Moodle E-Learning Course Development: A complete guide to successful learning using Moodle (Paperback)

by William Rice (Author)
Key Phrases: wilderness skills, login page, student sort, Front Page, Wild Plants, Home Page (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
A complete guide to successful learning using Moodle
- Straight-forward coverage of installing and using the Moodle system
- Working with Moodle features in all learning environments
- A unique course-based approach focuses your attention on designing well structured, interactive, and successful courses

A complete guide to successful learning using Moodle, focused on course development and delivery and using the best educational practices. Moodle is relatively easy to install and use, but the real challenge is to develop a learning process that leverages its power and maps effectively onto the content established learning situation. This book guides you through meeting that challenge.

This unique book gives you more than just a guide to the Moodle software; it uses Moodle as a route to better teaching, more motivated students, and more successful courses. Moodle is the leading Open Source learning management system. Using Moodle, teachers can easily construct richly textured web based courses. A course can consist of a number of lessons, with each lesson including reading materials; activities such as quizzes, tests, surveys, and projects; and social elements that encourage interaction and group work between students.Moodle E-Learning Course Development shows you how to use Moodle as a tool to enhance your teaching. It will help you analyse your students' requirements, and come to an understanding of what Moodle can do for them. After that you'll see how to use every feature of Moodle to meet your course goals.

The social constructionist learning philosophy is at the heart of Moodle: we all "construct" knowledge through interation with one another and with learning materials in a social way. Moodle E-Learning Course Develelopment will show you how to add static learning material, interactive activities, and social features to your courses so that students reach their learning potential. Whether you want to support traditional class teaching or lecturing, or provide complete online and distance learning courses, this book will prove a powerful resource throughout your use of Moodle.

- Understand what Moodle can do, how it compares to other e-learning packages, and how it can support your teaching strategies
- Install the Moodle software on your own computer or a server, and understand your way around it
- Know how to create different kinds of courses. Moodle can support courses where the group works through the classes with a shared schedule, or where individual students work through at their own pace, or courses where students are free to explore the different topics in their own time. This book will show you how.
- Understand all of Moodle's learning features. Moodle provides features for managing course content, interactive resources, and social activities such as forums and wikis. This book explains what each of these features are, how they work, and most importantly how and when to use them effectively.
- Manage students – so that you can ensure that the right students are going to the right classes; allow students to enrol themselves, or invite students to join a course. You can even set up commercial courses where students pay to sign

William Rice is an experienced trainer and expert on learning and teaching practices. This experience and expertise forms the foundation of his approach: What do we want to teach? How would this best translate into a course? How best can Moodle support these course objectives?Of course, the book contains everything you'd expect from an introduction to Moodle: clear step-by-step instructions, plenty of screenshots, explanations and guides through the many features and options that you have to choose from. Throughout the book, William develops an example course. He uses this example to explore the sort of decisions, design considerations, and thought that goes into developing a successful course.

This book is written for everyone who wants to get the most from Moodle. Beginners to the software will get a thorough guide to how the software works, and some great ideas for getting to a good start with their first course. More experienced Moodlers will find powerful insights into developing more successful and educational courses.

About the Author
William Rice develops software training, user documentation, and knowledge management solutions. He lives and works in New York City. During his 15-year career he has worked with a variety of Fortune 500 clients. He specializes in training and knowledge solutions for software that supports business processes. This is his first book for Packt Publishing. He can be reached via his website at williamrice.com.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (May 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1904811299
• ISBN-13: 978-1904811299
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #278,509 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A valuable resource for all Moodle users, November 1, 2006

By	Michelle Moore (Oxford, KS United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As a long-time Moodle user and trainer, I read Moodle E-Learning Course Development with a critical eye. I work with many Moodle users who are looking for manuals or printed resources and it is important to me that the options I offer are well-written and accurate. On a personal level, I also wondered if, as an experienced Moodler, the book could hold my interest.

Overall, I found that William Rice's Moodle book is a good addition to my collection of Moodle resources. The book held my attention and I found myself highlighting various passages as I picked up new ideas and information. Since reading the book, I have started offering it as a potential resource to my training participants.

Moodle E-Learning Course Development has a number of strengths that make it a worthwhile investment. It is generally easy to read and follow. Most of its sections had information and screenshots that allowed the reader to follow along, step-by-step. While there are some sections dedicated to the more technical aspects of Moodle, they are not overwhelming, rather their inclusion simply makes this book a more well-rounded resource for Moodle users.

The sections on the Lesson module and the Workshop module, two of the most complex Moodle modules are especially well-written. Each setting in these two modules is described in detail. Furthermore, the screenshots throughout the text to accompany instructions are an important component of any well-written technical resource.

The final positive I will highlight is that the examples used throughout the book are applicable to a wide range of Moodle implementations; K-12 schools, businesses, universities, and individuals will all find the examples are general enough to apply to their own situations. I especially liked some of the suggestions geared toward developing your site to promote and drive business; such as in those situations when a person is using Moodle to offer classes for a fee to the Internet community.

While the book has many strengths, there are several weaknesses as well. The first is one that challenges all print materials, especially in regard to technology, and that is the book is slightly out-of-date. Fortunately, many of the components of the book will still hold true despite the version changes. The second weakness is that the screenshots, while useful, lacked any graphics (arrows, etc.) to help the reader identify the parts of the screen being referenced. I also thought that a few of the transitions in the book were difficult to follow; I found myself wondering where the author was headed. Finally, there are a few places in the book where I disagreed with the author about the function of a particular setting or feature. Some of these disagreements may be the result of differences in the version of Moodle, but there are one or two places where the author didn't quite seem to completely grasp the feature being described.

User documentation is a generally acknowledged trouble spot for many open source projects like Moodle and William Rice has made a valuable contribution to the Moodle community. New and experienced Moodlers alike will benefit from William's efforts.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent introduction to Moodle, September 28, 2006

By	John Isner "a teacher" (Freehold, NJ) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Whether you are a teacher or a site administrator, you will find this book to be an indispensible companion during your first school year using Moodle -- and probably long afterward. I was fortunate to start teaching with Moodle around the time this book came out. When I scanned the table of contents, I was dismayed to discover that approximately half of the book seemed to have nothing to do with me. After all, teachers don't install, configure, or extend Moodle, and teachers (at least at my school) can't create new courses or course categories. As it turned out, I couldn't have been more wrong. As teachers, we are profoundly affected by the decisions made by our Moodle administrators during Moodle setup, as well as the procedures they use to administer the system. Inevitably, we come to realize that we cannot avoid knowing the information in chapters 2, 3, 7, and 9. Fortunately, the author's explanations are clear and do not require a technical background. He illustrates everything using an example site called "Wilderness Skills" which carries through the book.

The author devotes the middle section of the book to chapters covering static, interactive, and social course material. Here, teachers will find excellent introductions to each of Moodle's standard resource and activity types. Readers should not expect more than just enough information to whet their appetites and get them started. For example, the author devotes only ten pages to the single most complex activity in Moodle, the Workshop. While the material in those ten pages is valuable (I referred to it frequently when setting up my first Workshop), a full treatment of Workshops could easily fill fifty pages. In all fairness, the Workshop module is facing revision and any author who devotes too much space to it (or any other feature of open source software) risks obsolescence. Mr. Rice seems to have struck just the right balance here.

The book is remarkably free of error, has a good index, and has been extremely well edited. If you are looking for a book on Moodle, this is definitely the one to buy.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Complete Introduction on Using and Managing Moodle., October 14, 2006

By	Su Cheng Chao (Taipei, Taiwan) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A Complete Introduction on Using and Managing Moodle.


Moodle: E-Learning Course Development is a complete guide to using and managing Moodle. It introduces all aspects of Moodle from technical issues on how to install, backup, restore, where to edit PHP codes, to pedagogic issues on how to put in contents - resources and activities. Each chapter is independent for your reference, but is also developed from simple to advanced control of Moodle system. The book is well-organized with no difficult technical terms or complicated explanation for any teacher who want to use Moodle.

Although some teachers are afraid of the technical issues, such as MySQL database, installation, backup/restore, it is worthwhile to have the necessary technical ideas that will help you to design and manage your course. The book offers the minimal knowledge of server, Php, database for teachers to understand the Moodle system, and then to know how and when to use different tools provided by Moodle.

The book also gives its readers detailed instruction of how to create and mange a course. While there are many options in the Moodle system, the book tell you when and how to use different options. The book categorizes course materials into 3 categories: Static Course Material (text pages, web pages, links to web, file directories, label), Interactive Course Material (assignment, choice, journal, lesson, quiz, SCORM, survey), and Social Course Material (chat, forum, glossary, wiki, workshop). All these are tools to add Resource and Activity in Moodle system. Besides explaining how to add these materials, the book tells you in what occasion to apply the material. For some complicated materials, such as Lesson, Workshop and Wiki, the author gives a very good instruction on how to set up and when to use them. A fly in the ointment is without demonstrative examples. Thus, the readers should not just read, but have to experiment each adding tools by themselves.

The last three chapters are useful for teachers to manage a more inviting course in Moodle including 1) changing or editing theme, logo, header and footer; 2) analyzing students' logs and grades; 3) installing other modules and different ways of backuping Moodle system. These are powerful tools and safety of a Moodle system that teachers should know if they want to have complete control of Moodle.

Moodle is a free course management system which is especially good at social interaction. This system is even better than the commercial WebCT and Blackboard. Teachers should not wait for their institute to install a course management system for them, but begin to follow the instruction of this book to persuade your institute to set up a Moodle or even install a Moodle by yourself. It is a time of open source. Join open source club, and open your mind.