CALL Potpourri
Issue 10, Fall 2005
TELL @ ELI Archive

New Courseware Opportunities: Moodle

Irshat Madyarov

Do you know that ….
the ELI is about to start using online software called Moodle? Moodle is an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. In layman’s terms, Moodle acts like an online classroom with all kinds of handy tools available to the learners. Instructors or administrators can set up such a classroom in any way they like, within reason, of course. They can bring new tools and objects for effective learning into this classroom and move them around, in many ways similar to Blackboard used by USF, except that Moodle is free and is more conducive to language learning.

What can we meddle with in the Moodle?
Here’s a list of some online tools: quizzes, forum, chat, Wikis, opinion poll and surveys, email messaging, glossary, journals, and the grading tool. Some of the most common objects you can upload include: texts in most common formats (e.g., Word, PDF, and Power Point), activities created with our old friend Hot Potatoes (for instance, crosswords), images, audio and video files.

A little bit of a theory…
The Moodle environment is based on the principles of social constructionist pedagogy. In a nutshell, this approach upholds the idea of learning when a) collaboration in a community of learners is key, and b) learners learn best by teaching each other. Simply put, everything that is needed for collaborative and creative learning is available.

ELI, the Moodler
Moodle is used mostly for online delivery of courses. It is one of the areas Moodle is going to be used for at the ELI. It can also be applied to regular classes where CALL components are used as an add-on, like in many of the ELI classes. In other words, it may act as an alternative to Nicenet that we all use on a regular basis.
For more info, visit a website about Moodle built in the Moodle environment: http://moodle.org/course/view.php?id=31