Case Study #1
Moodle
Benoît is a sessional instructor in the English department of a large, research-intensive university. Previously he has used WebCT Vista to disseminate lecture notes and readings for his face-to-face Business Writing course.
His department head has approached him about offering an online version of Business Writing. However, WebCT Vista is no longer available at his university and Benoît must choose either Blackboard Learn (a new, enhanced version of WebCT Vista) or Moodle. Blackboard Learn is the university’s “official” LMS and has university-wide IT support, but the Help Desk is difficult to get a hold of and can be very slow in responding to email. Moodle is hosted within the Faculty of Arts, but operates as a stand-alone tool with no real technical support: instructors need to set up their own courses from scratch. More and more faculty and instructors in the English Department now use Moodle, since it isn’t administered by IT support: less paperwork, less red tape.
Benoît is very comfortable in the design mode of WebCT Vista; he has also done some general web design, mostly for personal use. In terms of web design he has developed content, uploaded it via FTP and then left it there. He has heard from colleagues that Blackboard Learn is dreadful, that doesn’t have half the functionality of WebCT Vista, though he has not yet had time to do any evaluation himself.
Because of his teaching load, Benoît estimates he could spend up to 5 hours a week developing the online version of Business Writing. The course would go live next semester.
Moodle for Benoît?
The first thing that Benoit needs to do is to apply the SECTIONS or Seven Principals method to his decision making process. Using one of these tools will help Benoit take the guesswork out of his choice and to allow him to make the best choice for himself, his course and his students.
An important question Benoît needs to ask himself as he moves to an LMS from a face-to-face learning is “What kind of information and experience am I trying to offer to my students and which system gives me the features and flexibility for all participants in my course to interact in a meaningful and efficient way?”
Benoit should evaluate what information and or content is most important to the core ideals/message of what he is trying to teach is most important to the success of his course. This is an important question because content is the most important aspect to a course and should dictate the tools being used and not the other way around. Too often, educators get excited about a new technology and choose the tool first, then they attempt to make the content ‘fit’ which often leads to the course failing because the core is lost to fashion over function.
“Business Writing Online” Launch Time Frame
I think that it might take Benoit about 25 hours to transfer his offline course to an online LMS. Since he can contribute 5 hours a week it would take about 5 weeks for him to do this task. The rest of this time frame makes the assumption that Benoit will choose Moodle as his LMS.
Week 1
- research the features of the Moodle LMS features using the SECTIONS method. Moodle has extensive videos and documents online to aid Benoit
- create a plan of attack on what resources he needs for his course and the best way to structure his moodle page.
- Being modular, Moodle is very easy to tailor to any instructors needs.
Week 2
- begin to upload core documents to Moodle and layout the course structure.
- replace any material that does not transfer from analog by creating digital content (audio, video, links)
Week 3
- install LMS site or access existing LMS site,
- develop the general site (theme, navigation, permissions, calendars, announcements, etc),
- learn and experiment with basic orientation to structure, layout and interface,
Week 4
- fine tune the layout of the site and begin to test for problems in navigation of the site.
Week 5
- test site as both instructor and as student,
- troubleshoot and fine tune,
- publish completed site