Why Teachers Might Desire an Inadequate LMS

Before I get back to why I think Moodle is superior to other Learning Management Systems, it might be worth exploring why a teacher might request his/her district to grant access to a school-wide account to one of the other lesser performing systems.

In an earlier post I mentioned that teachers tend to favor systems like Schoology or Edmoto because of their simplicity. There's a lot to be said for things that are simple but probably not in this case. Teachers gravitate to these tools because they're used to learning new things in isolation. They choose things they can figure out on their own. Systems lacking in features are easy to use but what will almost certainly happen is that as systems like Schoology grow they are bound to increase the number of features offered just to keep up with user requests/demands. Then guess what happens...they become more complex; harder to use and less intuitive. Then they'll require more intense training or those using the system will simply ignore what they do not understand. They may even learn some of the new features as they are launched, but what about the new teachers just getting into it. They'll look to some other simple tool that is out there, right around the time the current systems are bought up by Blackboard ;) It took me about 3 years to become proficient with Moodle and there are still probably things I don't know. That's just the way it is. You may have had a similar experience with Microsoft Word or PowerPoint; how many of you know what every setting and option is for in those programs? Do you need them all? No. Do some of those options come in handy for specific purposes? Once you learn the other functions is what you create even more dynamic?

There's a reason why Moodle has so many features and options. The developers and the Moodle community have been contributing additions and improvements for the last 10+ years. What it lacks in simplicity it more than makes up for in features and flexibility.

I believe that most teachers are overwhelmed with the day to day tasks they must perform and are looking at tools through the lens of what can help them in the moment. I'm taking a little bit more of a longer view. It may very well be that what people need right now is an online space to post course handouts. Here's what's important to keep in mind, education is evolving as will the demand from students, parents and communities. We must personalize everything (as quickly as possible). What kid in 3-5 years is going to sit still for some boring lesson that doesn't take them into account? Only the one who was going to do what you told him to do anyway. That's probably fewer students than will put up with it now (about a third). Students need choices, they need to work at their own pace, they need a place to share what they've created and they need it in a space that looks engaging and thoughtfully constructed. They need options. Did I mention that they need to work at their own pace?

That means that staff development must include information about content development, design and time to transform resources.

That can't be done in a Facebook for PDF's and PowerPoints.

More Course Improvement Suggestions

Well, it's done; I've looked over every online course and am back with some more suggestions.

While many of these come from looking at online courses, I've seen hundreds of Moodle spaces for face-to-face and blended/flipped courses as well. I think it's safe to say that most courses started out as a supplementary resource for students that were in class every day. Eventually all of the course resources were uploaded and then that meant that they were ready to be used as an online class. Thankfully, the courses I've reviewed are quite a few steps beyond that but I think that what is relatively consistent is that the design as content was put into Moodle stayed that way.

When taking curriculum courses for my undergrad and Master's degree I remember hearing over and over again how much color and images can facilitate student engagement, help them remember information and make things look more interesting. That's probably even more true in the online setting since there is no teacher there giving the supporting commentary as the lessons/activities are being handed out.

One of the things I've really encouraged teachers to take advantage of is to align images next to content in their Moodle courses (on and off the main page).

Moodle 2 image hack: This will allow images to be aligned within text in Headers: course/format/topics/format.php &  course/format/weeks/format.php  Files have been altered so that  $summaryformatoptions->overflowdiv = true; has been changed to $summaryformatoptions->overflowdiv = false;  Warning: There are two places in each file this edit needs to be made.

It is a shame that it now requires a hack in order to get them to embed next to text on the main page of a course. It's well worth the 3-5 minutes it takes to make it though. I would argue that images that relate to the content can help facilitate faster navigation because a student can quickly scroll (don't get me started on scrolling) if need be and not have to read the text but look for an image that means something to them. It also just looks so much nicer and why wouldn't we want that?

Speaking of Navigation, the Topics in Moodle can now be renamed so it is worth the time to take that text that was in your header and using it to name your topic because this also shows up in the Navigation Block. Better to say something about the content than Topic 1. Speeding up access to content will make it more likely that a student will find it without problem. If there are problems then the content gets ignored.

One of the things I've been working on in my own courses is to use the formative assessments as another mechanism to reinforce concepts and ideas. No matter the student response to a question the feedback that is generated is reminding them of the correct answer. I'm hoping that this helps save me some time next year when I'm trying to teach 20 students in different places within my course how to create a proper Works Cited page. If the quizzes on these topics are easy and fun then taking them is not so bad and it all helps them fill in their progress bars.

More course suggestions on the way in the coming days...

More on Moodle Zen (Compact Design)

During/After the presentation by Jen Hegna today I have some thoughts to add to the discussion:

I think having a reason to design a course like this is important. Not all courses would benefit from this type of layout. Here's why I do it:

• I have students enrolling all year long so it is necessary to leave an entire semester's course open. It cannot be used synchronously with an entire class.


• Even though almost everyone will go in order, I want to support users who don't want to.


• Some people only need access to parts of the course and not the whole thing. I'm way into the "just in time" idea. When someone wants to know something, I want that part of my course accessible to them.

To add to Jen's list of Pro's/Con's:

Visual appeal matters. Like it or not, teachers have to learn some elements of design to sell their content. I had an interesting discussion with an IT person once who asked why I spend so much time on layout/design of content. I could just upload the text/PDF files the old way. He couldn't wrap his head around why someone would not just read what they were supposed to. Even if they did, I would still argue that participants will remember more of the content if they are visually engaged.

There was a question about how much time this adds to the process and how teachers will fit this into their schedules. Once you wrap your head around how it fits together, it really doesn't take much more time. I've written about my design process before, but compacting a course really only adds another couple hours to the process. It's worth it in terms of what you'll make up by engaging learners. In the end, I believe this extra time up front will save students/teachers time, not to mention result in higher participation and completion (an issue that continues to elude much of the online learning community).

Some things break upon restore. This isn't so much of a con for me as they're usually quick fixes, like updating the course number (which is easily accomplished in the HTML version with a Find/Replace or a couple quick edits. The nice thing is that the errors are consistent so once you know where they are then it's easier and easier to fix them when they're restored for others. Another quick way to check for errors is to change the course theme and click on the links. You'll know right away if any are broken since your course will look different.

Shortcuts I've learned:

I've now designed at least 7 courses like this (3 of which are available on MoodleShare), and I can say that I'm still finding ways to speed things up.

1. Get your unit pages created first even if you leave them blank.
2. Put commonly used HTML code in a label or text file to have quick access to.
3. Get a second monitor and use your landscape to have different parts of your course open at once.
4. To avoid restore errors you can host your media on another server or in places like YouTube or Google Docs.
5. Use the Resources block to get quick access to different pages in your course. This will be very helpful once you close the extra topics.

Here's a link to a post about my own course design process.

Thanks to Miguel Guhlin for putting this together for the Moodle Mayhem Podcast.

There was a comment in the chat about Picasa links being problematic. I've noticed that when I try to use the "link to this image" link that it doesn't embed, but when I click on the image, then right click on it and copy link location that this will work. I don't know why the URL's are different but I guess they are. There was also concern about Flickr being available and some schools blocking it. There are lots of ways to share files as mentioned in the presentation, I would just add that you would use any number of free spaces to upload/share content, they can't block them all! :)