Are they laughing because moodle is so easy to use or laughing at moodle?
Recently I found a web hosting site that offers free hosting for moodle accounts. I need to develop a Spring 2009 course and I want a platform that runs smoothly, reliably and quickly so I can spend more time developing the quality of the course and very little 'thumb twiddling' time. I set up a new course called 'Global Issues' there.
Last Saturday two other faculty and I met to look at the beginnings of the course. I wanted to illustrate the basic features shared by most platforms and so we looked at file uploading, adding a syllabus, discussions, assignments and quizzing. As we looked over the basics we found ourselves also exploring other features like adding media, web links and more. Fortunately for every feature, there is a link at the bottom of the page which goes directly to the doc files which show how to use that link, although the features were mostly intuitive and tutorials were not needed.
Moodle is the most popular open source platform in the world - used in over 150 countries and in hundreds of thousands of courses so far. While the moodle platform is free, hosting is not so each user must either host moodle or find a suitable host. The official moodle site at http://moodle.org/ includes links to hosting partners in the USA. These sites offer hosting: Moodlerooms at www.moodlerooms.com/services/academicpackages/ , Remote Learner Inc., at http://remote-learner.net/moodlehosting, or Classroom Revolution at http://www.classroomrevolution.com/?moodlead=cr.general. Classroom revolution offers a single user license for up to 5 courses for one year for $149.
To start with I wanted to try the free hosting site at ninehub. Getting an account at ninehub and creating a course shell took about 45 minutes (I was a little slow.) Once the course was created, it took several hours to figure out to create or in some cases transfer doc files I already had to my 'Global Issues' course shell. I call the first hours 'playing around' time as I became comfortable with the easy-to-use features and thought out how I wanted to use them. I used a weekly format (not a chapter or unit format) and placed my content under Week One. I set aside a couple of hours on a subsequent day to create a short quiz. The quizzing tool is also easy to use and quizzes can be imported from many sources according to the documentation I read (as we all know, documents are one thing and reality can be quite another.) I intend on continuing to blog my experience with setting up my ‘Global Issues’ moodle course - it may prove useful for those who are considering learning a second platform.
Since setting up the course on the free website, it seems to have disappeared so I'll set up a course on classroom revolutions which offers a license for as low as $150.00.
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