Many of our knowmates ask: What's Moodle? The simplest way of describing it is that it is our environment. Moodle is the open source learning management system that houses all of our courses, our content and our discussions.
Moodle http://moodle.org has gained an international reputation as a stable and feature rich environment.Most importantly, the Moodle open source community is well established, with an active and growing membership of over 1200 registered sites in over 75 countries.
Canada has approximately 46 active sites, of which 17 are operating in British Columbia
Rooted in Constructivism, the design of Moodle supports course and activity development that focuses on creating learning experiences, rather than just publishing and assessing the information that instructors think students need to know.
MOODLE FEATURES
The word Moodle is an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. Moodle is open source software, which means you are free to download it, install it and even distribute it (under the terms of the GNU Public Licence (GPL). Moodle runs without modification on Unix, Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Netware and any other system that supports PHP, including most webhost providers. Data is stored in a single database: mySQL and Postressql, but it can also be used with Oracle, Access, Interbase, ODBC and others
The design of Moodle is rooted in social constructivist pedagogy, which emphasizes interaction between students and the use of student-generated content as a learning resource. Moodle supports a wide variety of traditional and innovative online delivery philosophies. However, it offers particular strength in course and activity development that focuses on creating learning experiences, rather than just publishing and conducting assessment based on the information that instructors think students need to know.
Moodle is available in 34 languages and features include (but are not limited to):
Support for the creation of learning communites
- Personalized identity
- Flexible control over registration options for invited guests,
- cross-course/institution collaboration, etc.
Participatory involvement in design and content creation
- Teacher forum to promote dialogue around development and pedagogical issues
- Options to retain student contributions in course backup and restore
- Packaging of courses for reuse and sharing
- Ability to store, manage, and annotate course content independent from decisions about how to incorporate them into course design
Multiple layers of help and support
- Embedded contextual help, including steps and suggestions for use
- Both Institution-wide and course-specific
- FAQ, glossary, resource, and communication tools :
- Access to administrator support contracts
Rich Communication Tools
- Private dialogues
- Personal reflection journals
- Chat
- Variety of formats and access privileges for asynchronous discussions
- Option for email notification of posts
- Integrated feedback/rating options for posts
Several possibilities for assessment and evaluation
- Recording of grades with customized scales
- Options to grade any type of activity
- Quiz tool allowing choices and combinations of quiz types
- Survey tool
- User logging and tracking
Flexible Customization
- Site branding and themes
- Course organization according to pedagogical approach (topical/project-based, weekly units, etc)