Learn How You Can Use the Moodle LMS to Deliver Your Courses Online
Director of Computer Training Services
Web Master
Carroll Center For the Blind http://www.carroll.org
Carroll Tech delivered its first online classes to students using static HTML pages starting in 2003. By 2004 we had built our own custom learning management software that featured auto-correcting quizzes, an interactive gradebook, real time chat capabilities and hundreds of video tutorials that augmented their professionally written curriculum. In 2008, we had started to bump up against the ceiling of our own software. We realized that the demand for new courses was increasing faster than we could get them online. Talented curriculum developers were easier to find than web developers with the passion and skills necessary for creating accessible web content. We began our search for a new learning management system that would support multiple content contributors with minimal support and training. We eventually settled on Moodle, otherwise known as Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment, is a free open source e-learning software platform, more commonly known as a Learning Management System [1][]. Moodle powers the e-learning programs at thousands of educational institutions worldwide, and is quickly becoming the most popular e-learning platform available today [2][]. The Carroll Center for the Blind has been using Moodle to deliver their distance learning courses to thousands of visually impaired computer users and professionals in the field for the last 3 years of their 8 year history teaching courses online. The Carroll Center calls their distance learning program Carroll Tech.
While not perfect, Carroll Tech found Moodle to be the most accessible LMS out of the box and began experimenting with using it to deliver their online courses. Being open source, Moodle would allow Carroll Tech to modify its code to make it more accessible, but more importantly gave them an opportunity to participate in making the software more accessible to all by reporting bugs, suggesting improvements, and testing and creating patches to improve the software downloaded by hundreds every day. Carroll Tech began its journey with Moodle 1.9, and is currently working with the latest version, Moodle 2.0.
Over the last 8 years, we've listened to feedback from our online students, studied their successes and failures and analyzed a variety of performance metrics. The results of this feedback has resulted in a clearly defined and consistent method for delivering our online learning content. The overwhelming number of activity and resource types available in Moodle has also played a part in shaping our pedagogy. While the tools offered in Moodle don't always line up exactly with how we would like to do things, we've always found a way to shoehorn them in.
While we realize that our format won't work for every course, every instructor or every subject, we've found success with the following sequence of activities for each individual Topic found in one of our Moodle Courses:
Carroll Tech had previously accepted content from curriculum developers in common formats like Rich Text or Microsoft Word. That content was then carefully converted by our Web Master (Mark) into accessible HTML, paying close attention to consistent layout and presentation, resulting in a comfortable and very user friendly online learning experience. While the use of Moodle allowed content creators to bypass the middle man and enter their content directly into the learning management system, we found that no matter how accessible they made our Moodle theme and configured our Moodle installation, we could not enforce the accessibility or usability standards our users had come to expect in the content that was created by outside curriculum developers.
Moodle itself is not 100% accessible, either. There are barriers built right into core, like the native multimedia filters and the "File Picker" widget. There are also some activities that just don't take a very accessible approach to measuring comprehension, like the mix and match activity.
We also have different audiences or roles that bring various levels of knowledge of HTML and accessibility to the table. The three we are most concerned about are Students, Instructors and Content Creators.
We also had trouble identifying and motivating content creators.
So We decided to do what we knew how to do best, create an online course that instructed curriculum developers how to create accessible course materials using the Moodle Learning Management System. We would also take this opportunity to teach our Pedagogy as well, in the hopes that we could continue to offer an accessible, consistent and highly successful online learning experience.
http://bit.ly/csun2012
http://media.carrolltech.org/csun2012/
webmaster@carroll.org
Mark Sadecki @cptvitamin
Brian Charlson @briancharlson