Matt Bury

Hi everyone,

Great discussion & I agree with the sentiment that Moodle should be more involved, & in a more systematic way, with helping authors to provide Open Education Resources (OER).

Re: pilot projects, yes, I think it's easier to show than tell & a complete course or two would be a good demonstration of what the idea is & what it would entail. For example, a founder member of the UK's Open University, Tony Bates, wrote & published an OER textbook here, it's also been translated in to several languages: https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev2/ (Now in its 3rd edition, not yet updated on the repository) He estimated the total cost of publishing such a book to be around $80,000 - $130,000 CAD (See: https://www.tonybates.ca/2015/06/08/the-cost-of-developing-an-open-textbook-80000-130000/), so as you can see, it's no small feat but that is a pretty dense 600+ page book. From personal online curriculum development experiences, I'd say developing an interactive Moodle course with high-quality assessments would be even more work.

However, I don't think there's any need to start from scratch. There is already a selection of highly popular & in-use OER textbooks that could be developed into Moodle courses & this would substantially reduce the time & cost, e.g. https://openstax.org/subjects

Another option would be to petition educational institutions that have made commitments to OER to enable Moodle.net to host the courses that they'd like to share more widely. It's worth noting that making coursebooks & courses openly available enables students to "study ahead" before term starts & that this increases overall student retention & graduation rates. Some courses are often adapted & used as MOOCs to attract potential students to their universities/colleges. I'm not sure how this would affect their willingness to share those courses more widely though.

BTW, I think charging for access would go against the spirit of openness & community that underpins Moodle.org. It's also explicitly prohibited by the licences on many OER resources so it'd more than likely reduce options & increase development costs. For me the whole idea of OER is for communities to work together, sharing resources, time & expertise to produce something for the good of everyone who's interested & for mutual benefit. Perhaps sponsorship, contributions, fundraising, etc., could be a more ethical & "open source-esque" approach?

Just some ideas to throw out there.

Cheers!

I'll second the comments on the improvements in the 4.x UI. They're very much appreciated.

I'll also second Ira's comments here on cognitive load for typical learners too (Dylan Wiliam called cognitive load theory possibly one of the most important theories in education). Task-switching (from thinking about learning content to thinking about navigation then back to learning content again) always comes at a cognitive cost & can make difficult tasks more difficult, resulting in shallower learning. The less learners have to think about navigating between Moodle activities, the better they'll learn. Thinking metaphorically, the obvious place for most people to "turn a page" is at the bottom right of it. Take a look at a few old magazines & softback books to see which corner is the most dog-eared. I think that should tell us what is most intuitive for most people.

BTW, Re the App: for the courses I design, for language learning, the app doesn't support many of the necessary features, e.g. audio & video recording & 3rd party activity modules, & so despite some of the conveniences & immediacy the app can offer, it doesn't justify requiring learners to use both the app & the web UI. I don't think the app should be used as a justification for sub-optimal website UI design.