software. As mentioned before, Moodle is open-source and freely available. This does not, however, mean that it would be free to use. It requires a server to operate on. Fortunately, at our school we have a server already and a staff member (Harvey Hall) who maintains it as part of his teaching assignment. Through my discussions with Mr. Hall, he informed me that our server could accommodate Moodle (personal communication, May 25, 2011). Though we are fortunate to have the necessary hardware, Moodle is not terribly straightforward to install and would need a program administrator to maintain it (Al-Ajlan, 2008). As such, I would estimate that one linear block of time would need to be dedicated to the support and upkeep of the program. Being that a full time teacher in our district at the top of the pay scale is paid $81 633 per year, this would translate into $10 204 per year in salary for that release time. Other costs would include release time for teachers to learn how to use Moodle, and time for these teachers to develop their courses. As the chair of the professional development committee, I can easily foresee Moodle being a large part of our staff development during our allocated professional development days. You have also indicated that you have funds available to release teachers to support projects that help vulnerable learners at our school. I see Moodle as being a means by which these learners can be supported.
In summary, I believe that the low cost and pedagogical affordances of Moodle make it an LMS that is worthy of your consideration.
Sincerely,
John Cunnian
Bibliography
A vision for 21st century education. (2010). Retrieved May 28, 2011, from Premier’s Technology Council: http://www.gov.bc.ca/premier/technology_council/
Al-Ajlan, A. (2008). Why Moodle. 12th IEEE International Workshop on Future Trends of Distributed Computing Systems, 58-64.
Bates, A. W., & Poole, G. (2003). A framework for selecting and using technology. In A. W. Bates, & G. Poole, Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education (pp. 75-108). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Brandl, K. (2005). Are you ready to “Moodle”? Language Learning & Technology, 16-23.