Age-old question...many answers. Can the question itself be improved? Is there more to 'good course' than design? Can we pull it all together somehow? Background slides to the 2011 Australian MoodleMoot presentation

1. “What makes a good Moodle course?”

2. A few tips and observations from Moodle community ...

3. Ask not: Moodle-centric
“What makes a good Moodle course?”
Learning-centric

4. Ask not: Moodle-centric
“What makes a good Moodle course?”
Ask instead:
“What makes a good learning experience?”
Learning-centric

5. An attempt to bring the voices together ...
A framework for understanding: www.tpck.org/ (Koehler & Mishra)

6. Usability
What is meant by usability?
Visual and textual design of a Moodle course to achieve specified goals and satisfy
users in a given context. This includes users with disabilities.
Why is it important?
★Reduces (unnecessary) effort to do things - scrolling, clicking, browsing.
★Improves clarity and consistency.
‘Scroll of death’
Dead links
Main page = launchpad
Odd navigation Consistent, uncluttered layout
Heavy text-base Logical organisation
Overzealous graphics Easy navigation, flow
Lots of clicking
... and similar

7. Variety
What is meant by variety?
Moodle has a variety of tools that are best suited to do different things. Not all are
always needed, only the appropriate ones for the purpose at hand.
Why is it important?
★ Improves efficiency (make the most of people’s time and effort).
★ Increases engagement (do what you and people you work with WANT to do)
Multiple and task-appropriate
File dump modules, standard and
contributed

8. Re-usability
What is meant by re-usability?
The ease with which the course to be re-used, adapted, modified, maintained by the
original creator and/or others in the future.
Why is it important?
★ Reduces the time and effort to re-use the course or parts of it.
★ Improves popularity and widens the use through sharing on community hubs and
similar outlets.
Many non-standard modules
Complex custom theming Mostly standard modules
Experimental coding
Standard themes
Huge file sizes
Small files
Overly-complex conditionals
... Simple conditionals (if any)

9. Interaction
What is meant by interaction?
Why is it important?
This time, a short clip ...
Multiple, appropriate channels for
interaction:
(student-student, teacher-student,
A default News Forum, parent-teacher, group-individual...)
(unused) Enabling of groups
Provision for collaborative work
...

10. Scaffolding
What is meant by scaffolding?
To organise and support investigation or inquiry with clear goals, direction, resources
and assessment that is appropriate, meaningful and challenging to the learner(s).
Why is it important?
★ Avoids learners veering off the path too far and possibly losing interest.
★ Clear, meaningful challenges and achievable goals increase motivation to
persist and succeed.
Clear path of activities
No obvious path or sequence Rationales, descriptions, directions
No rationales, descriptions Sequence (not necessarily linear!)
No ‘checkpoints’
Appropriate use of cond. activities
Variety of assessment ‘checkpoints‘

11. Feedback
What is meant by feedback?
Provision of information used by people to learn and alter the gap between their
current and the ideal performance. Traditionally, feedback is provided mostly by teachers to
students but can very powerfully flow in other, multiple directions.
Why is it important?
★ Builds self-assessment, self-regulation abilities and meta-learning (learning how to learn).
★ Increases people’s knowledge, skills, confidence and perception about themselves in
the role they play (learner, teacher, parent, mentor ...).
Variety, appropriate formative &
summative assessment,
No feedback in any way Allowing multiple ways of providing
timely feedback (student-student,
student-teacher etc.)
Use of peer and self-evaluation

12. Relevance
What is meant by relevance?
Content is relevant if it addresses the needs of a person at a specific time at the level
understood by the person. Relevance - the solution to the problem of information overload.
Why is it important?
★ Reduces the info overload.
★ Supports, enables scaffolding.
Content part of/linked with specific
learning activities
Many disorganised documents
Understandable by learner(s)
and links to browse,
often in a single area of access Just-in-time needed/requested
by learner(s), not (only) placed
there ‘in case’ by teacher

13. Quality
What is meant by quality?
Age, topic and expertise-appropriate, trustworthy, up-to-date and readily available
content that can brought into the course, created within the course and/or exported
beyond the course. It does not drive the course - it enriches it.
Why is it important?
★ Supports, enriches learning and improves confidence of learners to use and/or create
quality content for variety of purposes.
★ Allows value of the course (commercial, links ...) to be extended beyond the course.
Appropriate level of up-to-date,
A few files with outdated info static and/or dynamic external
(behind a pay-wall) content
... Multiple, varied examples and
opportunities to create quality,
public content

14. Licensing
What is meant by licensing?
Stipulating the conditions and limitations of using individual piece(s) of content and
observing conditions and limitations set by others.
Why is it important?
★ Cultivates responsible ‘net-citizenship’.
★ Observation of legal copyright requirements (possibly very costly!).
Course and contents
No consideration given to marked with appropriate license
licensing of course, contents
Licensing observed, acknowledged
Multiple breaches of copyright
with all external items (documents,
media, images...)

15. Project: I Can Change the World
Created by Alja Isakovic (@ialja)
for the 2011 iMoot
Course Creator Challenge
Available at
Mt Orange School Demo &
MOOCH
Is this a good Moodle course? Why (not)?
Is this a good learning experience?

16. Background slides to the 2011 Australian MoodleMoot session.
Participants were invited to contribute real-time to the following public Google Docs,
moderated and discussed in the live session:
Technology (usability, variety, re-usability)
Pedagogy (interactivity, scaffolding, feedback)
Content (relevance, quality, licensing)
Course evaluation -
‘Project: I Can Change the World’

17. Image credit:
Lumaxart -
http://thegoldguys.blogspot.com/
Created by
Tomaz Lasic
http://tomazlasic.net/
@lasic
Licence conditions