An Evaluation of Moodle for Secondary Grade 6 to 9 Summer Learning Program
Zale Darnel, Shannon Hagen, Danielle Peters, Justin Wu, and James Lewis
University of British Columbia
ETEC 565A
June 8, 2017
Introduction
The awareness around online learning environments is something that is becoming more prevalent in society today. Online programs are being offered not just in rural areas but all over as a way to meet students’ needs in Elementary, Secondary and Post-Secondary. Learning Managements Systems have become the growing tool in education to manage these online programs over the past 15 years (Bates, 2015). As the demand for flexible education has increasing, so too has the role of technology and Learning Management Systems. “A learning management system (LMS) is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting and delivery of educational courses or training programs” (Ellis, 2009). The LMS helps instructors and students by forming the structure or digital classroom for a course. However, courses offered through LMS systems can take many forms such as fully online, hybrid or blended with physical classroom learning.
In this document, we will look at the learning platform, Moodle, from a Junior Secondary School, grade six to nine standpoint. We will use the Surrey School District Summer Learning program for Applied Design, Skills and Technologies (ADST) as a focus point, with specific attention given to how a LMS will work in a “hands-on” structured program. We will attempt to evaluate the functionality and sustainability of our chosen platform and asses how it will meet our chosen programs goals.
Organization Overview
Applied Design, Skills and Technologies (ADST) – Let’s Make Something – is a four week Summer Learning program, offered in the Surrey School District (SD36) for students in grades six to nine. This program will focus on design, coding, robotics and hands-on learning through the ADST curriculum. Since our course is based upon Piaget’s constructionist theory, where people produce knowledge and form meaning based upon their experiences, students will be actively engaged in tasks by ‘doing’ and learning kinesthetically (Papert, 1999). They will be given opportunities to engage in science, engineering, mathematics and English language focus, as they implement the ADST curriculum through problem-based learning.
Students will follow the design thinking model and develop an ability to follow a “continual cycle of innovation” while demonstrating their learning through the making and sharing of their projects. This program will help develop the concept of Maker Culture (Rosenfield, Halverson & Sheridan 2014) and look at the development of new ideas and the redesign of existing ones.
Skills such as creative thinking, critical thinking, and communication skills, will be developed, while preparing students for future learning in the next school year. Students will be expected to work with the Moodle Learning Management System to create a digital portfolio to showcase their learning and achievements over the four weeks. The Moodle LMS will allow students to track and document their learning to share with the instructor and others.
Evaluation:
When evaluating whether Moodle would be beneficial in our educational context, our group reviewed the principles from Bates and Poole’s SECTIONS (2003):
- Students- LMS allows accessibility to students with diverse needs, provides privacy protection for all users, accessible to students worldwide via URL, and support learning theories (constructionist theory)
- Ease of use- allows interface to be easily navigated for both host/user, and supports system requirements (supports audio, images, and video)
- Costs- licensing fees (teacher/host), subscription fees (user), maintenance/ renewable fees (archiving of materials), infrastructure, and time costs efficiency.
- Teaching & learning- opportunity to demonstrate learning using multimedia.
- Interactivity- interaction amongst faculty, peers, and resources for the course.
- Organizational issues- account management system, support structures to maintain updates, allows host to customize the site and update content, available user/host support, and retrieval of loss information support.
- Novelty- provides coursework features (dropbox, calendar, comment box)
- Speed- Updates web content in real-time, allows files to transfer at industry standard speed (25 Mbps or greater)
The eight principles above will help determine the congruency between Moodle’s attributes and the context in which it will be used by the Summer Learning Program. Bates’ ‘SECTIONS’ framework allows us guide effective teaching while using technology. It also enables teachers and instructors to help students develop the knowledge and skills they will need in a digital age; not so much the IT skills, rather the thinking and problem-solving attitudes to learning that will bring them success in the future.
Learning Management Systems:
Learning Management Systems (LMS) allows the administrator of the site to easily deliver information to a specific set of users through a process called eLearning. It has historically been used in distance learning at educational institutions or corporate training programs, however more LMS are being utilized by teachers to deliver blended learning programs. As a result, the traditional components of the LMS such as integration of data, security and structured recorded interaction have been expanded to include academic administration, learning analytics, student monitoring and various reporting functions (Porto, 2013). Educators using these systems are employing more social media applications to enhance the learning of their students and to build online communities and collaboration. These include such tools as wikis, podcasts, forums, chats, discussion boards, blogs and interactive quizzes or surveys, many of which are incorporated into the LMS.
Using a LMS to provide eLearning to students allows them to access learning tools anytime and anywhere (Ülker & Doğancan, 2010). In doing so, it offers many advantages over traditional learning, including constant accessibility, time and cost savings, limitless use of multimedia technologies, reuse of content by course developer, student’s’ ability to repeat subjects or review concepts and no limits to participant numbers (Ülker & Doğancan, 2010).
There is a large variety of LMS available commercially including Blackboard, as well as free open source ones such as WordPress. Many factors determine what LMS is chosen for any given organization, including functionality and sustainability. These will be discussed in more detail below.
Functionality
The affordances that Moodle offers work well with a blended classroom. Students are able to login to a secure server using a username and password at home or school. Moodle offers a wide variety of features to guide, assess and communicate students’ learning. Learners can encounter course material through uploaded documents, embedded media or applets, direct links to the websites, collaborative forums and wikis. This material can be managed through organized menus that break content into easily managed modules. Also, through a course calendar and notification features, teachers can communicate a timeline for students to follow.
A variety of assessment and communication strategies are present in Moodle. Instructors can create quizzes, assignments, wiki projects and collaborative group workshops for students. The included gradebook is able to be customized for numerical grades, competency-based assessment and rubrics. Communication to students and parents is present through messaging, chat and feedback. This feedback can be annotated directly onto submitted assignments or can be through the gradebook feature for students to see in the “My Grades” page.
Further features which are useful include the ability to customize the look of the course shell, backup course material and assignments and support for multilingual students who may prefer features in their native language.
Sustainability
No matter what form of eLearning is decided upon or the LMS that is used to implement it, sustainability is a key factor in the success of the application. Organizations will often rely on the secondary criteria outlined by Dreyer and Carstens that include access, costs and operability (2013, p. 247). If the LMS is deficient in any one of these areas, it is not considered sustainable. Moodle was appraised, keeping these three criteria in mind while focusing more specifically using the SECTIONS model.
| Students |
|
| Ease of Use |
|
| Costs |
|
| Teaching & Learning |
|
| Interactivity |
|
| Organizational Issues |
|
| Novelty |
|
| Speed |
|
Recommendation
We recommend the Surrey School District uses Moodle because Moodle fulfills the National Education Technology Standards (NETS) for students to explore problem-based learning, while using: creativity, innovation, communication, collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving and decision making. Moodle’s user-friendly navigation allows users a breadth of materials to learn from which include, graphics, videos, texts and collaboration tools. Moodle supports the constructionist approach to learning, where learners are developing and sharing knowledge through wikis, blogs, and face-to-face collaboration.
As mentioned above, Moodle is an open-source software which can be downloaded for free. There are no licensing costs to set up a Moodle server; the only requirement is to have a web server, which the Surrey School District currently has. However, the Surrey School District would have to develop infrastructure in order to utilize Moodle. Users are able to join other online Moodle communities (other districts) for support. We are not recommending Blackboard because the navigation for both the instructors and the learners does not enhance teaching or learning. Additionally, the licensing fee of Blackboard is quite costly, which hinders the sustainability of an LMS on organizational resources. Lastly, we are not recommending WordPress because of its poor security features, where student information is confidential and cannot be breached.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Moodle fits our ‘Let’s Make Something’ summer learning programs objectives because of its design to support both teaching and learning. This LMS is accessible both in and outside of the classroom on students’ devices. Learners are able to access course resources, read forum discussions and participate in a collaborative learning environment. Students can also share their learning journey by uploading multimedia and other files for reflection. Moodle is an all-in-one learning platform; therefore, students will not need to navigate through different platforms. Our organization intends to support students as they learn the principles of design thinking. Moodle can be customized to our learners needs, providing extra resources, examples and tutorials to extend their thinking and understanding. “Integration of digital tools in education has a significant impact on the teaching-learning process. Cloud Computing based platforms and applications support the learning communities with extended benefits to instructors and administrators to sustain in the rapid changing-learning environment. Cloud-based Moodle LMS provides accessibility and flexibility in terms of place and time and facilitates usage of multiple devices at reduced cost” (Kumar and Sharma 2016 p. 45). Our organization can enhance our course through Moodle by adding plugins that are offered, such as an attendance plug-in which allows teachers to keep track of attendance, create checklists for students to help them keep track of what they’ve done and what they still need to complete and open up a dialogue between students and teachers. We have chosen Moodle as our LMS because of the features, plugins and user-friendly platform for teachers and students in addition to the relatively low costs and capability to maintain it at the organizational level.
References
Bates, T., Poole, G. (2003). Effective teaching with technology in higher education: Foundations for success (1st ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Coates, H., James, R., Baldwin, G. (2005). A critical examination of the effects of learning management systems on university teaching and learning. Tertiary Education and Management, 11(1), 19-36.
Ellis, Ryann K. (2009) Field Guide to Learning Management Systems. Retrieved from: http://www.astd.org/~/media/Files/Publications/LMS_fieldguide_20091
Konstantinidis, A., Papadopoulos, P. M., Tsiatsos, T., Demetriadis, S. (2012). Selecting and Evaluating a Learning Management System: A Moodle Evaluation Based on. System and Technology Advancements in Distance Learning, 189-192. USA: IGI Global.
Kumar, V., Sharma, D. (2016). Creating collaborative and convenient learning environment using cloud-based moodle LMS: An instructor and administrator perspective. International Journal of Web-Based Learning and Teaching Technologies, 11(1), 35-50.
Moodledocs. (2017). Retrieved from https://docs.moodle.org
Nel, C., Dreyer, C., & Carstens, W. A. M. (2010). Educational technologies: A classification and evaluation. Tydskrif vir letterkunde, 35(4), 238-258.
Papert, Seymour. (1999). Child psychologist Jean Piaget. Time Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,990617,00.html
Porto, S. (2013). The uncertain future of learning management systems. The Evolllution: Illuminating the Lifelong Learning Movement. Retrieved from https://evolllution.com/opinions/uncertain-future-learning-management-systems
Rosenfield Halverson, E., Sheridan, K (2014). The Maker Movement in Education. Harvard Educational Review. 84(4), 495-504. Retreived from: https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.84.4.34j1g68140382063
Shannon, L. Y., Rice, M. (2017). Scoring the open source learning management systems. International Journal of Information and Education Technology, 7(6), 432-436.
Ülker, D., Yılmaz, Y. (2010). Learning management systems and comparison of open source learning management systems and proprietary learning management systems. Journal of Systems Integration. 18; 18-24; 24.
ETEC-565 HOME FLIGHT PATH INTRODUCTORY MODULE CONTENT MODULE SYNTHESIS