Learning Management System Example Course - Moodle
I created an example Moodle course on how to greet someone. Moodle allows many different ways to create content and I settled on a few of the modules using the tools labeled lessons, assignments, announcements, and forums to organize my content. I created a video for part of the instruction and used M. David Merrill's first principles of instruction to organize the sequence of activities and events. The overall experience helped me appreciate that creating content for an online course requires two parts. The first part involves the experience that the student is expected to have with the focus on inclusiveness and accessibility in delivery. Thinking about UD principles and making sure that the content is clear and well organized on the screen takes a lot of planning. The second part involves the actual content which must be structured to take advantage of the strengths of an online asynchronous method. Decisions need to be made as whether it makes sense to use video, sound, or text as the method of delivery. With more experience and knowledge, then differentiation for the different learning abilities of the students can also be considered.
The feedback from the post course survey was positive in nature, and I learned that having a student more engaged by actively doing something is preferential to just having a student reading text or passively watching a video. I learned and experienced the many details and elements which need to be considered in creating content to be used in an online format. I hope in the future that LMS systems become more seamless to instruction and don't interrupt so much the focus of the instructor on content. This I believe could be possible if some of the best lesson creator tools such as are available now on IOS and Android devices could be incorporated into an LMS.
The feedback from the post course survey was positive in nature, and I learned that having a student more engaged by actively doing something is preferential to just having a student reading text or passively watching a video. I learned and experienced the many details and elements which need to be considered in creating content to be used in an online format. I hope in the future that LMS systems become more seamless to instruction and don't interrupt so much the focus of the instructor on content. This I believe could be possible if some of the best lesson creator tools such as are available now on IOS and Android devices could be incorporated into an LMS.
Learning Management System (LMS) Review
For my LMS comparison and contrast I looked at Edmodo, Moodle, and Google classroom. All three have a difference in when they were created and how they were originally used. Thinking about these tools brought back many memories for me and so I hope it’s ok to write this as more of a narrative.
Thinking back several years ago to about 2005 or so, I remember that LMSs were embraced by some educators and disparaged by others. At that time Moodle was how I learned about what an LMS or CMS was, and with it being free, offered the greatest freedom to organize classroom content with many types of modules which included a blogging tool, a wiki, a glossary, a journal, calendar, and forums. At that time I primarily used the forums and journal tools as I wanted a more public platform for blogging and wikis. Each of the tools within Moodle was based on creating community by inviting student centered activities and the ability for students to share their content with each other. At that time the book The World is Flat had just been published which heralded the use of open source software with the ability for many designers to contribute and improve upon an initial design. Moodle to me represented just such a platform with multiple plugins and tools being available to add on and improve upon the student experience and the teacher’s ability to create amazing lessons and content. It was as if all the best features of several Web 2.0 tools at the time had been brought together for students but also afforded the ability to protect the students from outside and uncontrolled content getting in. And this for me was the key image when thinking about Moodle or an LMS was to think of it as what was called a “walled garden.” It offered the educator an ability to create community within the classroom but separated that community from interactions with the wider internet. If a student was alway behind the wall, would they develop the skills necessary to navigate, examine, and verify the content that they might come across without a teacher intervening.
A few years later in 2008, a company that none of us in a room had heard of called Edmodo was about to go live and presented to a small conference put together by what was then one of the largest professional learning networks for educators called Classroom 2.0 which was created by Steve Hargadon. Someone named Jeff O’Hara had flown out to San Francisco where the conference was to garner interest for what was considered a micro-blogging tool. At that time it was difficult to understand how important Edmodo would become for the education community. After a short time it changed from a simple way for teacher to post upcoming assignments and allow students to interact, to an amazing collection of third party tools and resources. A key difference between all the plugins for Moodle and the ones for Edmodo was that many companies began creating their product so that it would run inside Edmodo. Again the teacher wouldn’t have to worry about their students doing something outside the protected virtual classroom. Some of the plugins available are free but many charge for access to the tools and content. It’s become more of a market place that charges so much per student to access. As where Moodle is open source and embraced by a community of users who help problem solve and guide anyone to help overcome any technical issues. Edmodo has become a polished virtual classroom in which a teacher doesn’t have to worry about technical issues. Also Edmodo has many learning communities that can be joined that may be focussed on a company such as Spelling City or a topic such as a PBL (project based learning) group. For both LMSs there are conferences that are devoted to further learning about the tool. Overall I tend to think of Edmodo as being more of a K12 LMS and for Moodle as being a higher education LMS.
The last tool I thought about is Google Classroom which has only been available since the summer of 2013. When I first looked at what this LMS could do it reminded me of what Edmodo originally looked like. There were very few options beside being able to create assignments and announcements. It was more of a classroom timeline for the events that were happening. Now similar to Edmodo there are many third party apps that will interact with it. It has grown in sophistication and it’s ability to interact with other Google Apps makes it a good choice for schools that use Google Apps for Education. The one thing that Google Classroom does not appear to be is so much of a walled garden. It seems to expect that a student is going to be going outside the LMS and not necessarily getting all their content from one place. This may change over time as more and more third party tools integrate with it.
Thinking back several years ago to about 2005 or so, I remember that LMSs were embraced by some educators and disparaged by others. At that time Moodle was how I learned about what an LMS or CMS was, and with it being free, offered the greatest freedom to organize classroom content with many types of modules which included a blogging tool, a wiki, a glossary, a journal, calendar, and forums. At that time I primarily used the forums and journal tools as I wanted a more public platform for blogging and wikis. Each of the tools within Moodle was based on creating community by inviting student centered activities and the ability for students to share their content with each other. At that time the book The World is Flat had just been published which heralded the use of open source software with the ability for many designers to contribute and improve upon an initial design. Moodle to me represented just such a platform with multiple plugins and tools being available to add on and improve upon the student experience and the teacher’s ability to create amazing lessons and content. It was as if all the best features of several Web 2.0 tools at the time had been brought together for students but also afforded the ability to protect the students from outside and uncontrolled content getting in. And this for me was the key image when thinking about Moodle or an LMS was to think of it as what was called a “walled garden.” It offered the educator an ability to create community within the classroom but separated that community from interactions with the wider internet. If a student was alway behind the wall, would they develop the skills necessary to navigate, examine, and verify the content that they might come across without a teacher intervening.
A few years later in 2008, a company that none of us in a room had heard of called Edmodo was about to go live and presented to a small conference put together by what was then one of the largest professional learning networks for educators called Classroom 2.0 which was created by Steve Hargadon. Someone named Jeff O’Hara had flown out to San Francisco where the conference was to garner interest for what was considered a micro-blogging tool. At that time it was difficult to understand how important Edmodo would become for the education community. After a short time it changed from a simple way for teacher to post upcoming assignments and allow students to interact, to an amazing collection of third party tools and resources. A key difference between all the plugins for Moodle and the ones for Edmodo was that many companies began creating their product so that it would run inside Edmodo. Again the teacher wouldn’t have to worry about their students doing something outside the protected virtual classroom. Some of the plugins available are free but many charge for access to the tools and content. It’s become more of a market place that charges so much per student to access. As where Moodle is open source and embraced by a community of users who help problem solve and guide anyone to help overcome any technical issues. Edmodo has become a polished virtual classroom in which a teacher doesn’t have to worry about technical issues. Also Edmodo has many learning communities that can be joined that may be focussed on a company such as Spelling City or a topic such as a PBL (project based learning) group. For both LMSs there are conferences that are devoted to further learning about the tool. Overall I tend to think of Edmodo as being more of a K12 LMS and for Moodle as being a higher education LMS.
The last tool I thought about is Google Classroom which has only been available since the summer of 2013. When I first looked at what this LMS could do it reminded me of what Edmodo originally looked like. There were very few options beside being able to create assignments and announcements. It was more of a classroom timeline for the events that were happening. Now similar to Edmodo there are many third party apps that will interact with it. It has grown in sophistication and it’s ability to interact with other Google Apps makes it a good choice for schools that use Google Apps for Education. The one thing that Google Classroom does not appear to be is so much of a walled garden. It seems to expect that a student is going to be going outside the LMS and not necessarily getting all their content from one place. This may change over time as more and more third party tools integrate with it.