Question from Quora.com: Is there an advertising system as an addition to Moodle (learning management system)?

I just answered a question on quora.com about placing ads in a Moodle site. The question was:

"Is there an advertising system as an addition to Moodle (learning management system)? I mean, that show students the advertisement by his year of study."

My answer is copied below:

I don't know of any Moodle plugins that are dedicated to serving advertisements. However, Moodle does allow you to add an HTML block to the sidebar of any course. That HTML block can contain almost any HTML code you want; including something like Google ads.

One way to target those ads to students who meet specific criteria, is to add the HTML blocks to categories of courses. For example, suppose you have a category or courses for first-year students. You can add an HTML block containing an ad suitable for first-year students, to that category. Now every course in that category will display the ad.

More information from the Moodle site: Block settings - MoodleDocs. Notice that there's a bug in Moodle right now, where this doesn't work on sites that have been upgraded. So you'll want to do this on a fresh Moodle installation: Moodle Bug 31616.

10 Brain-Based Learning Laws

I am especially interested in taking teaching techniques that work in the classroom, and adapting them for online teaching. My book Moodle Teaching Techniques began as a long list of classroom teaching techniques that worked for me. I chose techniques from that list, and show the reader how to apply them online.

Jeff Hurt's blog entry, 10 Brain-Based Learning Laws That Trump Traditional Education, suggests 10 research-based principles for effective teaching. His article is intended for classroom teachers and presenters. These principles, or laws of learning, can be accomplished online with some specific techniques. So just like we can take traditional teaching techniques and adapt them for online teaching, we can take the latest research-based teaching principles and apply them online using specific techniques.

Let's look at one of these brain-based laws of learning, and figure out how we can apply it online. 

Law 2: Emotions trumps facts.

Hurt writes that, "Neuroscience has proven that everything the brain learns is filtered through emotions. There are no exceptions. How we use emotion to aide learning determines learning’s success."

To apply this law, we should bring the emotion to class early. Get the student into the desired emotional state first, and then start teaching the student. We can bring an emotional component to our online classes in several ways.

Consider putting an emotional, motivational video into the introduction of your course. For example you could begin a course about the oceans with the traditional course description and list of learing objectives. Or, you could begin it with a fun video:

In 1992, a freighter hit a storm in the Pacific Ocean sending two containers packed with 29,000 plastic ducks overboard. Dr Iain Stewart tells the story of how the mighty ocean currents sent them on an epic journey to the four corners of the Earth.

Then, you can state the learning objectives in terms that refer back to this video. For example, instead of saying,

We will learn to identify the major ocean currents, and how they organize themselves into gyres.

we could say:

We will learn about the major ocean currents that probably carried the rubber ducks on their journey, and how the gyres formed by the currents could take the ducks on an endless cicular journey.

Because we are not there to set the emotional tone for our online class, we need to use a proxy to set the tone. Video and audio can set the emotional stage for us.

In future posts, I'll talk about how we can apply some more of Hurt's ten brain-based learning laws.

As always, I welcome your comments! 

Should you serve videos directly from Moodle, or use a video sharing service like Limelight or Vimeo?

In the LinkedIn group "Moodlers Online," one member posted a question about the best way to share videos in Moodle courses. This is a frequent question. So I'd like to repost the question, and my response, here.

I've paraphrased the question below:

I am creating a Moodle site where all of the training is either WebEx, swf or .wmv based. It will have hundreds of training videos. Would it be better to upload the files to a video repository service such as Limelight or Vimeo, or just upload to Moodle? What are the pros and cons of each approach? I am worried about the slow loading of videos if they are stored and served by Moodle, and about the ability of Moodle to adapt to a user's slow internet connection.

And my answer:

You appear to be caught between two conflicting technical requirements for this. One the one hand, your users would get the best performance if you host the videos and a dedicated video streaming service and link to them from within Moodle. On the other hand, you need to lock down these videos to prevent anyone with the link from accessing them on the video sharing site. There is a relatively easy, technical solution.

The service that you referred to, Limelight, has an optional feature called "Media Vault." It will prevent your students from sharing the URL to a video. See http://www.limelight.com/content-Delivery-security/. Vimeo.com, another video sharing site, has a similar feature for their Pro account. You can embed videos that you've uploaded to Vimeo directly on a Moodle page, and configure the video so it plays only from that Moodle page (only from that URL).

Moodle is a great learning management system, but it's not a streaming media delivery application. I suggest you upload the videos to a video delivery service like Limelight or Vimeo, embed the videos to keep your users inside Moodle, and use content security to prevent them from being played outside of Moodle.

Hope this was helpful, and good luck with your project!

(cross posted in the blog of my new site at http://www.williamrice.com/blog)

Discounts on Moodle Books from Packt Publishing

Packt Publishing is celebrating the recent publication of thire Moodle 2 Administration book, with discounts on all of their Moodle books.

• Buy any Moodle print book and get 20% off.
• Buy any Moodle eBook and get 30% off.

Good only until the end of December. See more at http://www.packtpub.com/news/moodle-festive-month.

Articulate versus Captivate

If you do a web search on "articulate versus captivate," you will find a lot of opinions about how the two programs compare. One of my clients asked me about the merits of Articulate versus Captivate. The answer that I gave him is copied below. I hope it offers a different perspective for you when deciding between Articulate and Captivate.

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Ah yes, the great Articulate versus Captivate debate. Ford versus Chevy, Coke versus Pepsi, Yankees versus Mets...I'm kidding about that last one. The Yankees are, after all, a professional sports team.

First, I would recommend they get the 30-day trial before purchasing. It's fully functional and free.

Both Articulate and Captivate will read in a PowerPoint and then enable you to add interactions, audio, and quizzes to the presentation. Then, they enable you to export the resulting activity as a Flash file.

Articulate makes it a little easier to start with PowerPoint. I think it brings in more of PowerPoint's advanced features, such as custom animations. However, the other things that you can do in Articulate are a little more limited. That's because Articulate's raison d'etre is to take a Powerpoint slide deck from a subject matter expert and enable the e-learning specialist to turn it into an online activity.

Captivate lets you add more features. It also enables you to take screen shots and full motion video of your screen and add it. Captivate just does more. And, it's more popular among e-learning specialists.

If your client is starting with a subject matter expert who knows just basic Powerpoint, then either tool will do. If the SME knows advanced PowerPoint, and will supply them with a slide deck that has advanced features like custom animations and timing and embedded files, then go with Articulate because it interfaces better with PowerPoint's advanced features. If your client wants to be able to create e-learning without PowerPoint, and start right from within the tool, then try Captivate.

Answered Question on Linkedin.com: Instructional Design standards for online learning? Ideally specific and measurable that can be used in contracts with vendors.?

This question was posted to theInstructional Design & E-Learning Professionals' Group:

Does anyone out there have any useful resources to share around ID standards for online learning? Ideally specific and measurable that can be used in contracts with vendors.

I have used the standards posted by the Open ECBCheck. Open ECBCheck is "a new accreditation and quality improvement scheme for E-Learning programmes and institutions in international Capacity Building." Their members focus on a specific subject (international capacity building), however, their e-learning standards can be applied to any e-learning program.

I download the standards from http://www.ecb-check.org/2011-06-15-07-04-37/guidelines. They publish them as a pdf and Excel file. In the Excel file, I find the most useful section to be the tab labeled "Quality Toolkit." That tab has a list of specific, measurable criteria that you can use to judge the quality of your e-learning program. For example: "Does the navigation allow learners to always understand their position within the programme?"





Not all the standards in the Quality Toolkit will apply to all online learning programs. I copy and paste the standards that apply to the job into the contract for that job. This is a section of the contract that I label "Course Standards."


The Course Standards section also includes subsections for things like: the file formats of the material developed for the course, voice and tense of the speaker, the skin to be used when generating files from Articulate of Captivate, and the source(s) of the graphics used in the course.

The quality standards supplied by Open ECBCheck have made a good starting point for the course standards in my projects. Post your favorite resources for quality standards in the comments below. Or,

The Fastest Way to Create a Course Review in Moodle

Students who read a passage, then took  a test asking them to recall what they read, retain about 50 percent more of the information a week later than students who used two other methods to study the material. That research was published in the journal Science.

Fortunately, Moodle makes it easy to create a quiz that you can use for review purposes. A Review Quiz in Moodle will enable you to re-use a log of the work that you do while creating the course, and, increase your students’ retention of the material. The keys to successfully creating a Review Quiz in Moodle are:

• using feedback in your quiz questions.


• creating a separate category of questions for each topic in your course.


• creating one-page review for each topic in your course.

First, let’s look at the feedback for Moodle questions.

Feedback in Moodle Quiz Questions

In a previous post, I wrote about the various kinds of feedback that you can create in a Moodle quiz. I wrote about how to use feedback that is display when:

• the student selects a specific answer.


• the question is completed, no matter what the student’s answer.


• the student achieves a specific score on the quiz.


• the quiz is completed, no matter what the student’s score.

These four types of feedback give you the ability to make a Moodle quiz into a teaching tool. Instead of using a quiz to just test the student, you can use it to teach.

If you create quiz questions for every topic in your course then you can use a fast, easy method to create a course review. This method assumes that each question in your course includes feedback to teach the student why (s)he is right or wrong, and to help the student remember the correct answer.

Creating a Review Quiz in Moodle

With this method, you will use four phases to create a review quiz:

• Create a category of quiz questions for each topic.


• Create a quiz for each topic.


• Create a one-page review for each topic.


• Assemble the one-page reviews and questions into a review quiz.

Let’s step through each phase below.

First: Create a category of quiz questions for each topic

Here’s how to prepare your questions for a review quiz:

• For each topic, create a category of quiz questions.


• For each of the categories that you just created, create several quiz questions. Now, you have several quiz questions for each topic.


• For every answer in each question, create feedback that teaches them why that answer is right or wrong. Now, every answer of every question is a teaching tool.


• For every question, create general feedback that explains why that question is relevant. Now, no matter which answer the student selected, (s)he will learn where that question fits into the bug picture.


• Make sure that each quiz question can stand alone. Do not refer to or depend upon any other questions.

Now your question bank for the course looks like this:

Topic 1 Questions

Question 1

Question 2

General Question Feedback: “This question relates to the concept of…”

Answer A

Answer Feedback: “This answer is correct because…”

Answer B

Answer Feedback: “This answer is incorrect because... The correct answer is…”

Answer C

Answer Feedback: “This answer is incorrect because... The correct answer is…

Question 3

Topic 2 Questions

Topic 3 Questions

Now every answer, and every question, is a teaching tool. And, every question can stand on its own. You are ready to create a quiz for each topic.

Second: Create a quiz for each topic

For each topic, create a quiz. You can make the quiz appear in the gradebook, or, make a practice quiz that doesn’t affect the student’s final grade.

Third: Create a one-page review for each topic

For each topic in the course, create a one-page review. This can be a simple bulleted list of key points, an infogram, a video, or any other technique. Keep the review short enough so that it can be read, viewed, or listened to in a few minutes.

Fourth: Assemble the one-page reviews and questions into a review quiz

Finally, you are ready to create the review quiz. In the review quiz, you will assemble the one-page reviews and teaching questions.        Â

• Create a quiz, and add instructions that look like this:

This quiz is practice for the final quiz. Your grade for this quiz will not be used to calculate your final grade.

This quiz will present one page of bullet points for each topic that we covered. These bullet points are reminders of what you studied in the topic.

Then, the quiz will present some random questions from that topic's quiz. Do your best on these questions. Feel free to refer back to the topic's presentation while attempting the questions. As before, the questions will give you feedback if you answer incorrectly.

The reminders before the questions, and feedback after the questions, are designed to help you learn the material.

You can attempt this practice quiz as many times as you like. When you're ready, proceed to the final quiz.

There are two things that make creating a review quiz in Moodle easy. Moodle enables you to add Descriptions to a quiz, and to add manual page breaks.

In a Moodle quiz, a Description is just a question that consists of nothing but a Web page. You can put anything into a Description that you can put on a normal Web page. The student doesn’t need to answer anything, and the Description doesn’t get scored. Usually, you use a Description to explain a section of the quiz. In this case, you will use the Description to display the one-page summary of the topic.

• Add a Description to the quiz, and name it something like “Topic 1 Review Page.” Then add the one-page review for the topic to the Description.


• After the Review Page, add a page break.


• After the page break, add several random questions from the topic. To do this, you will select the topic’s question category, and then instruct Moodle to add a certain number of random questions from that category.


• After the random questions, add a page break.


• Repeat steps 2 through 5 until you have a Review Page and random questions for each topic in your course.

Congratulations! You’ve created a review test for your course. Because you re-used questions from your previous quizzes, you made efficient use of your work. Because you alternated a brief review of a topic with questions about that topic, you used the learning principle of Immediate Feedback to improve retention.

Developing an Online Course in Moodle as Quickly as Possible

I had a reader send me a question about how to estimate the time it will take to develop a course in Moodle. I'd like to share her question and my answer with you. As always, your comments and experiences are welcome.

Her Question:

I am just about to embark on my masters dissertation project, and am looking a web-based tutorials for teaching. At the moment I’m considering putting together a tutorial as part of the project using moodle (I have copies of your books in front of me now).

One question I cannot seem to find an answer to, is realistically how long would it take for me to construct something like this? I have seen reports stating that construction of online courses can take up to 18 months, but I think these were from scratch as opposed to using a software programme such as moodle. I am fairly Internet literate, and have created basic webpages before, but have never done anything like construct my own online course.

I am studying via distance learning and also have a full-time job. I have between now and June/July to work on my project (including analysis and user-testing, etc) – do you think this is something which I can realistically achieve in this kind of time frame?

My Answer:

In my experience, the old methods of determining how long it takes to develop courseware were never very accurate. With the variety of tools available to us today, the many different situations, and the many different expectations from learners and stakeholders, those old recommendations are even more inaccurate.

I no longer ask, "How long will this take me to develop?" Instead I ask, "How long before the client needs it?" And then I determine what I can do between now and then. It sounds to me like you have a few hours a week to spend on developing an online course, between now and June. That's not much time. So instead of dwelling upon how long it will take, let's talk about how to maximize your output in the time that you do have.

First, try to get out of installing Moodle yourself. If you can use an outside hosting service, find one that has a one-click install for Moodle. If you must use your organization's web server, try to get the web admin to install it for you. When Moodle installs without trouble, the installation goes quickly. When it gives trouble, you can spend hours tracking down the problem. If you pay a few dollars a month for a hosting service that will install Moodle for you, I advise it.

Second, resolve to stay within Moodle's built-in capabilities. Some of the add-on modules add great functionality. But for a project working against time constaints, I advise you stick with Moodle's built-in functionality and not get bogged down in trying to get add-ons to work.

Third, make as much use of existing material as possible. As a librarian, I'm sure you can locate web pages that you can use as course material. I think there's nothing wrong with a course whose learning material consists entirely of links to external web pages, video, and audio. For example, if I was teaching a course on public speaking, I might link to a funny Youtube video of public speaking bloopers, tips from Toastmasters, and famous speeches. Creating your own multimedia takes especially long, so I would search Creative Commons for media I could use in my course.

Fourth, I would try to use Moodle's built-in Web page editor (Web page Resource) to write a short description of each resource that I link to, and what I want the students to pay attention to while viewing it, and what I'd like them to get out of it. To ensure that they read this before going to the resource, I would put the link to the resource on this web page instead of on the course's home page. Then, the students would need to go through the web page that I write before clicking through to the external web page/video/audio.

Fifth, I would follow up each reading/viewing/listening resource with an activity created in Moodle. For example, I might ask the students to:

1. contribute to an online discussion, and to rate other students' postings in that forum. (Forum activity)


2. take a short quiz on the material (Quiz module)


3. write a summary of the material and upload it (Assignment activity)


4. record a snippet of speech and upload it (Assignment or Workshop activities).

Sixth, I would use outside services for things that Moodle doesn't handle, or that it handles only with plug-ins. For example, after the students have completed viewing the resources and doing the follow-up activities, just before an exam, I might schedule a summary lecture with WebEx or GoToMeeting. The lecture could include a slide show of the material that will be on the final exam, whiteboarding, and chat. If possible, I would record the session and offer it to the students as a download.

Seventh, I would offer an online exam open only at a given time, to ensure that students don't take the exam and pass along the answers.

That would be my model for rapid development of an online course. And if I could, I would choose a topic for that course based upon the amount of good material freely available online.

How to Install Moodle on GoDaddy Hosting

UPDATE 2012-02-25: For the most recent information about installing Moodle 2.4+ on GoDaddy, see this discussion at moodle.org: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=222941

I recently concluded an email exchange with someone who was very frustrated trying to install Moodle on their GoDaddy.com host. My first recommendation was, "If you can get your money back, switch to DreamHost.com or BlueHost.com and use their one-click installer instead." But he decided to see it through, and a dozen or so emails later we got his Moodle site up and running. In case you're using GoDaddy to host your Moodle site, let me post the instructions for installing Moodle on GoDaddy here.

First, create your MySQL database.

1. Go to godaddy.com and log in with your account number and password using the form on the right-hand side.
2. Once logged in, click the link My Account that appears where the form was.
3. In the Hosting & Servers drop-down, choose My Hosting Account.
4. Under Control Panel for the domain you wish to create a database on, click Open.
5. When your Hosting Manager window opens, and assuming Godaddy have put you on the right account package, under the Databases title click MySQL.
6. Click the CREATE NEW DATABASE button. GoDaddy is different from most hosts. It will ask you to enter a description, username and password. Note that you do not enter a name for the database. Instead, the username also becomes the name of the database. Make a note of the username and password.
   
   Add the name of your domain to the beginning of the username, such as williamrice_moodle. This ensures the name of the database is unique.
7. Determine the host name by clicking on the pencil icon. It probably isn't "localhost." So click the pencil and note the name of the server.

Second, download the latest Moodle zip file

Go to http://download.moodle.org/, and download the latest stable version of Moodle to your PC. Choose the .zip file.

Third, upload the Moodle zip file to your root directory.

The preferred way to upload files to your hosting account is using an FTP client. GoDaddy has documentation on how to set up your FTP client. You can also upload files using a Web-based interface. Since we're going to upload just one file, the Moodle zip file, here are directions for uploading it using the Web based FTP. The text was copied from GoDaddy's support documentation:

1. Log in to your Account Manager.
2. Under the My Products section, select Hosting Account List.
3. Next to the hosting account you want to use, click Open. The Hosting Control Center opens.
4. Under the Content section of the Hosting Control Center, click the FTP Client icon.
5. If a security certificate window displays, click Yes or Trust to accept the certificate and open the FTP program.
6. In the Local System section, go to the location on your computer where you saved the Moodle zip file and select your file.
7. Click the >> arrows to upload the file to your hosting account.

Fourth, unzip the Moodle package on your site

1. Log in to your Account Manager.
2. Under the My Products section, select Hosting Account List.
3. Next to the hosting account you want to use, click Open. The Hosting Control Center opens.
4. Under the Content section of the Hosting Control Center, click the File Manager icon.
5. Assuming you have uploaded moodle.zip to the root, select it by using the check box on the left, then click on Unarchive at the top. In the resulting window, leave Select Destination as your root and don't select Overwrite Existing Files. The File Manager will unzip the files.
6. You should now see a folder called moodle in the root. Click on it to make sure that it contains all the moodle sub-folders.
7. Go back to the root directory and select the moodle folder again by checking the check box on the left.
8. Click on Permissions at the top.
9. In the resulting window, set these permissions for the moodle folder:
   Inherit = unchecked
   Read = checked
   Write = checked
   Reset all children to inherit (All subdirectories will be reset to inherit from current directory) = checked
10. Click OK. The File Manager will set the folder permissions for moodle and all its sub-folders.

Fifth: Create a Moodle data directory

If you've followed the directions above, you should be in the File Manager, at the root of your site. There is a /moodle directory with Moodle unzipped into it. Now, create another directory for the Moodle data. For example, /moodledata.

1. Click the New Directory button.
2. Enter the name of the new directory, such as moodledata.
3. Click OK.
4. Select the moodledata folder by checking the check box on the left.
5. Click on Permissions at the top.
6. In the resulting window, set these permissions for the folder:
   Inherit = unchecked
   Read = checked
   Write = checked
   Reset all children to inherit (All subdirectories will be reset to inherit from current directory) = checked
7. Click OK. The File Manager will set the folder permissions for moodledata.

Sixth: Step through the Moodle setup process

Open a new browser, and to the web address of your new Moodle installation. For example, http://www.williamrice.com/moodle. The setup process will start. Most of it is self-explanatory, but if you want instructions, try the guide at http://www.installationwiki.org/Moodle. That page contains the installation chapter from my book, Moodle E-Learning Development. When the book is updated, the publisher will also update that page.

These instructions should get you through installing Moodle if you've chosen GoDaddy.com as your host. If you have any questions, please contact me via the email address in my profile. Wherever you choose to host, happy Moodling!

Using different kinds of feedback in a Moodle quiz

Moodle quizzes enable you to create different kinds of feedback. Let's define the different types of feedback, and then, let me suggest some best uses for each kind.

Types of Moodle Quiz Feedback

Different Feedback for Each Answer

You can have feedback for each of the answers in a question, so if the student selects answer "A" the feedback is different than if the student selected answer "B." Let's call this kind of feedback "choice specific," because it changes with each answer that the student chooses.

Different Feedback for Right and Wrong Answers

A less specific type of feedback is using one feedback message for the correct answer to a question, and another for all of the wrong answers to the question. Let's call this type of feedback "right/wrong," because the feedback changes according to whether the student got the answer right or wrong.

General Question Feedback

General question feedback gives the student the same feedback no matter what answer they chose.

Different Feedback for Different Quiz Scores

You can also have feedback based on the student's score for the quiz. For example, if the student scored greater than 90 percent, the feedback might congratulate the student on a great score. Let's call this "overall feedback," since that's the term Moodle uses.

Uses for Moodle Quiz Feedback

Best uses for different types of feedback in Moodle quizzes.

Type of feedback	Usage
choice specific and right/wrong	For right answers, tell why that choice is correct, in case the student selected the correct answer by guessing. For each wrong answer, there's a reason the student would think that it is correct. In the feedback for that choice, I address that specific reason. For example, take the question "Which is the smallest planet?" If the student selects "Pluto," then my feedback will state something like "A few years ago, your answer would have been correct. Pluto was considered the smallest planet, until it was downgraded to a pluton. Now Uranus is the smallest planet." The challenge for me is in creating feedback that addresses the probable reason the student chose that answer, without assuming that reason. If I can't do that, then I fall back on just using that same feedback for all wrong answers.
general question feedback	Give students background about the knownledge the question was testing. Or give a link to more information about the knowledge that was tested.
overall feedback	Whole-quiz feedback is difficult for me to make meaningful. If I want to tell the student anything more than, "You passed with flying colors," the quiz needs to be very very focused on a narrow topic. For example, what if the student scores low on a quiz on the American Revolution because (s)he missed all the questions on dates? And what if the student answered every other question correctly? The computer doesn't say, "You did great with concepts and names, but you seem to have a problem memorizing dates." But if I break that quiz up into mini-quizzes, and one of them is "Dates of the American Revolution," then I can say something meaningful in the whole-quiz feedback.

Articles About Using Feedback to Help Learning

Since we're talking of using question feedback as a learning tool, you might be interested in these articles that I found online: "Effects of immediate self-correction, delayed self-correction, and no correction on the acquisition and maintenance of multiplication facts by a fourth-grade student with learning disabilities." Also, "Effects of immediate and delayed error correction on the acquisition and maintenance of sight words by students with developmental disabilities." If you use question feedback, and make the quiz short so there's not a long delay between answering question number 1 and submitting the quiz, then I think that qualifies as "immediate error correction." Even more immediate would be to use a lesson, with one question per page, which the student answers before moving on to the next page in the lesson. That's my preferred way of creating immediate error correction. Partly because a lesson page is more flexible than a quiz question. And partly because each lesson page is "submitted" before moving to the next, making the feedback/error correction truly immediate.

Why did I write Moodle Teaching Techniques?

I collect techniques. Techniques for writing clearly, techniques for constructing e-learning courses, techniques for making the best tiramisù (there is more to life than work, no?). When I began writing my collection of teaching techniques for Moodle, my intent was to add them to my first book, Moodle E-Learning Course Development. By the time I collected a handful of Moodle teaching techniques, I realized that they didn't belong in the same book as the general how-to instructions for using Moodle. Is this because the techniques in Moodle Teaching Techniques are more advanced than those in Moodle E-Learning Course Development? Partly, but if that were the only reason, I would have folded them into the first book anyway. It's because these techniques are developed and written from a different point of view.

When I wrote Moodle E-Learning Course Development, I started with Moodle and worked towards creating an online course that adheres to good teaching practices. The book is organized according to the workflow that works best in Moodle: create your course, add static course material, then add interactive material, then add social material, then customize the roles for your course...and so on. The approach in this book is to start with what Moodle can do and work towards creating an effective e-learning experience. The keystrokes and clicks in this book apply only to Moodle.

When I wrote Moodle Teaching Techniques, I started with a list of proven learning principles. I then developed Moodle techniques that used these principles. Some of these techniques work around Moodle's limitations, which makes them inappropriate for a book on using Moodle as it was intended. Others combine features, or use features in unexpected ways. In each case, the approach in this book is to start with a research-based learning principle and work towards creating an effective e-learning experience. Moodle Teaching Techniques is less about keystrokes, and and more about teaching techniques. You could probably apply all of the techniques in this book to another LMS, like ATutor or ILIAS. The keystrokes and clicks would change, but the most important parts of the book would not.

So here are two approaches that hopefully take you to the same place: creating an effective, engaging e-learning experience for your students. And that's the result all e-learning developers are striving for, no matter what tool we use.

Moodle versus Sakai

I received a question about how Moodle compares to Sakai. I'd like to share it with you.

What are the advantages to a ... university of 20,000 faculty and 5,000 students to using Moodle over Sakai?

I found several advantages to Moodle over Sakai:

1. Moodle is better documented from every angle than Sakai. Administrators, Teachers, Students, and Developers all have better documentation in Moodle.

2. There are more official vendors ("Partners") providing service for Moodle than Sakai. Note that the term Moodle Partner is a trademark, and is managed by the founder to ensure that anyone awarded that label knows their stuff.

3. There is a much larger active community for Moodle. It's no advantage to have the most popular software in a category if the community of users don't help each other. But Moodle's community is both larger and more (inter)active than Sakai's. Put simply, if you don't want to or can't pay for consulting, you have a better chance of finding answers from the Moodle community than from the Sakai community.

4. Moodle's user interface is more consistent than Sakai's. And I don't just mean in the traditional sense, where you compare the icons, colors, menu actions, and layout on each page to ensure they match. As you go through a Moodle site, things look, feel, and function consistently. But more importantly, you interact with each activity, your classmates, and the teacher in a consistent way, whether it's in the chat room, a forum, or leaving feedback on a workshop.

This is because Moodle is designed around an educational philosophy called "social constructivist learning." Sakai, on the other hand, is designed around a technical framework. Try as I might, I could not find anywhere on the Sakai websites a statement of their instructional philosophy, or what instructional strategies they strive to support. To an IT person like those I work with every day, this isn't a big deal. But to teachers and students, it is a key point.

Moodle Teaching Techniques

Moodle Teaching Techniques is my newest book from Packt Publishing. This book is for Moodle teachers and course creators who want to use Moodle's features in more creative ways. The book is subtitled Creative Ways to Use Moodle for Constructing Online Learning Solutions.

This book focuses on best practices for constructing learning solutions, such as:

• Applying your teaching techniques through Moodle
• Creative uses for Moodle’s standard features
• Workarounds, providing alternative solutions
• Abundantly illustrated with screenshots of the solutions you’ll build
• When and how to apply the different learning solutions

It's especially suited for university and professional teachers.

The publisher's website

The publisher's website has a detailed description of the book: http://www.packtpub.com/Moodle-Teaching-Techniques-Open-Source/book

Reviews of Moodle Teaching Techniques

Susan Smith Nash, the "E-Learning Queen," published an extensive review of the book: http://elearnqueen.blogspot.com/2007/11/moodle-teaching-techniques-meets.html

Free Software Magazine was kind enough to say that "This type of practical advice is worth its weight in gold": http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/book_review_moodle_teaching_techniques

Harold Jarche posted a very short review on his learning and technology blog. I enjoyed the comments about using a dedicated learning management system versus making a mashup of other tools: http://www.jarche.com/?p=1447

Our Lady's Catholic High School, a mathematics and computing specialist high school, uses Moodle and also offers training in Moodle. See their review on their Moodle training blog: http://www.moodletraining.org/?p=20

And of course, there's always the Amazon.com reviews from those who've purchased the book: http://www.amazon.com/Moodle-Teaching-Techniques-William-Rice/dp/184719284X/