Moodle
Moodle is a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) which makes it easy for you to provide online support for your course. Providing a central space on the web where students and staff can access a set of tools and resources anytime anywhere.
An easy way to communicate with students and staff wherever they are:
The news forum automatically emails messages to all learners and staff on the course. Forums can also be used to answer commonly asked questions – and prevent repeats, to provide a space for an informal peer-to-peer student discussion or even online tutorials.
A quick way to share documents:
Moodle provides a place where you can easily create web pages with information about your course and provide links to word documents, slides, and other resources that your learners will want to access.
Easy access to relevant and useful online resources:
You provide a wealth of materials and resources, but catering to so many different types of learners can be hard for learners to find those that are most relevant to them. You can use your Moodle to provide links directly to the resources that will be most useful for your learners whether e-library resources, skills courses, or social information.
Online assignment handling:
When your learners and staff are not close, assignment handling can save time and effort for everyone involved – whether it is just used for learner submission with marking done on paper or the whole process is moved online saving time, postage and paper.
Other advantages –
- Save time and money – making resources available online can save time and money in photocopying
- Control access to different areas – can make a space for dispersed tutors to communicate with each other as well as learners
- Use less paper – keep a central copy online so everyone can find the latest version of a course handbook etc. provide handouts online and learners only print out what they really need
- Designed to encourage collaborative learning – Moodle makes it easy to model a tutorial system online if you want to use it with globally distributed learners
- Easy to experiment with new ideas and tools – a low risk way to incorporate new tools and ideas into your teaching
- Manage your materials – if all your course information is on Moodle it is easy to access this year after year
Other features and tools:
- Course calendar – use this to flag important events to everyone on your course
- Profiles and contact information – help learners and staff get to know each other at the start of the course, also hold information about course team and learners in one place
- Deliver content – post up slides etc.
- Video and audio – many academics find it easy to record lectures as podcasts or even arrange for videos of lectures or special events – posting these online and making it available to learners is straight forward with Moodle
- Group tools for learners – there are many tools that learners can use for collaboration with each other e.g. forums, wiki and chat