Introduction
In School District XX, the current summer school system is failing to meet the needs of students. School maintenance and renovation projects make it difficult to consistently find quiet, comfortable, and uninterrupted learning spaces for students. Rising costs and budget cuts are reducing pay and making it difficult to find educators to teach summer school. In addition, personal devices keep students more in contact with those around them, making it tougher to keep students engaged for an entire day during the summer.
Adopting a CMS to offer online summer school courses will help our school district address some of these needs. Online classes allow students to work from their own homes, and students can work any time throughout the day allowing them to still participate in activities with friends. This may help to prevent student burn out, and increase student focus by enabling them to learn when prepared to do so.
An online CMS also offers additional benefits. CMSs develop reciprocity and cooperation among students, through forums and peer evaluation of posted work. Prompt feedback can be offered through automated responses, and high expectations set by posting previous samples of high quality work. All of these examples have been identified by Chickering and Gamson (1987) as good practices in education.
In addition, Saywell (2006) indicates that “distributed learning is becoming so prevalent in our secondary schools, post-secondary institutions, and the business world, that all high school students could benefit from taking at least one online course.”
CMS Evaluation Methods
“Contrary to some concerns about industry consolidation, there’s still a healthy range of options from which to choose” (Panettieri, 2007). WebCT, Blackboard, Desire2Learn, and Moodle are all examples of available options. In order to select a CMS, a rubric was used to quickly compare and evaluate a number of different systems for use in School District XX’s summer school system.
The rubric was designed around the SECTIONS model developed by Bates and Poole (2003). The SECTIONS model considers the needs of the Students, the Ease of use and reliability of the system, the Costs involved, the options to support Teaching and learning, the kinds of Interaction the technology enables, the Organizational requirements for successful implementation, the Novelty involved in the technology, and the Speed at which courses can be created and updated.
A number of different systems were scored via the rubric. The top three CMSs were then taken through trial runs, where basic courses were uploaded and student simulations were run. By using these evaluation methods, we determined that Moodle would be the best platform for students taking summer school in School District XX.
Moodle
Through experimentation it was discovered that Moodle has great potential for student learning. “Moodle, like most learning management systems, contains essential tools like discussion forums, quizzes, wikis and file sharing, but it also contains much more than this. One of the key strengths of Moodle is its flexibility” (Wikieducator, 2011). Moodle is modular in nature and can therefore be extended to include extra features relatively easily, as there are hundreds of modules available for teachers to use.
According to Wikieducator, “Moodle also has excellent support for e-portfolios,… and it is a space where students can construct their own artefacts and expressions of understanding.” Moodle can also create learning communities that not only traverse geographic boundaries, but temporal ones as well as students that took a course in previous years can connect with students presently in the course.
Resources Needed
There are three main costs involved in adopting Moodle as School District XX’s CMS. Qualified educators are still needed to teach the classes, but fewer teachers could be needed in comparison to a face to face classroom. This is due to the amount of automation possible with Moodle.
The second cost involved is in hosting and supporting Moodle. On the positive side, Moodle is open source software which means that there are no costs associated with using the program itself. There are no licensing fees, updating costs, or other unexpected hidden expenses. However, it does mean that an IT team is necessary to ensure that course content is available to students at all times, and that technical difficulties can be resolved. Moodle must also be hosted on our server, so there would also be bandwidth costs.
The third cost stems from the need for a computer lab to be made available for students without home internet access, or for students that do not have a comfortable home environment. Electrical and janitorial costs should all be taken into account, though those costs would all be lower than in traditional face to face summer school classes.
Conclusion
The current summer school system no longer meets the needs of students in School District XX. Poor learning environments due to insufficient funding, and inflexible learning schedules deter student achievement. Movement from face to face classes to an online learning environment addresses some of these issues.
In order to choose an effective CMS, a rubric based on Bates and Poole’s SECTIONS model was used to score a variety of learning platforms. The top three were then tested, and Moodle was identified as the best option for this school district.
Moodle was chosen because it includes quizzes, forums, and numerous other modules that allow tools such as podcasts to be added to online courses. Moodle also provides a place for students to display their understanding of material in a different method than is normally found in traditional classrooms.
Although there are some costs such as teacher salaries, hosting and IT costs, and providing computer labs for students without home internet access, these costs would be lower than for the current face to face system in place. Fewer teachers could be needed, there is no cost for using Moodle as it is open source software, and the amount of classroom space needed would be much lower than is currently required. Thus, not only is Moodle an effective online CMS, it is also an economically viable option in today’s current market.
References
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.
Chickering, A.W. & Ehrmann, S.C. (1996). Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 49(2), 3-6.
Chickering, A.W. & Gamson, Z.F. (1987). Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 39 (7), 3-7.
Panettieri, J. (2007). Addition by subtraction. University Business, August, 58-62. Saywell, S. (2006). School District 68 Learn at Home: Principal’s Message. Retrieved from http://schools.sd68.bc.ca/lah/812_letter.htm
Wikieducator. (2011). Why use Moodle? Retrieved June 5, 2011 from http://wikieducator.org/Moodle/Why_use_Moodle