Teachers: Moodle

Work Teaching English in Taiwan
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In May of last year I began piddling around some with Moodle. Moodle is a free, downloadable, courseware program. When I first started using Moodle, I took a look at the “lesson” function, but because I’m lazy and it seemed a little intimidating, I decided to stick with quizzes. So for about the past nine and a half to ten months, I’ve used the Moodle “quiz” function to make multiple-choice and matching quizzes.

The quiz mode is satisfactory. It can employ text, images, and sound (I’ve used mp3s on it, but only a couple of times), so it can test vocabulary in a number of ways, in addition to testing listening, reading, grammar/usage, etc. I’m sure someone somewhere has thought about how it might be equipped with an application to teach and test speaking (maybe automated speech recognition?), but I doubt that that has happened yet.

In the past few months I’ve occasionally googled around in an unsuccessful search for some game-like device that would prompt the learner to learn English by interacting with a computer program, something like a simplified version of interactive fiction. I posted something about this in Temp a while back.

Tonight I took another look at the lesson mode of Moodle. It has these things called “branch tables.” The lesson can put the learner through a kind of flow-chart process. It can present a lesson/explanation/description/essay/audio file/image/etc., then take the learner to the next page and present one of a number of different kinds of questions, receive a response from the learner, and then send the learner back to the previous informational page on getting an incorrect response, or to the next page on getting a correct one.

In other words, it can produce a format that’s a crude or simplified version of interactive fiction. (I’m not necessarily interested in interactive fiction in itself as a teaching tool; I’m mostly interested in the way it works.) But even if no one is interested in my little idea, I expect there are people on the boards who are smarter than I am about this kind of thing, and who could use Moodle in ways that I can’t even imagine.

Anyway, just in case there are teachers who aren’t aware of Moodle, I just thought I’d let you know about it. I think it’s a neat tool.

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Thanks, CJ! I’m going to take a good look at moodle!

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You’re welcome, Maoman! I hope it helps!

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Good post, Charlie. But why temp it?
This info should be kept permanent.
I also just recommended this software to Miltownkid in his post about Chinese lessons.

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Thanks, bobl.

I’m not always sure why I post things in Temp, but I guess posted here because I wasn’t sure anyone would be interested.

Yeah, I remember reading a post about Moodle here on forumosa. I guess that was yours.

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Anyway, bobl, now that I think of it, I’m glad you mentioned it in a permanent forum. I think would be a good thing if more teachers on forumosa became aware of Moodle.

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I thought moodle was some kind of beef-flavoured pasta. oh well, carry on then.

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[quote=“Charlie Jack”] When I first started using Moodle, I took a look at the “lesson” function, but because I’m lazy and it seemed a little intimidating, I decided to stick with quizzes. So for about the past nine and a half to ten months, I’ve used the Moodle “quiz” function to make multiple-choice and matching quizzes.

The quiz mode is satisfactory. It can employ text, images, and sound (I’ve used mp3s on it, but only a couple of times), so it can test vocabulary in a number of ways, in addition to testing listening, reading, grammar/usage, etc. [/quote]

How the heck did you do that? I signed in and promptly got lost.

[quote]The lesson can put the learner through a kind of flow-chart process. It can present a lesson/explanation/description/essay/audio file/image/etc., then take the learner to the next page and present one of a number of different kinds of questions, receive a response from the learner, and then send the learner back to the previous informational page on getting an incorrect response, or to the next page on getting a correct one.

In other words, it can produce a format that’s a crude or simplified version of interactive fiction.[/quote]

Sounds fantastic but can you actually get anyone do do it? Somehow that seems like it might be quite a struggle.

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Sorry, your post was quite a while ago. I wish I had visited the board earlier.

[quote=“bob”][quote=“Charlie Jack”] When I first started using Moodle, I took a look at the “lesson” function, but because I’m lazy and it seemed a little intimidating, I decided to stick with quizzes. So for about the past nine and a half to ten months, I’ve used the Moodle “quiz” function to make multiple-choice and matching quizzes.

The quiz mode is satisfactory. It can employ text, images, and sound (I’ve used mp3s on it, but only a couple of times), so it can test vocabulary in a number of ways, in addition to testing listening, reading, grammar/usage, etc. [/quote]

How the heck did you do that? I signed in and promptly got lost.[/quote]

Yikes, I didn’t really do all this the right way. I’m bad about not following instructions. I’ll have to take a look at the Moodle site and find out for you. I know it can be kind of confusing over there.

I downloaded an older version of Moodle from a U.S. college sports site. I don’t necessarily recommend that, as I just got my first real “bug” today, working with the lesson mode (somebody on the Moodle bug forums had already found the problem and posted a fix for it, so I got lucky). I’ll look as soon as I finish this post.

[quote=“bob”][quote]The lesson can put the learner through a kind of flow-chart process. It can present a lesson/explanation/description/essay/audio file/image/etc., then take the learner to the next page and present one of a number of different kinds of questions, receive a response from the learner, and then send the learner back to the previous informational page on getting an incorrect response, or to the next page on getting a correct one.

In other words, it can produce a format that’s a crude or simplified version of interactive fiction.[/quote]

Sounds fantastic but can you actually get anyone do do it? Somehow that seems like it might be quite a struggle.[/quote]

Well, for me it is. The kind of thinking involved is not my forte. Last night I ran a “test” of the lesson mode with something like, “[Branch table] Fire is hot.” --> “[Question]Is fire hot?” -->"[Choices]Yes/No." :laughing: Today I’m working on a lesson involving making a sandwich, and I now wish I had chosen a peanut butter sandwich, and not a sub with the works.

But I figure (a) I can do this, eventually, and (b) if I can do this, just about anybody can.

Anyway, let me go look around a little, and I’ll try to come back with more info.

[Edit:]Okay, here’s the Moodle documentation page. That’s the page with the online manuals. Here’s the “generic” download page, and here’s the download page for Windows. I didn’t use the Moodle from Moodle’s download page. Also, someone else installed my school’s Moodle on a Web site, so I don’t know anything about how to do that, but I can find out.

I’ve installed Moodle offline on some of the computers here at my school. I’m not sure how easy that is with every version, but it was easy with the older version I’m using, Moodle 1.5.2+ For Windows with EasyPHP 1-8 installation. I got that version here. I don’t necessarily recommend using that one. I don’t really know which is the best one. I found this older version easy to install and use offline, and I played with it a little bit before someone installed this same version on the Web site. This version has been OK so far, even online, but as I said earlier, until now I’ve only used it for quizzes. Moodle has a lot more features than just quizzes, and to judge from taking a look at the Moodle forums, some people can get pretty far into it, even to the point of learning how to write computer code.

I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary to go that far, though, but it probably takes most people a little time to learn their way around this thing. I know I’m still doing that.

But I think a lot of things involving computers are like that. Just takes time.

I’m kind of uneasy now, because I don’t want to wind up, like, practically blogging here about Moodle, or something–don’t think admin would like that too much.

I’m really a newbie at this myself, but since I’m somewhat familiar with it, I think I might be equipped to find out more, even if I couldn’t answer questions off the top of my head.

So bob, if you or anyone else has any more questions, go ahead and ask them, and I’ll try to find answers.

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I’m not admin so I can’t speak with any authority at all but I can say the teaching English forum has been almost moribund lately, maybe they’d enjoy the traffic a moodle convo would inspire?

Thanks man. I had another poke around and got almost as lost as the time before, made it as far as some exercises for phrasal verbs. Anyway, I’m almost retarded, you should know that. I might figure that thing out but it’ll take awhile…

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[quote=“bob”]. . . maybe they’d enjoy the traffic a moodle convo would inspire?[/quote] Yeah, I don’t imagine they’d mind that. I was just worried it would wind up being just me talking to myself. :slight_smile:

[quote=“bob”]Anyway, I’m almost retarded, you should know that. I might figure that thing out but it’ll take awhile…[/quote] Well, then that goes double for me, because I got to thinking about it, and I realized that I’ve actually been goofing around piecemeal fashion with this idea since before the Web site thing. I can remember doing some snooping and reading about it maybe three years ago, and I can remember installing it offline and playing with it at least a year ago, maybe more. So I’ve had plenty of time to investigate it, think about it, and use it, but I still don’t know much about it.

Like you said, though, it’ll take a while; but if you get interested in this, there’s a good chance you’ll fairly quickly get better at it than I am. In fact I have hopes in that direction, so I can ask you questions about it.

Maybe bobl will post something here. He has experience with Moodle.

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Not much hope there. I’m set to get busy again here pretty quick and likely won’t have time to think let alone explore a website. I was (am) really intrigued by the idea of collaborative fiction generally, and collaborative fiction as a learning/ teaching tool particularly, but it looks like it would take quite a bit of effort to get that far with moodle. And the collaborative fiction idea just doesn’t wash with students here either so it’s kind of hopeless I guess… and I am not the kind of teacher that hands out exercises either, I look at them occassionally, but never download them and certainly never hand them out. Essentially what I do is explore this or that, movies and music mostly and “create” things with the things we find there, tape recordings, games, stories etc. Anyway, thanks for that, it looks like great site, perhaps just not for me.

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Then I will have to moodle through somehow on my own. (Sorry, couldn’t resist that.)

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Interesting stuff. I looked at Moodle a couple of years ago, and because it didn’t suit the specific thing I was trying to do back then, I didn’t do anything on it.

I’ve just been looking at it again. It took me a little while to find some useful introductory information about what Moodle could actually do. I think the Moodle Features Demo is a good start (the link takes you to a login page, but if you’re not a member, you can Login as a guest).

The software can just be used for creating one-off quizzes and puzzles, but it can also be a complete course management system including storage and grading of any kind of assignment in digital form, and collaboration and feedback along multiple channels between many teachers and students. The case study Using Your Moodle gives a real life example of this.

I also had a look at this teacher’s manual for Moodle, which gives good clear instructions for using the various features.

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Yeah, I’ve been looking at the documentation more, too. I’ve had to look at it because I’m starting to use Lessons now. I downloaded a couple of manuals about a year ago, I guess, but I’ve used them mostly as reference works when I didn’t know how to do something. I haven’t done the demo yet. I’m going to take a look at the links you posted and the demo.

[Edit:] I just discovered that I’ve already downloaded and uploaded the Moodle Features demo, but from a different part of the site. It was also in the “course exchange” part of the site. That person did a good job on that course. It’s got a chat room, messaging, all kinds of stuff.