I am about to make a major push at Rider to try to make people aware of Open Source alternatives to Learning Management Systems like Blackboard. There are a lot of problems with Blackboard as an enterprise system, not the least of which is price, but also support issues, upgrade woes, questions of monopoly, and a real lack of innovation, despite the endless upgrades. Enter Moodle, an open source Learning Management System that is truly looking at what’s going on in the web 2.0 tools for inspiration of its features, like wikis, rss, flash video, and 3rd party service integration. I can, and will, go on about this, but in the meantime, take a look at what another instructor is saying about Moodle, because I couldn’t have said it better. Moodle is already installed at Rider – if you want to try it, just call me at x7145. As always, click the link for the whole story. – j.
Linux.com | Educators can manage course content with Moodle
Why use Moodle?One reason I recommend Moodle is because it provides a full variety content of activities that teachers can add to a course. Moodle has more than 100 gradable activity modules and plugins such as chats, forums, and tests. While other gradable modules, such as flashcards, podcasts, LAMS, and galleries, are not included in the standard package, they can be installed as modules later. Moodle also allows administrators to back up and restore courses. Once created by a teacher, a course can be reused in subsequent years with little effort.
Another reason to recommend Moodle is because of its philosophical foundations. Moodle is designed with a social constructionist philosophy, a belief that people actively construct new knowledge as they interact with their environment, and that learning is more effective when you’re constructing something that others experience. In other words, collaborative learning and discovery are at the foundation of this CMS application. You may not agree entirely with this philosophical foundation — I do not — but educators in the sciences and in the humanities can accept much of this philosophy since the social constructionist philosophy lies somewhere in between the strict qualitative and quantitative extremes.
