Some of the Moodle advantages are:
- Assignments like "Write a program to ..." can be made
- Each segment can have an associated quiz
- There is a forum in which students can have discussions about the course
- There are mechanisms to provide fedback to users
- Users can easily see their progress through the course
- The course developer can see what is working and what isn't
But I also see a couple of significant deltas:
- Users must be online to follow the course. Most likely a significant fraction of the intended audience has dial up or pays per connected minute.
- It is significantly more work
- I haven't found a reasonable way to be able to put up a sample on my LAN and share it outside for comment. I can have one or the other. This seems to be a common problem among FOSS packages. In theory, I could put it on elmer166.org, but I'm reluctant to do that.
Well, an attempt to install Moodle on my online site failed, and it isn't clear why. It took a very long time, perhaps not much longer than installing locally, but it seems longer when you don't see all the install messages fly by.
ReplyDeleteAt another time I'll have to try again. There are a few folks who I would like to see it, and right now the only way seems to be to sit down on my LAN. A bit unhandy since some of them are halfway across the country.