Item: Moodle
Rating: 9
Author: Darin Nolan

Overall Satisfaction with Moodle

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I am using Moodle in the Bellingham School District to teach a high school Health Education course. This class has been taught as a blended model and asynchronous during the regular school year. I also use Moodle to teach a summer school Health Education course. Other teachers in the school district use Moodle to supplement their courses.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Moodle is very intuitive for the e-learner. Students have found it easy to access course material.
Adding assignments and resources is very easy in Moodle. The updated version of Moodle allows the instructor to 'drag and drop' files into the course.
There is an integrated gradebook in Moodle which allows the instructor to monitor student progress.

Cons

The gradebook in Moodle is not as functional as I would like to see. Students sometimes find it difficult to monitor their grades in the Moodle gradebook.
There are upload file size limits that should be increased to allow students to upload larger documents/projects.
I would like to see more options for designing pages in Moodle.

Return on Investment

The Moodle online Health Education course has allowed high school students to earn credit outside of the classroom and be able to focus on other courses during their regular school day.
The Moodle course has been especially beneficial to students who are involved in "Running Start" at the college and need to earn their high school Health Education credit.

Alternatives Considered

e-College,Angel

The Bellingham School District owns a license for the Moodle learning management system. Therefore, this was my only option when I first created my online Health Education course. Over the past few years as I have gone through several version upgrades to Moodle, I am more and more impressed with the functionality of using Moodle. I have experience working with e-College courses and also Angel. I find Moodle to be easier to manage overall.

Likelihood to Renew

I'm excited to see the continual changes that have been happening with Moodle. The company is continually working to make the learning management system more 'user friendly.' My goal is to get more teachers in the Bellingham School District to create a stand alone course in Moodle or use Moodle as a supplement to their course in a blended model.

Likelihood to Recommend

I have found Moodle to be very easy to add/delete content. With the addition of being able to 'drag and drop' files, makes it very easy to update units. If a teacher wants to have a course that is setup linear on the page, Moodle is the way to go. Everything is right there in front of the student to see in the course on the main page. There is a lot of flexibility in the types of assignments and/or resources you want to share with your students.

Comments

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