We see the constructivist pedagogy that animates Moodle as a way for students and teachers to become reflective about the way they learn and how their own vision of the world is constructed with the help of others. Online learning demands extra listening and articulation skills. We believe this extra effort may be the most essential element of any person's education. Further, we suspect that true communication, facilitated by e-learning, might be one of our best opportunities to dismantle cultural barriers. Supported by Moodlerooms, Moodle removes barriers to learning, and opens the way to attainment and equity of a new order.

Online and blended learning

Moodle courses can be designed as a 100% online experience or, alternately, your traditional classroom instruction can be supplemented to create blended learning environment. In a Moodle “room,” instructors create activities and give learners the time and virtual-space to collaborate and to provide thoughtful, detailed and un-compromised feedback. Moodle eliminates the idea of a “missed class” and if a participant misses a class, a Moodleroom can keep her in the loop. If an instructor needs to chat with a learner after hours, they can meet in an online chat room in Moodle, or carry on a discussion in a Moodle forum.

Create activities and sequence them

Moodle offers 12 standard learning activities, as well as a variety of resource options. A resource in Moodle might be an individual file (like MS PowerPoint or MS Word files), a movie, a sound file or a Web page that an instructor places in logical sequences. As the course progresses, these activities and resources can be altered, added, hidden, removed and re-sequenced. The activity might be a quiz on the Trojan War, or it might be a lesson on safety standards on a construction site. Activities can be automatically graded (like a multiple choice quiz), or require instructor feedback (like an essay due in history). Some activities are designed for instructors to interact with students and others focus on peer-to-peer interaction (like a forum discussion) or a class-constructed glossary or database.

Immediate instructor and learner feedback

Every time an instructor grades, rates or places a comment on submitted work, participants receive an email alert. This greatly reduces the lag time between submitting work and receiving instructor comments. If desired, learners can check their progress and scores at any time from within Moodle, as well as double check what assignments are on the horizon.

Calendars and reminders

A Moodle calendar integrates three levels of information: site events (assigned by the business or institution administrator), course events (assigned by the instructor) and personal calendar items (assigned by participants). In this way, a quick glance at the calendar will show participants what activities are pending in all of their Moodle courses.

Participant monitoring

Instructors using a Moodleroom can also view powerful log charts that indicate when participants visit the site, review resources, and then submit assignments. At a glance, an instructor can know who is missing work and send them an email reminder. Moodlerooms lets instructors focus on teaching, rather than shuffling paperwork or worrying about potential hardware or software issues.

Archive, transfer, translate and convert courses

Courses can be copied at any time and zipped into a simple archived file for safekeeping, and be used in any Moodle installation. An elementary teacher in Rochester, New York, can archive an interesting Moodle course and send it to a university in Brazil. To restore an archived course, simply upload it to Moodle and press the “restore” link. With Moodle, good ideas can be duplicated and shared. In fact, Blackboard courses can be converted to Moodle with only a few clicks. There is no need to re-create the course; simply place it into Moodle.

An agent of worldwide change and transformation

Given the fact that Moodle is freely distributed around the world and is being adopted and advocated at rapid rates by international communities like UNESCO, we sense that this is the time and tool that may change ways that schools, countries and cultures share and collaborate. For this reason, we have chosen to create a content-rich environment that gives more than it takes. We know our approach is different from the corporate tradition, but this difference inspires us every day to think about the seeds of good learning.