Why do so many Moodle courses suck?

Moodle is a magnificent free product and has the potential to enable schools and teachers to build wonderfully unique interactive online learning courses in which learner interaction can be tracked, measured and responded to. Despite this the vast majority of Moodle courses I see are a long list of Word and PDF documents with at best a few forums that enable a minimum of human social interaction.

Given the state of many of these courses, it’s no wonder that drop out rates for online learning are so high. And of course Moodle isn’t the only culprit. Many of the other commercially available LMS (learning management systems) and VLE (virtual learning environment) platforms aren’t doing any better.

Moodle has been around now since 2002 and research carried out in 2013 showed that more than 7.3 million students had studied in more than 83 thousand registered sites.

Image from ELTPics: https://flic.kr/p/jBXAwK

So why is it that so little progress has been made in developing innovative courses that really generate interaction with media rich content?

The problem surely isn’t Moodle, because the platform is capable of delivering all of the above.

The reality is that there are a number of causes:

• I think it’s fair to say that Moodle isn’t the most intuitive of platforms to work with. A lot of progress and improvements have been made, but it’s inevitable that a product with multiple modules constructed by different people is likely to result in some inconsistencies of look and feel.
• The fact that Moodle is seen as a ‘free’ platform and so a ‘cheap’ way to get learning online is another factor. Schools start using the platform with the impression that it won’t require much financial backing and that once they have provided the platform teachers will just be able to get their classes online.
• This brings me to the next point and that is lack of training. Most teachers I have met who use Moodle do so with only the most minimal and basic training and again this comes back to the perception that Moodle is a cheap solution. Many school managers seem to think that a few hours of training is enough to get their teachers designing great online courses. It’s not! Training to use Moodle effectively takes considerable time and needs to be constantly reinforced and renewed.
• A second element of training which is often overlooked is instructional design. A teacher may well be marvellous at developing and delivering their own materials in the classroom, but when it comes to converting those materials into effective online learning units there is a new level of skill and understanding that they need. Understanding the instructional design potential of an online platform and how to structure materials so that students progress through an online environment requires training and experience.
• Another factor in this mix is that the Moodle platform is often seen as the ‘property’ and responsibility of the IT department and as such they make the platform as secure as possible. Often this means that teachers’ access to many of the different features and potential that Moodle can deliver are hidden from the teacher and they don’t have the opportunity to experiment with the platform and learn for themselves.

So given all of these problems is it worth using Moodle or any other platform to develop online and blended learning for your students? 

The answer is of course a resounding yes. To ignore the potential that online learning and new technology has to offer is to be like King Canute trying to order back the sea.

But to use technology effectively education establishments have to approach online learning with their eyes open.

• It isn’t a cheap solution.
• It will require a significant investment in training for teachers
• Teachers won’t just construct wonderful online courses in their free time. Developing good online materials takes time. More time than it takes to develop paper-based face to face materials, so they will need to be paid for this time.
• Teachers need to be trained at all levels of the platform including the admin level, not just at teacher level.

How about ready made courses?

Knowing all of this schools may be tempted to by an ‘off the shelf’ solution with all the content ready made, but I would be wary of this type of ‘one size fits all’ content. In many cases the content has just been adapted from a course book with a copious amounts of drag and drop and gap-filling activity mixed with a little multimedia and very little student - teacher or peer to peer interaction built in and no sign of any authentic materials or personalisation. These courses are often dull beyond belief and fail to engage the students.

The best online courses, just like the best face-to-face courses, are usually designed by teachers who have developed an understanding of the needs and interests of their students and can choose content which they will enjoy and find engaging.

So, if platforms like Moodle are really to be used to develop effective and engaging learning which realises the potential of online and blended learning modes of delivery, then we must have managers who are willing to invest in developing the skills of their teachers and teachers who are willing to meet the challenges of new technology head on  and accept their changing and more diverse roles as teachers, mentors and instructional designers.

For teachers who would like to try to develop their own Moodle skills.
You can register for a free Moodle platform at: http://www.mdl2.com/ It takes a few moments to register and then you have your own Moodle platform to use as a sandpit.

Here are a few quick video tutorials that can help get you started.

• How to add an image to Moodle and size it correctly
  This video shows how to edit the html code to control the space the image takes on the screen.
• Formatting a Moodle page
  This video shows how to make the Moodle page look more attractive and professional
• Adding an image to a Moodle webpage
  This video shows how to add an image to a Moodle page
• Adding a YouTube video to Moodle
  This video shows you how to embed a video from YouTube into a Moodle page
• Embedding a webpage into a Moodle page
  This video shows you how to embed a webpage from a different site into a Moodle page so that it appears as part of the Moodle course
• Creating a questionnaire
  This video shows you how to create the questionnaire framework. 
• Adding questions to a questionnaire
  This video shows how to add questions to the questionnaire once the framework has been created. 
• How to create a quiz
  This shows how to create the quiz framework before adding questions 
• How to add questions to a quiz
  This shows how to add questions to your quiz once you have created it.

I hope you find these videos useful and enjoy making a start at using Moodle to create more engaging materials.

Best

Nik Peachey

Mobile Learning in ELT: Survey 2013

In 2010, after buying my first iPad I decided to do some research into how teachers were using mobile devices in their classrooms and their teaching. At this stage ‘smart’ phones were already starting to make an impact and tablet devices were just coming onto the market.  The research results from this first survey were published in the Guardian Online under the title ‘English language teachers connect to mobile learning’ http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/sep/14/teachers-mobile-learning and the complete results and report can be downloaded from: http://technogogy.org.uk/mobile_survey.pdf

I followed this research up in 2011 using the same survey questions in an attempt to see how things had advanced with the intervening period and the results from that survey were  published in May 2011 on the DELTA Publishing blog under the title ‘mLearing and ELT: Are We Mobile Ready?’ http://www.deltapublishing.co.uk/development/mlearing-and-elt-are-we-mobile-ready

One of the main observations from this survey was that many teachers were in fact ready and willing to embrace mobile learning and mobile devices, but that publishers seemed to be more reluctantly lagging behind.

Over the last 18 months since publishing the 2011 survey results, mobile learning seems to have made its way into the main stream of discourse surround the implementation of educational technology in our schools and universities, so I have decided once again, thanks to the support of the Bell Educational Services Teacher Training department,  to launch a more extensive survey building on the original one to try to discover the extent to which the ‘talk’ about mobile learning has had any genuine impact and realisation in our schools and classrooms over the past three to four years.

Whether you use technology, mobile learning or avoid it please find time to answer these 20 questions and share your ideas, opinions and reflections and I will once again publish the results for all to share.

• Mobile Learning in ELT 2013 Survey

Many thanks for your help and participation.

Related links:

• iPhone for Speaking Homework 
• iPad Apps for English Language Teachers
• Create Books for the iPad
• Getting Learning out of the Classroom with Augmented Reality  
•  Augmented Reality and Web 3.0
• Creating texting dialogues for students

Best


Nik Peachey

Two Contrasting Views of Educational Technology

I’d like to share a couple of videos with you that I have used recently in the courses I teach. I find these videos particularly interesting because they show such contrasting approaches to learning and in particular - for want of a better word - elearning.

This first one is from the early 1950’s and is about something called a ‘teaching machine’ which was created by behavioural psychologist B F Skinner.


As you see Skinner’s teaching machines, though not exactly iPads do look remarkably like  what we would recognise as computers. What’s also remarkable is the claims that he makes for them and the reasons why he believes they are effective are remarkably similar to those made by many producers of learning and especially language learning software today.

However, despite the extremely logical reasoning that Skinner expounds I’m sure if you were invited to sit down and use one of these machines for a period of time it wouldn’t hold your interest for very long and like me you probably watch those hard working children with a sense of pity.

Of course it’s easy to look at videos like this with the advantage of hindsight and with a shinny iPad sitting close by and wonder at how they could ever have believed these machines would be effective, but if we look closely at quite a lot of elearning being produced these days, it isn’t long before we realise how similar in many ways it is to the kind of learning materials used on Skinner’s teaching machines. Gapfills, Multiple Choice Questions, True false Questions, etc. but with some multimedia rolled in still seem to be the mainstay of much computer based instruction and even mobile apps, so I’m not surprised to find that many of the teachers who come onto the courses I teach want to know how to use and produce these kinds of materials and to be honest I can see that they do have their place, but I think we should be aiming to do so much more than that with the materials we produce.

Here’s the contrasting video that I like to use.


This clearly shows a completely different approach to the use of technology and for me a much more powerful one. It shifts the role of the computer from being a storage place for predefined information and transforms it into a conduit by which knowledge is shared and constructed through the interaction between people. I think this aspect of computer based learning is the one that most critics of educational technology most often fail to see, unfortunately it’s also this aspect and role of the computer that is most often feared and blocked by educational institutions around the globe, and ironically enough, by governments wishing to suppress the rights of their citizens.

These videos and the methods of education demonstrated within them also highlight some other important points.

In the first video knowledge is clearly seen as residing in the materials of the institution. The students have no part in the creation of the content nor do they have the chance to question the validity and accuracy of the content and the role of the students is simply to learn and remember the content.

They sit in rows obediently working hard with no communication between them and no discussion sharing or collaboration of what they learning.

The second of the videos is almost the opposite of this. The classroom and even the school has become almost unnecessary. The student creates and negotiates knowledge through interaction with multiple sources of information and using multiple channels of communication. The student acts independently and works autonomously much of the time.

In a time when critical thinking, creativity and the ability to evaluate and manage information have become so important, it’s clear to see which kind of student we should be creating within our schools and the way we design and apply out learning tasks and materials will be a key factor in this.

It’s true that the student in the second video isn’t a language student, and developing linguistic ability is about more than finding and applying knowledge, it also has to do with skills and the practice and development of those skills, but what better way to do this than from the kinds of authentic network building and knowledge building tasks that can help our students become life long learners of far more than language?

The final thing that strikes me about these two videos is how they reflect the kinds of societies that the system of education seeks to create. For me the first is a society of obedient unquestioning worker drones being spoon fed information that will enable them to fulfil their predefined roles. The second is a society in which individuals are encouraged to think, act and explore, to question and to create. I know which I would prefer to live in.

Related links

• How I use social media for my professional development 
• Online Teacher Development Works Best - 15 Reasons Why
• Developing your digital study skills
• Temporary Bookmarking
• 10 Teacher Development Task for Web 2.0 Tools
• Creating a personal homepage
• Social Networks and the Web 2.0 Revolution
• Create your own social network 7 steps
• A Tick List of 21st Century Digital Skills for Teachers 

Best

Nik Peachey