OK, I have taken a vow to install no mods / plugins on my most recent Moodle site. No third-party theme, either.
It's Moodle out-of-the-box for me this time.
I am sure Moodle out-of-the-box will be perfectly adequate
Why are you doing this Art?
I agree with Mary, up to a point. After creating 56 courses manually, adding 37 users to your cohort one by one, uploading 518 files each with a lot of clicks, hand crafting your HTML to make videos play nicely etc you may wish for a few scripts or plugins.
-Derek
Heh, heh. You might be right.
But I am betting that my classes in 2011 - 2012 will be fine if I keep everything very lean and simple. Just stick to the basics. (Although I already miss the book mod!)
Just want to try and see.
- Art
This kind of reminds me of the "How long can you stay unplugged?" social experiments that were all the rage a couple of summers ago.
Interesting trial, Moodlemeister. Let us know how it goes.
Will do, Lesli.
- Art
Hi Art
Good luck with that...I wouldn't have lasted more than an hour without my favorite mods and blocks. I suppose that you would end up with a easy(ier) upgrade path to future versions of Moodle 2.x with this strategy.
We'll see, Frankie. We'll see.
I already miss some super-cool mods, but I am going to stick to my "diet."
In the past, the problem for me has never been the coolness or utility of this mod or that mod, it has been my less-than-stellar online teaching and some pretty mediocre instructional design, sadly.
This time, I am simply going to let my beloved Moodle just be Moodle, and I am going to be a better teacher.
I know that adding functionality to Moodle and teaching well are not mutually exclusive, of course. It's just an approach that I hope will work better for me and my students.
I certainly do not advocate this Minimal-Moodle approach to others or recommend it to anyone else.
Anyway, I expect that I will end up focused on forum-based interactions. For me, forums are key. Always have been.
Guess I will find out soon, as I am beginning to create a "Digital Mentors" course in which my German 1 and 2 studnts will be able to get extra help from my German 3, 4 and 5 students.
- Art
How's it coming along Art?
Maybe from your experience you'll be able to distil the main ingredients of teaching an online course successfully using Moodle-Out-Of-The-Box.
How's the Digital Mentors working out?