Education Reform by Opensource.com on Flickr_zHere within LTI and in the wider learning technology community there has been a longstanding debate on how to make more of Moodle and ensure that it is used to it’s full potential as a learning tool.  In an ideal world the VLE(1), in our case Moodle, plays an essential part in the learning process, allowing students to go at their own pace through material, test their understanding of key concepts or theories, work with others to develop and produce content, gain feedback on their progress and build a learning community.  Online course features should interweave with face to face teaching, link to the course learning outcomes and follow a clear sequence of activities which build on each other and are referred to in lectures and classes.  That is how it could be used, but how is it currently used at LSE and what can we do to improve things?

In these three blog posts I have explored the issue of how we can make more of Moodle.  These short Musings on Moodle are grouped under the three themes of standardisation, layout and design and embedding Moodle activities into face to face teaching. 

Part 1 – the standardisation or baseline debate

Part 2 – layout and design

Part 3 – embedding Moodle activities into face to face teaching

 

(1) Virtual learning environments (VLE’s) are online interactive platforms that are designed to support educational courses, by providing a consistent way for staff and students to store and access resources and tools.  These online learning spaces allow teachers and students flexible access to material and provide ways of communicating and assessing collaboratively and individually.  Here at LSE we use Moodle as our VLE with the aim that it will support ‘blended learning’, (a combination of online and face to face learning).