Moodle Methodology and impact on students and teachers

Moodle Methodology and impact on students and teachers

by Andrew Wall -
Number of replies: 8

Hi Everybody,

I'm a University student in the UK and in my last year, currently in middle of my dissertation. I am investigating a suitable design methodology for the adoption of a LMS (i.e. Moodle) as a teaching tool and its impact on staff and students within a higher education insitution.

I am looking into how a university goes about adopting the use of learning management system into their learning and teaching as currently at my university, they have switch from WebCT to Moodle.  With regards to the impact on students and teachers, the investigation will look at whether there is a positive correlation between students' study with Moodle and their exam/assignment performance.

Therefore I would appreciate it if as many people as possible would care to share any thoughts / contributions on the above issues

Thanks
Andrew

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In reply to Andrew Wall

Re: Moodle Methodology and impact on students and teachers

by Susan Maros -
Andrew,

Our institution (in Southern California) has had an online program for nine years, the last four or five of which have been using WebCT, and we are now switching to Moodle. I am in the midst of designing and creating training for our faculty to aid them in making the transition. Thus, I am extremely interested in what anyone would have to say on the subject you've raised.

A question for clarification: when you say you are "investigating a suitable design methodology for the adoption of a LMS (i.e. Moodle) as a teaching tool", are you referring primarily to designing the transition from one platform to another or are you referring primarily to the learning theory issues undergirding course design ... or something entirely different?

Regards,
Susan
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In reply to Susan Maros

Re: Moodle Methodology and impact on students and teachers

by Andrew Wall -

A question for clarification: when you say you are "investigating a suitable design methodology for the adoption of a LMS (i.e. Moodle) as a teaching tool", are you referring primarily to designing the transition from one platform to another or are you referring primarily to the learning theory issues undergirding course design ... or something entirely different?


In regards to your question, I am looking into the transition from one platform to another (i.e from WebCT to Moodle) and how effective Moodle is in enchanicing course material within a Learning Management System.

The questions I want to address within my dissertation are:

How teaching staff have perceived the use of a LMS in terms of impact on the learner’s education and the delivery of course material by the teaching staff?

Comparison of any advantages / disadvantages to the adoption of LMS institutional wide?

Can you measure the impact of the effect on delivery by the staff and the students’ learning?

Determine whether there is a cost benefit in implementing a LMS?


To gain statistical evidence, I am going to see if there is a positive correlation between students' study time with Moodle and their exam/assignment performance.  I am also going to investigate if Moodle enchances student's learning compared with that of WebCT.  In addition, did students achieve better grades whilst using Moodle or by using WebCT instead.

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In reply to Susan Maros

Re: Moodle Methodology and impact on students and teachers

by David Hardman -

Dear Susan (and other respondents to Andrew),

I'm new to Moodle. My University is pushing WebCT. We've had it for a few years, but only recently has there been a big push towards blended learning. I'm curious to read that your institutions are moving away from WebCT to Moodle. What is the reason for this?

I've only recently heard of Moodle - but I understand that it is less clunky and is faster than WebCT. Is this why your institutions are adopting it?

David

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In reply to David Hardman

Re: Moodle Methodology and impact on students and teachers

by ben reynolds -
Hi David,
I'm on what my uni calls the "course management system support group." We've actually spent about 5 years moving slowly from Blackboard, WebCT, e-college, and 2 pseudo-CMSes (home grown). As a first step, one of our school moved away from e-college. The second round of looking at CMSes (or call them "LMS" or "VLE") began when Bb gobbled up WebCT. We use 4.1, and it looked like 4.1 was going to be abandoned before we were ready for that.

Bb/WebCT was, at the time, talking about a combined product in such a way that we couldn't project expenses for it at all.

It looked like, in the interim, we were going to have to go with the WebCT enterprise edition, which entailed significant costs. And then we would have the combined product costs on top of that.

This uncertainty led us to look at open source: sakai, angel, moodle. My part of the uni flirted with sakai but felt it wasn't ready for prime time. We went with Moodle and have been using it in production about 18 months with good success.

Just to show that all universities are unified, the rest of my uni went with Sakai and is in the testing phase.

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In reply to Andrew Wall

Re: Moodle Methodology and impact on students and teachers

by Diana Menefy -
Hi Andrew
I'm a tutor, course designer on an online writing programme at NorthTec on NZ. Our programme changed from WebCT to Moodle three or four years ago. I've been involved in developing orientation resourses for our student - handbooks, CD's and online resources. I'm happy to help you with this, but am not sure exactly what it is you are wanting. Please be more specific.
Cheers, Di

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In reply to Andrew Wall

Re: Moodle Methodology and impact on students and teachers

by Bryan Dawson -

Andrew,

You certainly have picked a 'How long is a piece of string?' question!  Some thoughts from a VLE implementor, in no particular order:


Many tutors resent the idea of somebody or something 'managing' the learning they deliver - that is what they are there for.
How much experience of a VLE have your tutors got?
What are they trying to achieve? - if they only want a repository for online versions of existing lecture notes, their expectations will be low and adoption will be easy.  The more technology they use, the more complicated it gets, and every tutor is different.
How much pressure is being exerted on reluctant tutors by senior managers? We have pushed through a 'minimum presence' that every course must have on the VLE.  The laggards grumble but do get on with it.  However takeup of the more interactive bits of Moodle is disappointing.
As far as I know, the military are the only people who can get away with taking a class, splitting it in half and teaching each half in a different way - and that's the only way you are going to get comparative results.
A study that was done when our halls of residence were wired to the network showed that student PCs typically have as many as 6 applications open simultaneously.  With multi-tasking being so prevalent, measuring the actual time spent with Moodle as the foreground application, being actively worked on, will be very difficult.

My advice to you would be to stick to those themes where you know you can get the evidence e.g. from Moodle's reports of what is actually happening, and be aware that there are no 'One size fits all' solutions to VLE implementation.

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In reply to Andrew Wall

Re: Moodle Methodology and impact on students and teachers

by ben reynolds -
Hi Andrew,
You've got a bit of a moving target with a before and after comparison.

Both your instructors and your students can only get better at using a CMS.

Course design\presentation can only improve (unless inexperienced instructors teaching brand new courses are introduced).

Moodle's pedagogical underpinnings (constructivist) are considerably different, IMHO, from WebCT's.

For that matter, depending on which version of WebCT you're looking at, the difference in CMS design may be like looking at neanderthal vs. homo sapiens (I'm exaggerating a bit, but a lot has changed in a very short time).

Moodle (& Sakai, for that matter) is so vastly less clunky than WebCT 4.1 that we had a very difficult time comparing the two CMSes.
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