Moodle

1. “… as a platform that comes with a
great set of bricks”-Tomaz Lasic

2. What is Moodle?
• Moodle is a software package for producing
internet-based courses and websites.
(www.moodle.org).
• It is a “free source e-learning software
platform, also known as Course Management
System, Learning Management System, or
Virtual Learning Environment”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moodle).

3. Community Users
• It supports 50, 000 learning communities
• Over 9 million users in over 200 countries
• It is offered in over 80 languages

4. Statistics continued
Source: Moodle.org

5. Philosophy
• Moodle, or Modular-Object Oriented Dynamic
Learning Environment, is a well-known and
widely-used Learning Management System
that embraces a social constructionist frame
of education. It is designed with pedagogy and
technology in mind to allow educators to
deliver quality online courses (Momani, 2010).

6. Philosophy Continued…
• The social constructivist theory postulates that
learning is a social activity and that learners
construct new knowledge by interacting with
their environment (Aranda, 2010). According
to this approach, teachers are facilitators of
information and not the source of
information.

7. Constructionism vs. Constructivism
• Constructionism holds that learning is
effective when constructing something for
others to experience (Moodle, 2012).Bers
(2012) argues that “constructionism carries an
interventionist perspective because it not only
aims at understanding how knowledge is
constructed, but also aims at designing
learning environments to produce a mindset
change” (p.2).

8. Moodle Origins
• Moodle has evolved out of Martin
Dougiamas’, PHD research “An exploration of
the use of an Open Source software called
Moodle to support a social constructionist
epistemology of teaching and learning within
Internet-based communities of reflective
inquiry” (Moodle, 2012b).

9. Pedagogical Factors
Course
Course Activities
Objectives
Students’
Progress
Tracking and
Self-Assessing Monitoring for Feedback
for Users Teachers for Users

10. Learners’ Environment
• Synchronous Real-time
chat
• Asynchronous rooms
Whiteboard
Discussion
Forums
Audio /Video wit Internal
Conferencing e-mail
File
Sharing
Online Reference:
Journal Momani,
2010

11. ♦Areas of Improvement
• “Some development may be needed for robust
handling of MathML and enhanced tracking features”
(Momani, p.1, 2010).
• According to Dougimas, “as the technical infrastructure
of Moodle stabilizes, further improvement in
pedagogical support will be a major direction for
Moodle development” (Moodle, 2012).
• Konstantinidis et al. (2011) suggested that the
Moodle’s layout has to be changed and “an
improvement of the user interface is necessary” (p.24).

12. Benefits and Criticisms: What Does
Research Say
• Konstantinidis et al. (2011) conducted a study on
the teachers’ and students’ perceptions on the
effectiveness of Moodle.
• The instructor-based evaluation of Moodle
revealed that “Moodle was highly accepted by
the instructors as a helpful and useful system for
their educational needs” (p.23). The instructors
that participated in the study outlined possible
issues that need to be addressed such as help
with how to post and organize their materials and
Moodle’s screen layout.

13. Assessing Moodle: What does
Research Say
• The student-based evaluation revealed that
attendance is high among the participants
registered for courses in the Moodle platform.
“More students use Moodle to download
material and be informed of a course than
attending the course lectures in class”
(Konstantinidis, 2011, p.25).
• The weaknesses identified by the students in the
study were“the on-screen organization of
information, the appeal of the user interface, and
the slow response time from instructors” (p.26).

14. Research continued…
• Commenting on this last issue, the Moodle’s
interface, Konstantinidis et al. (2011) argued
that “if students do not like the interface, they
are more likely to abandon the system” (p.28).

15. Comparison between Moodle and
other Learning Management Systems
• “The eCASE environment was developed by the
MultiMedia Lab fulfilling research needs. Its
design follows the principles of cognitive
flexibility theory’ (Konstantinidis, et al., 2011, p.
21). There is a difference in encoding between
the two LMS. eCASE uses ISO-8859-7 and Moodle
uses UTF-8 (Konstantinidis, 2011).
• A study conducted by Beatty & Ulasewicz(2010)
revealed that students that had prior experience
using Blackboard favoured the use of Moodle
over Blackboard.

16. Suggestions for the use in the
classroom
• Since it is free to use, the teacher can post
supplemental readings for the students as well as
interactive homework quizzes. According to Maikish
(2006) “In using Moodle this way, students are learning
how to operate various online modules such as online
quizzes, online discussions, and online journals” (p.32).
• Makish (2006) suggested other uses of Moodle: as an
assessment tool for teachers, as a mechanism for
communication and to track their progress, and as a
tool to post class handouts and PowerPoint
presentations

17. References:
• Aranda, A.D. (2010). “Moodle for Distance Education.”
Disatnce Leanring, 8(2), pp. 25-28.
• Beatty, B. and Ulasewicz. “Online Teaching and
Learning in Transition: Faculty Perspectives on Moving
from Blackboard to the Moodle Learning Manageemnt
System.” TechTrends. 50(4), pp.36-45.
• Bers, M. U. (2012). “A Constructionist Approach to
Values through On-line narrative Tools.” Retrieved May
08, 2012 from
http://aumni.media.mit.edu/~marinau/ICLS98.html.

18. References:
• Konstandinidis, A., K., Papadopoulos, P.A.,
Tsiatsos, T., and Demetriadis, S. (2011). “Selecting
and Evaluating a Learning Management System: A
Moodle Evaluation Based on Instructors and
Students.” International Journal of Distance
Education Technologies, 9(3), pp. 13-30.
• Maikish, A. (2006). “Moodle: A Free, Easy, and
Constructivist Online Learning Tool.” MultiMedia
and Internet Schools. 13(3), p26-28.
• Moodle. Retrived from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moodle

19. References:
• Moodle. (2012a). Background. Retrieved May 08,
2012 from
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Background.
• Moodle. (2012b). Philosophy. Retrieved May 08,
2012 from http:docs.moodle.org/en/Philosophy.
• Momani, A. (2010). “Comparison between two
Learning Management Systems: Moodle and
Blackboard.” Online submission. Retrieved May
08, 2012 from
http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED509728.pdf