Moodle Course Building Task:

When reflecting on my time building a course site with the Learning Management System (LMS) Moodle, I find it to have been both a positive and not-so-positive experience. Years ago when I was first introduced to this LMS, I embarked on using the system as somewhat of an experiment. Because I was teaching full-time in a brick and mortar school, there was little true need for such a program to supplement my classrooms’ learning environment, other than as a way to communicate with parents… Or so I thought. Fast forward to “Now” and needing to complete a Moodle course build. As my initial contact was several years ago, there wasn’t a need for a sophisticated set-up plus I had tried it just for fun. Therefore, the Moodle reflection below is based solely on some of my “Now” thoughts…

Going into this task feeling optimistic and positive, it did not take long for my feelings to change. My very first challenge with Moodle was just trying to navigate to the spot where I was to create my own site. I wondered how I was going to accomplish all of my upcoming tasks. After taking a few deep breaths, I plunged in. I began to explore the area I was going to use over the next several weeks. When I had some ideas starting to form, I went straight to installing Dream Weaver and began creating a ‘splash’ page. Being totally rusty at web design and editing, I found the learning curve to be steep but it was coming back. Finally having created an “easy” Splash page so that I could at least have a home page and begin work on my ‘Assessment” task, I tried to upload it. First frustration… I had difficulty finding where exactly to upload the files. Once I finally managed to figure that out, I came to the next frustrating issue… It didn’t work.

I considered myself lucky that I had tried this early on. Although it didn’t work properly at this stage, I assumed it was probably just linking issues. I would have to carefully check over links, images, etc. when I settled to creating the actual page I intended to use. With that in mind, the following week I set to work building the new splash page and basic shell. It was time to upload it into Moodle and see where I was at so that I could actually begin to add content into the pages and overall site.

All I can say here is “Holy Moly!” What an exercise in frustration! I spent the next several days problem solving a number of technological issues, including timing out and broken links and I really don’t know what else… I just knew that things were not working properly. Fast forward to today… Despite all of the issues and frustrations I have experienced along the way, I have learned many things about this particular LMS including some of its benefits and drawbacks (listed below). Am I happy with the end results of my perseverance? Yes, and No. I am happy with what I have created but as with any creative or online task, there always seems to be more to do to make it better. But for now, it accomplishes what I have set out to do. I know that my own learning, just like that of my student’s, is never wasted. With that in mind, this is what I have found about Moodle:

Benefits:
Being an online LMS, Moodle is pretty much available anytime, anywhere providing you have internet access. Once an account is set up for the student, students and parents can both access it as a learning environment, learning resource space, or communication tool. Parents can become more involved in their child’s learning and access the lessons, resources, multimedia etc, without actually contacting the teacher or having their own account. From a teachers’ perspective, modules and units can be built or modified with students in mind, using programs such as Dreamweaver and then uploading the files into the Moodle shell, either to be used immediately or using the future release option. There are many available synchronous and asynchronous tools including forums, activities and lessons, assessments, resource bank, wikis, to name a few. You can incorporate and embed a variety of multimedia, and as it is new and novel tool to students, they are more likely to access it. All units and resources can be kept for future use (ie test banks), therefore if well planned out and set-up to the teachers’ satisfaction, the units can be reused with adjustments or edit as they desire. As Moodles popularity continues to grow, when help is needed by a teacher, YouTube and Google searches can often provide suggestions. Lastly, there is no cost for the actual program, just the resource costs of set-up time, support, and whatever host server costs may be needed.

Challenges:
For me personally, there were quite a few challenges, many of which did dissipate or lessen with time and familiarity. There were several big hurdles, including the large learning curve as I haven’t created/edited any websites in approximately six years, so I was seriously out of practice. The next, which goes hand-in-hand with the first, was the challenge surrounding the “splash” page. This main page and subject pages were by far the most time consuming piece. It was very easy to create what I had in mind using Dream Weaver. By double-checking my pages with my browser review tool, I could see that everything worked the way I had intended. Despite this, it was getting the splash pages to work properly in Moodle that ended up taking a huge amount of time and causing the greatest frustration; finding where to upload, uploading and unzipping the files, and then files and links did not always appear to be uploading or working correctly. Ultimately I was able to problem solve to where I could accomplish my task, but it still required copying and editing html codes, additional tweaking,  and linking where required. The end product was not the same as the original splash page that I had created, (including fonts & styles), but it worked to my satisfaction. I felt that the LMS was not necessarily intuitive when it came to creation (uploading and unzipping files), there were various technical issues that I encountered, such as Moodle was sometimes very slow, even to the point of timing out, and as mentioned above the various problems with the uploaded files. I also found it difficult converting existing units and creating new content, to match an online learning environment (matching to learners that may not be able to work through the unit and would need additional support).

Conclusion:
Even though the overall task of building a Moodle LMS course site was more challenging and frustrating than I had anticipated, especially when considering the above reflection, I believe this to have been a positive and rewarding experience. As with any new technology (hardware and software), there always seems to be a large learning curve, and part of the frustration came from expectations based on previous experiences. To create units which will be easy for the learners to use and experience success, will often be a challenge. Even if the site build is very time consuming, it could be well worth the effort. I love learning about new technology as there is often carry over to other technologies. Also, I chose to build my site as a supplement to my classroom units, so if I am able to use it, I will have saved myself time in the future. I love that I can build an online presence as it holds many benefits for my students (information, resources, practice tests and auto-marking), but my lack of practice with Dreamweaver and Moodle itself have been time consuming and a sometimes a source of frustration. Looking through the eyes of a student, I find Moodle to be mostly intuitive for many aspects, such as where to find navigation panels, personal profile and where units are located.

Although this LMS may not be the perfect, it is a viable solution which is financially inexpensive and can be reusable with subsequent classes.

References:

Anderson, T. (2008). Towards a Theory of Online Learning. In: T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and Practice of Online Learning. Edmonton AB: Athabasca University.

Bates, A. W., & Poole, G. (2003). Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. (pp. 75 – 105) Jossey-Bass, An Imprint of Wiley.