After attending last week’s “Instructional Technologists at Liberal Arts Colleges” NITLE workshop, Jon B. and Joe B. turned right around and flew to Tacoma, WA to attend NITLE’s Moodle Community Meeting. Our hopes were high after the first workshop and the Moodle group did not disappoint. There are a some excellent changes coming down the pipe in Moodle, like an improved gradebook (woohoo!) and some better administrative tools. Moodle 1.9 looks to be a very solid upgrade from our current installation of 1.7. As with most Moodle upgrades, the interface stays the same for the user, but some of the features are improved or new features are added. Those using 1.9 already have very positive things to say about it.
There is a growing development and support community for Moodle. There were a number of great ideas suggested to further grow and develop this community, so that our schools may reap the benefits. One of these ideas was the “Moodle Museum” begun by Lafayette College. The museum incorporates screenshots of specific Moodle functions in use with 2-3 paragraph writeups from faculty members who are using these features in class. The idea is to have faculty members show faculty members what they like and don’t like, what works and what doesn’t. Suggestions were made to add a rating system and comments for each example, and the team at Lafayette already had some ideas on how to implement this. If you use Woodle in your teaching at the College of Wooster and have found a feature that you really liked, please contact Jon or Joe and we’ll help you get the screenshot you need to contribute to the Moodle Museum. It’s sure to be a great resource for teachers and technologists alike, and I look forward to growing its pages with successful practices from faculty using Moodle. I will post a link to the museum once it becomes available and we’ll of course also add it to Moodles help links.
In addition to the support planning we saw a lot of great examples of Moodle in action and some great inspiration on support and collaboration practices for our campus. It’s a great program and getting better all of the time. The community is working very hard on fixes and upgrades and it shows.
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