Working with and learning about Moodle was also an excellent experience. I would characterize my experience with Moodle as a journey that had some bumps and many roads, some of which I chose not to explore due to lack of time and pre-warnings not to attempt. In the beginning, I was so incredibly lost and frustrated that I did not want to even bother learning. There were many times that I needed to get up and walk away from my computer for a while so that I would not end up smashing it. Due to my frustrations, I sought help from a friend how was familiar with Moodle who gave me some words of advice and a couple quick how-to lessons to get me started (beyond what the eLearning Toolkit provided me). After this, my Moodle experience improved and could be described as learning how to do a sport; the more I “played” the easier and more comfortable I became. I am thankful that the professor in a sense dropped us in the deep end which forced us to learn how to swim on our own. I applied my own troubleshooting skills and overcame the bumps encountered. When I began to drown at one point, John came to the rescue via a screencast lesson and Skype, and I was swimming again. In fact, my confidence was raised to a higher level and I was able to completely finish that which I wanted for my site within one day. I can comfortably say that after this course, I can build an LMS for a course.
In general, Moodle is a fairly easy to use LMS. From a designer’s point of view, I would say that it does not quite meet my expectations within the ease of use category according to the SECTIONS Framework. The Webpage resource provides the user with limited creative options and design versatility in the WYSIWYG view. If the user is fluent in HTML code, then the user has more options in the source code view. I am familiar with HTML code, but definitely not fluent. Having the ability to use, or being advised to use, an HTML editor was a creative formatting lifesaver. From a student’s point of view, Moodle seems to be quite easy to navigate as long as the designer properly links everything together. I have both enjoyed and been frustrated by Moodle; however, my frustrations have enhanced my learning experience. One of my great frustrations was dealing with the Quiz resource. Building quizzes within Moodle is tedious. After completing the different types of questions multiple times, I am confident that I can create a quiz within Moodle, but I would generally choose a different tool to create my quizzes such as Hot Potatoes.
Overall, I enjoyed my experience learning Moodle and still have a lot to learn. Over the next month I will continue to work with Moodle to increase and hone my skills while helping to teach a colleague how to use it as well. Having the opportunity to guide someone else with the LMS will only strengthen my abilities and I am looking forward to learning more.
As of right now, I have two teachable modules (one of which is “hidden”). The preliminary link and pages that complete my splash page items such as the course outline, instructions, tools, etc. These are not intended to be an actual module, they are items that would normally be discussed on the first day of a face-to-face class. Each of the two modules created (Introdución and Ir al médico) each contain actual lessons, discussion forum components, quizzes, etc. There is a “hidden” links section located in the 5th topic section that contains all the pages created for my splash page; however, this is not an actual module. I hope that you enjoy! Here is a link to my Moodle site.