Glossary of common terms

The zone of proximal development, often abbreviated ZPD, is the difference between what a learner can do without help and what he or she can do with help. It is a concept introduced yet not fully developed by Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896 – 1934) during the last two years of his life. Also, many theorists are still applying to their work today.

Vygotsky stated that a child follows an adult's example and gradually develops the ability to do certain tasks without help. Vygotsky's often-quoted definition of zone of proximal development presents it as...

"...the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers. For example, two 8 yr. old children may be able to complete a task that an average 8 yr. old can do. Next, more difficult tasks are presented with very little assistance from an adult. In the end, both children were able to complete the task. However, the styles methods they chose depended on how far they were willing to stretch their thinking process."

Vygotsky and some educators believe education's role is to give children experiences that were within their zones of proximal development, thereby encouraging and advancing their individual learning.

"The zone of proximal development defines functions that have not matured yet, but are in a process of maturing, that will mature tomorrow, that are currently in an embryonic state; these functions could be called the buds of development, the flowers of development, rather than the fruits of development, that is, what is only just maturing."

Source: Wikipedia.org

An Outcome is like any other grade except that it can be applied to multiple activities. When the activity is marked, a mark should be given for the submission itself and for the outcome.


Outcomes are newly introduced in Moodle 1.9

basically implements a way to connect outcome statements with Scales.
Scales themselves are connected to courses and their activities.


ExampleOutcome: ‘Identityin social psychology’

Scales:{Refuser, Drifter, Searcher, Guardian, Resolver}

A collection of groups, i.e. a group of groups!

See the groupings documentation.

This area is for exchanging complete Moodle courses in Moodle Backup format, as well as other content like glossaries or quiz banks.

All content in here is free to download and use, and you can add and update your own content whenever you like.

The Moodle Exchange is at: http://moodle.org/course/view.php?id=15

(This entry can be replaced with a Resource pointing to Moodle Exchange so that the link is more direct )

NZ Open Source VLE Project is a New Zealand-based project, hosted at Eduforge.org

It is helping Moodle adoption as part of a greater project of developing OSS e-learning application software for deployment throughout New Zealands education sector. System integration of portal website framework, lcms, content creation tools and modular toolkit.

Activities in Moodle are educational things to do. They include, for example: discussing a topic in a forum, writing a journal entry, submitting an assignment, or completing a quiz.

Applets are small programs written in Java and embedded within web pages. Most recent browsers can run these small programs if you have Java installed on your computer.

Breadcrumbs are what Hansel and Gretel used the famous fairy tale to remember the way back to where they came from.

Moodle DOES NOT use breadcrumbs, as this is what your browser is for and why it has a back button/menu.

Moodle has a navigation bar in the header (and optionally footer) that shows the location of the current page within the site structure.

This point of view maintains that people actively construct new knowledge as they interact with their environment.

Everything you read, see, hear, feel, and touch is tested against your prior knowledge and if it is viable within your mental world, may form new knowledge you carry with you. Knowledge is strengthened if you can use it successfully in your wider environment. You are not just a memory bank passively absorbing information, nor can knowledge be "transmitted" to you just by reading something or listening to someone.

This is not to say you can't learn anything from reading a web page or watching a lecture, obviously you can, it's just pointing out that there is more interpretation going on than a transfer of information from one brain to another.

Abbreviation for "Cascading Style Sheets". CSS defines styles and colours and how they should be applied to a web page.