Introduction
Completing the Moodle course site was challenging and time consuming. I am now worried about how long it would take me to get my Biology 11, Biology 12, and Science 10 courses up and running. I think that would be an entire summer project and then some. I chose ETEC 565 because our district uses Moodle and I thought this would be a great way to learn about Moodle. I will admit that Moodle intimidated me to begin with. Being thrown in to the deep end of the pool is always scary but you have to just keep afloat. My experience with creating this site has involved a love-hate relationship with Moodle. With that in mind, I will break it down in to what I loved and what I hated.
Loved
Once everything is up and running the negatives seem to fall behind and the ease of use for this site takes over. I have checked other teacher’s sites in our district and they flow very nice. The site, when completed, is very organized in its appearance. I like that I can set it up to look like my notes from class and add more resources like videos and practice quizzes that they would not normally get in the classroom setting because of time constraints to cover all curriculum. I also like that I can set my course up the way I want it to look and filling in templates. I can choose to go with a chapter Module or a single lesson Module depending on the course. I think the part of Moodle that is worth the effort is the ability to give feedback and get feedback from your students. Setting up practice quizzes and providing feedback to the students with each answer, or at the end of the quiz, is an excellent learning tool. I also like the Forums and chats that can be set up. The Forums are a great place to answer questions and interact with the students in a different manner and outside of the classroom. It provides the students with a number of options to participate at their speed and convenience.
Hated
As I said earlier, the amount of time it took put 2 modules together was more than I expected. Those two Modules take me about 5-6 classes to complete in my class. Classes are 80 minutes in my school, if it takes me that long to put up a lesson then it could take a semester at 5 hours a day to just get the Moodle up and running!! That is far more labour intensive than I had assumed it would be. Now I realize that the time would hopefully decrease as I became more proficient in using Moodle, but it is still more than I was expecting. The quiz assignment was another slow process. I used questions from my own tests and quizzes to make that assignment and it still took me a long time. I made mistakes with the grades and feedback, which caused me to write this quiz a few times. The most frustrating part was when I did the grading rules, clicked save and they disappeared. I re-did all the rules and the same thing happened, apparently it does not display them afterwards but I’m still not sure. It is not really as easy as some ProD activities claim it to be. That is the common thread from the other teachers I have talked with. They started Moodle thinking it would be easy to set up because that is how the district pitched it. Funny how easy things look when the person doing it knows what they are doing? The teachers that did not abort Moodle did agree that the time it took exceeded their estimations but that when they finished it was worth the effort. With that said, I think that is where I am at with Moodle. I can see the benefits in the end product but I need to start now for September.
Conclusion
Having completed this site I realize that my complaints are about time and technology. The time it takes to create the course and the lack of technological skills, and patience, I possess. The benefits to the students and the extra learning opportunities that cannot always be covered in a class are substantial.
There are a lot of resources out there for Moodle but you must be sure they are for the correct version because they are always updating the version. I personally used Using Moodle, Moodle for Idiots, and a small forest of printed instructions from various sites. At times I felt the help was making things worse because I could not find the screen they were showing because it was the wrong version. I probably wasted as much time looking for help as I did in creating the site, which leads to my ever-increasing frustration with Moodle. Would I recommend Moodle to a colleague if they asked about it? Yes, but with a few warnings. I would definitely stress the time commitment involved and tell them it is frustrating but you will figure out how it works eventually. That doesn’t sound like a Pro D session, does it? Once the content is on the site it is extremely easy to edit the content, add new content, and change the order of the content if you wish to do so
References:
Cole, J. & Foster, H. (2008). Using Moodle: Teaching with the Popular Open Source
Course Management System (2nd ed.). Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media Inc.
Dvorak, R. (2011). Moodle for Dummies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing Inc.