In a series of previous articles we described our initial 'look see' of the open-source Moodle virtual learning environment. In the silent interval since these articles we've been busy working with colleagues in one of our departments to design, develop and implement a distance learning course in which Moodle has started to play a significant part. So this article offers our first impressions of using Moodle in anger. Note the caveat 'first impressions' as we fully expect 'worms to come out of the woodwork', as they do with any system. As we have expounded within Auricle and other places, we've used Blackboard, we've used WebCT, but we've never committed to an enterprise class system. Why not? Mainly because the University, wisely, thought more time was necessary for the technology and the e-learning knowledge base to mature. Whilst the functionality of proprietary VLE/LMSs may have been enriched over the years, we still feel these are inherently first-generation products which major in content delivery; compounded by the fact that increasingly expensive recurrent licences are necessary to support this content delivery. In a previous Auricle article Clark Kent solutions have superpowers - well sort of! we've also challenged the community to look objectively at so called e-learning courses using these proprietary systems, many of which are, in reality, no more than logistical conveniences for the delivery of content and perhaps with a smidgen of noticeboard.
We've been tracking the development of Moodle particularly because of its assertions that its fundamental design was at least informed by a socio-constructivist pedagogy.
A few months ago, the e-learning team, at the university, were approached by a school within the university who wished to redesign a Master's distance learning course to adopt a more student-centred approach. Some members of the school team had experience of delivering courses on-line using Blackboard. However, because of the inherent content delivery model of Blackboard, they felt it would not meet their requirements for the redesign of the course.
As this article is about Moodle I won't go into the options that were considered, but 'cut to the chase' and reflect on the process that has taken place.
The whole course comprised eight modules with an overarching module which is to provide the 'glue' for the complete course. The course design was to follow a blended approach using some traditional distance learning material but to use a student-centred model to provide the activities/resources with assessment tied to the activities. The redesign had been in response to an in depth review of the existing course, which highlighted a number of key elements including helping distance learners to feel less isolated, take advantage of the professional experiences of the learners (this course is for medical doctors) and to make the materials as relevant and up-to date as possible. The design also needed to allow cohorts of learners to join at three-monthly intervals.
It's probably important to note that this project had to be off the ground within approximately 3 months when the first living, breathing (and paying) learners were to start their studies.
The project team, which included ourselves, met very frequently, a couple of times per week, to produce a model of what the course would look like and to set a schedule for key points to have been reached in order to meet the deadline. Once we had the specification we then started to create the course in Moodle.
We installed a course development version of Moodle 1.4.1 on the main university Web server which was later ported to a dedicated server for delivery of the live course.
One of the first tasks that we had to do was to give the school a clear identity by creating their own theme. This was fairly easy to do since it mainly required taking an existing theme from Moodle and adapting it to meet the needs of the school. A new language file was also created to accommodate changes in some of the module titles, e.g. courses became units. As for the theme the new language file was based on an existing file and simple editing was all that was required. Once the look-and-feel was established the course could then be created in Moodle.
The development stages were, as mentioned above, subject to meeting a number of important dates. These were identified as those dates when the key players in the project should be introduced to the new environment. For all this would be a first time experience. This group included the senior management within the school, the personal tutors for the course, the course administrators, the directors of studies and the course tutors. The 'buy in' of key stakeholders like this are essential because without their support the project would have great difficulty in embedding. Presentations were made to obtain as much feedback as possible in order that changes could be incorporated into the design.
Exposure of the course to a representative group of students was also deemed to be vital before the first cohort started in January 2005. A rapid prototype of the course was also developed that had many of the many of the features of main course. Towards the end of November 2004 a group of volunteers from the existing course were invited to an event at the university. They are at various stages in their studies ranging from beginning through to starting the dissertation. They were shown the new environment and through a series of 'etivities' explored the course features. Obsevers were on hand to monitor how they interacted with the VLE and noting any difficulties they experienced, e.g. navigation problems. At the end of the event a debrief was used to elicit verbal feedback. This event provided valuable information that was incorporated into the user instructions.
The volunteers then had two weeks to carry out some other online activities and to attend another feedback session at the end of the two week period. This session included some online discussion and face-to-face questions and answers. One of the volunteers who had not been able to attend the first event, joined the second event 'virtually'. We made use of the chat facility in Moodle and, having an observer who had a great typing speed, this student was able to read the comments and questions from the rest of the group. An interesting experiment that provided a useful record of the event.
The last but one group of key stakeholders, apart from the students themselves, were the course academics. They are all discipline specialists who have authored the text based materials for the existing distance learning course. They will also need to be on-board. A number of them attended a briefing session to be introduced to the new course. It was an interesting meeting because at the start the academics polarised into two groups, those who were prepared to change and those who considered the existing approach was sufficient. However by the end of the session all were supportive of the new course to a greater or lesser degree. A comment from one of the early doubters was very encouraging:
“I must be the most IT incompetent person in this room but even I believe that I can use this facility.”
One up for Moodle usability then?
This course also has international students and so students from Hong Kong became the final group to test the new environment.
By early December 2004 more and more material was being added to the courses including support material that had been developed out of the feedback from the various events. The course team kept in contact by posting any new information in a discussion forum. The email alerts became an essential part of making sure the project stayed on time. The first units are now ready for the students.
The course went live on 10 January 2005 and so it is very early days, However there are already a number of comments showing that the first impressions are very positive with statements like 'very impressive site- I am going to enjoy working this way!' being typical.
Auricle readers will undoubtedly have noticed that although Moodle is in this article's title it has hardly been mentioned. One of Moodle's greatest strengths is that it appears not to get in the way of designing a course to suit what the developers want rather than have to shoe horn it into an environment that substantially changes how the course is delivered. I'm not saying Moodle does not have its limitations, but it largely does what it says on the box (if it had one:) If you wish to deliver courses that support a student centred approach then this is what it does. The software installation does not raise any problems and customisation, as mentioned earlier, is straightforward, even for people with limited programming experience. The support from the wider Moodle community is quite exceptional with answers to most of the questions to be found in the extensive forums that exist at the moodle Web site. Questions posted to the forums often produce responses within hours of it going live.
So what are the problems that we have so far experienced? Not too many, thankfully, but note that our use of Moodle is for a single course for one school in the university.
One key contstraint is that there is not a lot of up-to-date documentation for Moodle in any one place. Nevertheless, information can usually be found from the support community. This means that finding out how a part of the underlying code works, e.g. developing a new language file, can be a little slow.
Also, system technical support will need experience of the open-source PHP scripting language if course customisation is required. Nevertheless, Moodle's modular architecture means that we have already managed to enhance some aspects of basic functionality via its plugins (which it calls blocks).
We initially installed Moodle on the university Web server for test purposes but we found this affected system response times significantly even with a relatively low number of users. To guarantee good performance it is necessary to run from a dedicated server and so with the co-operation of our University computing services team we've now taken this step.
Although this is a brief and initial account of a work-in-progress we believe all the participants have created an online course to the design that we want and not one forced on to us by the VLE. We have been able to concentrate on providing a rich and dynamic environment for the students and Moodle sits in the background doing its job.
So what's the judgement so far?
Shows some promise. We have experienced a very helpful rapid responses from the support community. We need now to consider how the system could cope with big numbers of registrations and enrolments. Document management appears weak but perhaps no weaker than other such systems. We need to explore more how systems such as Moodle could interact with document management systems/learning object repositories (centralized or distributed).
