Moodle-izing Texas Online Professional Learning

Source: http://www.schoolestate.com/images/texas-flag.jpg

Do you have days where you feel like you came from a different planet???? I signed up for a Moodle account. I was hoping to begin creating some courses for the teachers in my district to take. Obviously I have not done something right...how to I become a "teacher" in Moodle. I thought Moodle was free, but now I am wondering if I have to pay someone to create
courses. HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :(

My response to her was as follows:

Moodle is a course management system that you install on a server. You design the courses for use with students, teachers, administrators, parents, whomever. Designing courses isn't brain surgery but it does take some time to get comfortable and to practice instructional design principles...what are you trying to accomplish?

There are some excellent tutorials out on the web, and I believe TCEA also offers a Moodle Tutorial type workshop. You can find a nice tutorial for Moodle online (look for Moodle Quick Starts in PDF) at:
http://wwwlb.aub.edu.lb/~acc/Workshops/TopicsPrerq/Moodle.htm

More stuff online at http://tinyurl.com/5bqzmh

Scott Floyd, Mike Gras, and I are presenting on some of this on Friday at TechForum 2008...see you there?

That was yesterday. Today, I had a fun conversation with some PBS folks.

In the email quoted above, someone shared the struggles she was encountering in developing courses in Moodle. The challenge isn't the course management system (e.g. Moodle) but rather, the process one follows to develop a course...instructional design is the challenge we all encounter! I really like this article because of the matrix that outlines core components.

I also encourage you to read this article at Education World on "How To Manage Your District's Learning Opportunities" on learning management systems as background info.

Earlier today, a colleague and I had a fun conversation with someone at PBS TeacherLine. As some of you may know, a few Texas districts have licensed courses from PBS TeacherLine (you can see the list of Ed-Tech specific courses here - http://snipurl.com/pbscourses).

One of the challenges, though, is that PBS TeacherLine's Desire2Learn--their course management system--isn't as easy to use and powerful as Moodle. What some districts in Texas are doing is taking the courses from PBS and re-creating them in Moodle. Why? A few benefits:

1. We have control over how the content is organized and can choose to add/drop components that aren't relevant to our population (gee, reminds me of my classroom teaching days).
2. We're comfortable with Moodle and that's what our folks are becoming comfortable with.
3. We can match up logins/passwords to Active Directory, which makes account management less of a headache.
4. Re-authoring the course in Moodle enables us to quickly build on the PBS Model rather than have to start from scratch.
   

We've done that with one of the courses, and have a few more in progress (PBS TeacherLine has hired someone to do this work since we're busy facilitating courses).

Re-authoring content involves:

• Approximately 3-4 hours, if not a day, to transition a 6 week course from PBS Desire2Learn to Moodle course format.
  
• Once the course is in Moodle format, it can be backed up and shared with others. You can use it as a template for new, derivative courses.
  
• A district who licenses the courses from PBS TeacherLine could then drop the course--in Moodle format--onto their own server and then use it as they needed to. Moodle makes it easy to hide/display different parts of the content, so it would be pretty easy to adapt the course to match a district's timeline.
  

Someone recently asked me, "Can Moodle (a course management system) replace a learning management system (e.g. Eduphoria's Workshop tracking tool or Alchemy Systems' Avatar/Course Insite)?" When you understand what a learning management system actually does, the answer is (IMHO) NO, it cannot (if you think it can, please tell me why and how...love to read that). Part of my response to that question follows:

So, unfortunately, Moodle won't provide the kind of reporting that a learning management system will. While you can host content in Moodle--as we do in SAISD--you will lack a good tracking system. We schedule folks through our learning management system and that is where they print certificates or a transcript of workshops, offer workshop evaluation feedback, etc. Moodle just isn't a learning management system like avatar is designed to be.

Ah well. Thanks for letting me share this. Love your thoughts on how this will all shape up!

---

Subscribe to Around the Corner-MGuhlin.net