Posts belonging to Category Moodle

Now learners control their VLE/LMS

Much of the criticism levelled at virtual learning environments / learning management systems relates to the control of the environment by the institution rather than the learner. The individual student has minimal ability to upload their own content or to set up collaborative tools unless this has been pre-ordained by the institution. The [...]

Moodle 1.9 Multimedia by João Pedro Soares Fernandes – a book review

£27.99 / $44.99 Packt Publishing A sample chapter is available.
I was recently sent a copy of this book for review. First published in May 2009, Moodle 1.9 Multimedia is one of a series on the popular learning management system / virtual learning environment published by Packt which includes titles on Moodle administration and [...]

Principles for future VLE/LMS development

A group of us met earlier in the year from my office and from Learning and Teaching Solutions at the Open University to discuss some of our ideas around the future development of our Moodle-based VLE/LMS. Out of this discussion emerge, I think, some principles which could be taken into account when looking at new [...]

Tricking students into learning

At the Cottenham event last week there was a talk by Andrew Field who achieved the most amazing level of audience engagement I’ve seen in years. His philosophy is to trick students into learning by getting them to play online games, improving their minds in the process without even realising it’s happening.
Field certainly achieved [...]

An institutional VLE/LMS for €10 a month? You cannot be serious.

Dan Leighton was waxing lyrical about the benefits of elearning this morning at a Moodle event for schools near Cambridge. He finds it particularly useful for seeing when his pupils have uploaded assignments.
He demonstrated a neat use of Jing to record his voice and his mouse clicks while producing feedback for students on spreadsheet [...]

Are open source VLEs/LMSs taking off in UK universities?

Blackboard has the lion’s share of the US higher education LMS market but how’s it faring in the UK? Further education colleges are switching to Moodle in droves as I noted recently. But changing your VLE can be a massive project for a large university, involving the migration of huge amounts of content [...]

Dancing with the devil: a view from Blackboard’s European conference

In the heart of downtown post-industrial Manchester, currently basking in sweltering Mediterranean temperatures, Blackboard is hosting its European Conference, BbWorld Europe ‘08.
Michael Feldstein has described the attack on Blackboard’s market share from Moodle. Whether this has anything to do with the negative publicity surrounding Blackboard’s patents, reported on extensively by Stephen Downes and Jim [...]

59% of UK colleges now using Moodle

Rob Englebright reports recently on the JISCmail VLE List about an unoffical wiki-based survey of VLE usage in UK colleges. Of 156 colleges it’s now Moodle 59%, Blackboard 28%. The detailed breakdown is:
Moodle 93 including 4 using moodle in combination with Sharepoint (and in one instance Moodle, Sharepoint and Pebblepad)
Blackboard 43 including 2 [...]

Latest version of VLE released at Open University

Our latest incarnation of Moodle was released this morning. New functionality includes:

Audio resources pages – enabling audio files traditionally distributed on CD/DVDs to be made available as mp3 files for download
New blog module – we found the existing Moodle blog too restrictive so have had a new system developed – this allows the setting [...]

Open University selects Elluminate for desktop conferencing

A press release yesterday announces the selection of Elluminate for our synchronous desktop collaboration and communication requirements. This comes after a lengthy procurement process in which 14 vendors submitted tenders. Elluminate scored the highest on our educational and technical criteria. Our evaluation team think the product is particularly well-suited for distance education and [...]