I’m back into learning how to use Moodle, after a couple of years (yes, it’s been that long) away from Development (the second “D” in ADDIE). We are using Moodle to create the knowledge base for our Unworkshops, so I’m back into content development. What we’re doing is less structured than a course but Moodle fits the bill quite nicely.
I’m using the book, Moodle: e-learning course development by William Rice as my guide, and it’s quite practical. I had already asked Wendy Wikham for feedback on this book, and here is what she told me:
So far, I’ve found 2 Moodle books – Rice’s and Jason Cole’s Using Moodle. They seem to be written for different audiences.Rice’s book is more for course administrators and more technically-oriented teachers. It describes the setup and functions in detail. During the initial basic Moodle setup – it was easier to find the information in this book than in the forums. Since we are installing Moodle within a corporate network, we had more issues than the book rightly covered. Ta found it was a good introduction to what Moodle does from a technical perspective. For more advanced issues – the forum is more useful.Rice doesn’t focus on the pedagogy and doesn’t give step-by-steps for completing particular tasks. Cole’s book focuses more on step-by-step how to’s and the pedagogy behind each of the modules. I would hand teachers the Cole book before the Rice book.I suspect that I will be referring more to Cole’s book than to Rice’s book now that we have the baseline courses set up. Cole’s organization makes more sense and he does a better job of putting the tools in context.
For me, getting back into the technical aspects of creating and organising a knowledge base, the Rice book is great. I’ve also noticed that Susan Nash has reviewed this book:
Packt’s Moodle is a fantastic resource, although the title is a bit misleading. It is, in reality, a technical manual for using Moodle. It has very little to say about e-learning, except in the sense that it is implicit that learning via Moodle is e-learning. Its major deficiency is that it does not include any elements of instructional design that would allow a user to start developing courses that are pedagogically sound in terms of commonly accepted best practices for e-learning. Further, it does not contain templates for typical courses, which would also be quite valuable for institutions that would be most likely to be interested in open-source learning management systems.
Anyway, it’s one more for my virtual bookshelf.
