Dear Mr. Munee Baggs,
After carefully considering the costs, the ease of use, the time required to learn the software, and the benefits of various Learning Management Systems (LMS), I suggest our school adopt Moodle.
We presently have the equipment capable of running Moodle in our basement, and we have staff members who are adept at server management, so our costs are kept to a minimum at the front end (i.e. the installation and management of the Moodle Server). Furthermore, Moodle itself “limits the kinds of pages that teachers can create” (Perkins & Pfaffman, 36), which enables “teachers to focus on content without spending excess energy thinking about formatting or navigation” (Ibid, 36), thus saving costs via time on the backend.
Below I have outlined five reasons for why our school needs Moodle: first, it is an open-source and free solution; second, Moodle is easy to use and customize; third, it has a vibrant and growing community of learning that can be found on forums, websites, and via social media where technical questions can be readily answered; fourth, it is based on educational theory and is built with both students and teachers in mind; fifth, it has been proven to improve communication between students and teachers and well as teachers and parents.
Being an open source solution means Moodle is free and “there are no licensing fees” (“Moodle Myths”, 2011). Thus gadgets, modifications, customizations, upgrades, and plugins require no fees; it also means we can use the software as long as we please with as many users as we please. Even if its creators decide to make Moodle a commercial venture, the current code exists under the GNU license (“About Moodle”, n.d.), which means anyone can continue to develop it, indefinitely (“GNU FAQ”, 2011). Being open source also means that it is a reliable and tested piece of software because the code and any bugs are transparent for anyone to see (“Moodle Myths”, 2011) and fix! While this may seem like a minor point, it is one that no commercial offering allows. With commercial offerings schools and teachers are at the mercy of the company making the software to upgrade and fix any issues.
Moodle is highly customizable. It offers end users both a WYSIWYG (“What You See Is What You Get”) interface, as well as HTML coding for more advance embedding of multimedia. Its interface in the WYSIWYG mode is as easy to use as editing a document. Many features will be familiar to all teachers, from aligning text, to changing its size, to adding images. The WYSIWYG mode alone can save teachers much time (and schools money) because it requires no programming knowledge (or training) on their part, which according to Bates and Poole is an important cost factor to consider (93). For more advanced users (i.e., teachers with HTML programming knowledge) Moodle also offers an HTML editor. This allows users to embed multimedia ranging from videos, to audio, to hundreds of other plugins available for Moodle.
Moodle’s key strength, besides the many benefits already listed, is the growing community of learning that exists online. Tutorials can be found through videos, demonstrations, powerpoints, manuals, published books, scholarly journals, and at Moodle.org itself (Perkins & Pfaffman, 35). The tutorials, demonstrations, and other help resources range in topic from setting up Moodle on a server, to integrating multimedia, to discussions such as how educational theory guides Moodle. Searching “Moodle Help” on Google produces 12,800,000 hits! No commercial software offers such a prolific and vibrant and growing web of support. Although these help-resources are freely available, there are also paid solutions available from Moodle Partners (“Certification”, n.d.), as well as Moodle certification for teachers.
Unlike many commercial offerings Moodle was designed with Social Constructionism as its framework (“Philosophy”, 2009). According to Moodle this theory “extends constructivism into social settings, wherein groups construct knowledge for one another, collaboratively creating a small culture of shared artifacts with shared meanings. When one is…within a culture like this, one is learning all the time about how to be a part of that culture, on many levels” (Ibid). This approach is what Chickering and Ehrmann refer to as “reciprocity and cooperation among students” (3). In other words, “learning is enhanced when it is more like a team effort than a solo race” (Ibid). Related to the idea of collaborative learning, Moodle also allows teachers to set various levels of access to their pages, so others within the school can help them create their pages, all while restricting students to the “student view”.
Finally, Moodle improves communication at all levels. As Perkins and Pfaffman point out “Moodle gives parents access to lesson plans, slide show presentations, assignments and due dates. Moodle helps parents and teachers to better hold students accountable…” (36). This improved communication with parents is in line with what Chikering and Ehrmann see as “a most important factor in student motivation and involvement” (3): frequent contact between students and faculty. Moodle can allow students to reach teachers outside classroom hours, and in an environment that is “safe” (3).
As a former educator yourself, I know you understand the importance of costs and benefits of anything introduced to the classroom in light of a school’s budget. What is more, you also understand the importance of the time required to implement something new into a given curricula, as well as how difficult it can be to communicate with students and parents outside classroom hours. While there are many potential solutions to these issues, they are either costly, have high technical requirements, or require much training before they can be implemented to their full potential. Moodle, on the other hand, avoids many of the problems that plague commercial software.
No commercial software offers as much for so little.
I hope you take time to seriously consider the benefits I have outlined in this proposal.
Sincerely,
Mr. J.S. Velasquez
About Moodle (n.d.). Retrieved June 10, 2011 from the Moodle.org Wiki: http://docs.moodle.org/20/en/About_Moodle
Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Chapter 4: a Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. (pp. 77-105). San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers.
Certification (n.d.). Retrieved June 10, 2011 from the Moodle.com Website:
http://moodle.com/certification/
Chickering, A.W. & Ehrmann, S.C. (1996). Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 49(2), 3-6.
GNU FAQ (2011). Retrieved June 10, 2011 from the GNU Website:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#CanDeveloperThirdParty
Perkins, M., Pfaffman, J. (2006). Using a Course Management System to Improve Classroom Communication. Science Teacher, 73(7), 33-37.
Philosophy (2009). Retrieved June 10, 2011 from the Moodle.org Wiki:
http://docs.moodle.org/20/en/Philosophy
Moodle Myths (2011). Retrieved Jun 10, 2011 from the Moodle.org Wiki: http://docs.moodle.org/20/en/Moodle_myths