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| Ray Le Couteur |
Ray Le Couteur considers Moodle as a learning platform, and
cites some original and interesting research.
Ray emailed me after Jim Fanning’s article
appeared to say:
I have just read the article by Jim Fanning at Tideway
School re their learning platform.
We have had a Moodle (Open Source) learning platform in place since 2003
and I have also published some research findings on its use at:
http://igniscm.org.uk/community/course/view.php?id=10&topic=all
Our site (recently highly praised by Ofsted) is at kegsnet.org.uk and is
almost all publicly viewable. It has become an integral part of school life.
However, our approach was very different to that at Tideway! And the whole
content is staff generated (no support technicians/dedicated web content
makers).
I was also slightly unhappy about the grouping of 2 expensive commercial
solutions that have been around for a long time (First Class/Blackboard) with
the much more recent Open Source Moodle (first released in 2000)!
Jim mentions getting presentations of the platforms from suppliers - so
that automatically excluded an Open Source solution!
So, naturally, I challenged Ray to write an article putting his point of
view. Here it is.
Ray Le Couteur (Head of ICT, King Edward
VI Grammar School, Chelmsford,
Essex, England).
Having read Jim Fanning’s article about their choice of Virtual Learning
Environment (VLE) at Tideway School, I felt an alternative experience might be
useful.
We have had a Moodle (Open Source) learning platform in place since 2003. It
has since become an integral part of school life.
However, our approach was significantly different to that of Tideway. The
whole content is staff-generated (no content support technicians/dedicated web
content makers). I believe that the key to success is ease and reliability of
use – unless these are guaranteed it will not be used by staff. Our site can be
viewed at http://kegsnet.org.uk and is
mostly open to guests (controlled by individual teachers).
Moodle is a relatively new VLE (first released in 2000) and is developing
extremely rapidly as a quick look at: http://moodle.org/course/view.php?id=5
will attest – it has recently had blogging, Wiki and chat facilities added,
although currently we don’t make much use of these.
Described below are some of the results of my research carried out into the
introduction and use of Moodle at our school.
Moodle is a sophisticated, easy to use, flexible and totally free (Open
Source) VLE (Virtual Learning Environment). The Moodle VLE can be run
anywhere in the world on any computer with a modern web browser (such as
Internet Explorer).
Like most VLE’s, a major advantage is that it is truly community software –
ownership is shared. All teachers can have their own online ‘classrooms’,
individually or shared within a department, and can add and edit their own
resources. Pupils too, as well as accessing documents, programs and web links
provided by teachers, can participate in discussion forums, journals, quizzes
and surveys which are all built into the Moodle interface. Our VLE is not used
to host commercial content.
The use of Moodle allows organic growth of online learning as and when
teachers perceive a need; schools that invest in expensive commercial VLE’s are
likely to put teachers under pressure to get ‘value for money’; unless there is
a perceived need by teachers, the educational benefit may be limited (putting
materials online because they’ve been told to put them online).
The Moodle VLE was first setup in our school (King Edward VI Grammar School,
Chelmsford Essex, UK) in early 2003, in response to individual staff requests
for an online platform for the school. Although selective, we are a State school
and have class sizes and staff timetables similar to most comprehensives. During
2004, a little over a year after its introduction, I carried out research into
the use of the VLE and a summary is provided below.
· To determine the effectiveness of Moodle in enabling teachers to implement
online learning in a secondary school situation.
· To introduce the software to the staff at my school, to support their use
of the software, monitor their successes and failures, and investigate the
effect it has on teaching and learning.
· To look at the differences in the use of and usefulness of a VLE between
the secondary and tertiary sectors.
I used two questionnaires to gather information: one for students and one for
staff and supplemented this with a focus group meeting/discussion with the most
frequent staff users of the VLE, which was partly recorded electronically for
later analysis.
The student questionnaires were used with a sample of students (those who
were likely to have had a reasonable exposure to the VLE during the year), with
19 responses from Year 10 and 45 from Year 12. Staff were asked to complete a
short survey on the VLE; 32 responses (around 65%) were received.
Students who used the VLE as part of their studies were almost universally
positive about the VLE and indicated ways in which they had been helped in their
studies (see below).
Students who completed the questionnaires also benefited from the ability to
feed back on their educational experiences (a relatively rare event) and to help
formulate future policy from which they will benefit. It was interesting that,
although the questionnaires were anonymous, all the students who participated
took the activity seriously and produced responses that were worthy of
consideration. This may reflect the motivational impact of involving students in
their own learning.
Since a VLE in a school is likely to be an additional tool for teachers (as
opposed to the only tool in distance learning), it was not surprising that some
features of the VLE such as forums, quizzes and assessment modules were less
used than in the tertiary sector.
By the end of the year, about 1/3 of staff were using the VLE from time to
time, about half of these frequently. Another 20% showed initial interest, but
never pursued it. Almost all staff cited lack of time as a constraint on the use
of the VLE. Currently (February 2006) almost all departments use the VLE, about
50% of staff use the VLE from time to time and about half of these are frequent
users. The site, at kegsnet.org.uk, is now a core part of our school ICT
facilities – teachers use it as a matter of course, and it is probably one of
the most active school sites in the UK.
· To post own tasks online, linked directly to relevant websites.
· To provide lesson information, resources, syllabus for long term absentees.
· To provide an ordered list of course requirements; gave structure to
students work (and helped organise the teacher). Also supported NQT - materials
are dated and helped to guide teaching speed.
· To post exemplar work/model answers for pupils online.
· Ease of use of Moodle enabled regular updating of links/materials. Teacher
could edit/add new links in lessons, immediately they are suggested by students.
· Skills ‘toolbox’, essay planners etc posted online.
· Revision materials posted online – for pupils with identified problems.
· General paperwork, syllabuses, trip letters, health and safety forms posted
online to save admin.
· Homework posted online – no excuse for forgetting/misinterpreting tasks.
Generally, teachers used the VLE as an extension of their classroom practice.
It was only rarely used to develop new teaching approaches.
Main Benefits for Students (cited in questionnaires - % citation)
· Helped with revision (50%).
· Extended my learning (39%).
· Helped me keep up with difficult topics (33%).
· Enabled me to keep up with work when absent (25%).
· Helped me manage my own learning (eg. move ahead at my own pace) (19%).
· Note: One unexpected outcome - a student new to the school felt that the
VLE had helped him feel part of the school and helped embed school systems.
Discussion forums appeared less useful than is the case in the tertiary
sector. They were used occasionally in some subjects for specific tasks, but
pupils had to be ‘coerced’ into using them. General ‘help’ or ‘revision’ forums
were little used by students. An exception was for clubs where the VLE acted as
a ‘meeting’ point for the group. Forums were then well used. Teachers in charge
of these activities found the VLE very useful.
So why isn’t everyone using it? Well, free software doesn’t have a marketing
budget – there are no colourful circulars or high powered sales staff. And some
technical expertise is required by the administrator of the VLE (Head of ICT?
Technician?), involving setting up the software on a server, then customising it
for your school. Some administration is also required to maintain the user
database and prevent abuse.
Moodle was chosen because it seemed to fulfil a number of criteria which I
felt were necessary for successfully implementing online learning in our school:
1. The software is extremely easy to use with a minimal learning curve. Even
a totally new user can be up and running with the software in no more than about
half an hour.
2. The relatively low cost involved in the use of Moodle would mean that
staff would not be under great pressure to make use of Moodle - instead, staff
would use the software where they see a need. This would result in it being seen
as an opportunity, rather than a threat.
3. This gradual introduction to the use of online learning complements the
evolutionary approach to change, which reflects the ethos of the school.
4. Finally, Moodle is essentially a mind tool. It allows teachers to develop
resources for their students in whatever way they wish but it is content free.
Moodle was implemented at our school in response to a perceived need by
teachers to be able to easily incorporate the internet into their teaching.
Moodle was seen as a potentially effective but low risk strategy: effective
because of its great ease of use, which means that it could remove barriers to
internet use by many teachers; low risk because the software itself is free and
could therefore be introduced in a gradualist way in response to teachers needs,
without involving the school in large capital investment. It was also, in part,
a reaction to a fantastic piece of software, that is not content based but has
the features to empower enthusiastic teachers to use the internet in a range of
different and innovative ways.
Although Moodle is open source software and as such entirely free to use, it
is necessary to either install the programme on your own server or to rent space
on an external server. The former choice probably gives greater flexibility but
requires significant investment in terms of time and technical expertise. Whilst
Moodle has proved to be very stable and largely free of bugs, it does place
significant demands on the host server and this needs to be taken into account
by any potential users.
I chose to install Moodle initially on a low cost shared remote server. This
can be achieved automatically if the server has a 'Fantastico' installer
included with the package, and this is an excellent way to test out the
software. Unfortunately, such a server could not support a whole class of
students accessing the site at the same time - this caused the site to crash on
a few occasions.
The solution, which has been very successful to date, has been to host the
site via a dedicated Moodle hosting service at a cost of about £500
(approximately $1800) a year, but this will vary with the size of the school and
the site itself. This has proved to be a very reliable solution, and the
software itself is installed by the server owner and technical support provided
for free. This in itself has saved me many hours of work. For anyone considering
the use of Moodle in their school, I would recommend a low-cost shared server (I
have found www.site5.com to be very good,
but there are many others) for testing and piloting purposes only. If you want a
whole school solution then I would definitely recommend a specialist Moodle
hosting provider (a list of these, at least one UK based, is provided on the www.moodle.com website).
The popularity of Moodle is rapidly increasing, and has recently received a
significant boost when it was announced in late 2005 that the Open University
was partnering with Moodle to provide their online courses. This increased
popularity is evidenced by the extremely active and very helpful support forums
at Moodle.org.
Certainly, Moodle is considered a success at our school. For staff, ease of
use is the key making the transition to online learning as near seamless as
possible.
(c) 2007 Ray Le Couteur
The author, Ray Le Couteur, is Head of ICT and teaches both ICT and Science
at King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford, UK. If you wish to know more about
the use of Moodle at the school then visit our Moodle VLE at www.kegsnet.org.uk or email the author at
raylec@yahoo.com. Current areas of
interest, apart from the use of Moodle, includes research into the prevalence
and prevention of plagiarism, especially regarding the early years of secondary
school and the use of software Mind Tools. Ray may be contacted on rlecouteur@kegs.org.uk.
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