The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Moodle - for the bookshelf Major Keary |
Moodle is an acronym for Modular Object Oriented Developmental Learning Environment, developed by Martin Dougiamas — an Australian computer scientist and educator — who became frustrated by engineer-created course management systems (CMS). The abbreviation can also stand for 'content management system', which is another Web technology.
Moodle is open source software "used by universities, community colleges, K-12 schools, businesses, and even individual instructors to add Web technology to their courses". Before you can use Moodle it has to be installed and configured on a server and the instructor must have instructor-access or administrator-access. For those interested, a Web search will turn up many Moodle-related URLs.
Using Moodle is a text "for people who want to teach a course using Moodie"; the course may be either 'full online', or a Web-based supplement to formal classroom teaching. The author points out that simply introducing technology — such as Moodle — won't make a course any better: like any other CMS it has to be used intelligently.
The book is not just a manual. It also introduces case studies, discusses best practices, and makes useful suggestions. Topics such as setting up forums, workshops, and how to create a quiz. The discussions are in both the context of how to create and manage, for example, a quiz, and effective practices.
As a manual the book shows in clear language how the software is used; the text is supported by useful screen shots and tabulated information. The presentation is an example of technical communication at its best: users don't have to sacrifice teaching time in order to grapple with overly technical instruction on how to use the software.
Anyone setting up training courses should look at this title. Apart from explaining what Moodle does and how to use it, the author includes some interesting discussions for people who create courses. There is an interesting chapter on Wikis.
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Jason Cole: Using Moodle ISBN 0-596-00863-5 Published by O'Reilly, 219 pp., RRP $74.95 incl. GST |
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Reprinted from the June 2006 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
