Lesley Anderson

Wiki and Moodle design

Using your CSU Interact wiki or other wiki experience and your short
experience as a Moodle member, answer the following:

a. What is it about the design of the wiki and Moodle that you liked or disliked?

a. I have often seen my daughter access homework documents or class notes from the school Moodle site, however, I haven’t had any previous experience using Moodle myself.
Logging in was new to me.  I spent about an hour touring the site after creating an account, verifying  my email address and signing in to the Moodle for 510/213. The account was easy to set up and along with the password from Ken I got into the site without a problem.

I liked what I saw and was impressed with the uncluttered layout of the Moodle interface - to me, that reflects the professional purpose of the site. I have to admit, I like some colour and personality, but I can make up for that on other sites that I visit. The interface reminded me of Blog sites I use or have used - central area and different tools around it with highlighted links to connect to other pages/areas of Moodle.

 I also liked the variety of tools available in the site.  At my fingertips, I had access to blog, wiki, forum and chat - one account, one setup. There is allocated space for resources/course outlines and the like as well as evidence that the 510/213 Moodle has been used for collaborative exercises by groups of students. I particularly like the idea of one area to house all the learning tools that might be required - saves having one address for each tool along with associated usernames and logins that go with them. Security, while working with students is also a big issue. Individual account creation and login for Moodle seems to be a plus in that area.

  I have spent a little time using Wiki software as a learning tool with primary level students. It too was easy to setup and I have found it great for collaboration, giving students an avenue to build upon, revise, and edit emerging text. Students at this level have been keen to learn about the tool, quickly navigating the site and pointing features out to me. 

A few of my students had difficulty with the idea that other people could edit their posts but that was more about their idea of what writing was and differences between personal and collaborative writing.  As the design of most Wikis is functional, there is little to distract users from a task . Discussion, in my experience is asynchronous, so users are less likely to be distracted by other users and chatting with them, and more likely to complete a set task.