Teaching with Moodle

Moving to Teaching with Moodle forum...

Have had students in the past giving the opinion that they prefer the content direct on the web, ie in pages or moodle books or similar, because pdfs are not responsive on smaller devices, they are not always fully accessible to screen readers (depends how they are produced). PDFs also cannot hold videos the way Moodle books can.

One solution I've used in the past is to create both - create the Moodle book, so I have all the content as I want it, then export it and reformat it so it looks good as a download and save that as a PDF available for download from within the book.

UK Govt advice on accessible pdfs

PDFs are bad for accessibility. Users can’t customise them for ease of reading, and they don’t work so well with assistive technologies like screen readers.
Wherever possible, create content in HTML formats. If you can’t avoid publishing a PDF, it should be in addition to an HTML version.
As a minimum, any PDF you publish must meet Level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0.

Can we do it like the Scribd Format. I have seen Scrbd down loader and the Format is just fine if I look at it from the Reader's Perspective.

Hi pgmoodle

I use the Book resource for my course content. It is easy to update and easy for the learner to print the entire book or a specific chapter of the book (using the gear icon or admin menu (depends on version) when in the book). It is also much better for mobile devices and media content.

Hi pgmoodle and other fellow Moodlers,

Some good points have been covered well here so I'll come at this from a different angle.

In terms of students learning from the reading materials they're given, as far as I understand the growing body of research on screen vs. print formats, printed formats tend to work better than screens, especially for longer and/or more challenging texts. Here's a short, recent summary of the research so far: http://theconversation.com/the-enduring-power-of-print-for-learning-in-a-digital-world-84352

I think a good strategy is to provide PDF versions of longer/challenging readings so that students can easily print them out, or to provide a textbook with the necessary readings in, e.g. the Open University offers print versions of some of their courses to enrolled students for purchase.

Another important feature of traditional printed pages relates to cognitive load theory (See: John Sweller, Richard E Mayer, Paul Kirschner et al.), more specifically the benefits of reducing extraneous load, i.e. information that is not directly related to the current learning objectives and other "distractions" such as navigation menus, hyperlinks in the text body (even the decision of whether or not to click on a body text link creates extraneous load), logos, to do lists, reminders, and Moodle blocks. In short, if students are reading on a screen, it should be as free from clutter and unrelated information as a printed page, i.e. none. I think there are plugins for Moodle that make collapsing navigation menus and other blocks simple and easy. Having the option to go full screen, i.e. the reading text only, would be ideal.

I hope this helps!

Matt

Does it have to be either/or?  Build your book.  "Print" it to Word (or preferred word processing program), fix the funny formatting.  "print" it to PDF.  Provide a pdf download as an option.  When you update the book, update the Word version, reprint to PDF, update the option.  A few more steps, but possibly worth it?