Moodle Book Recommendation

I have had a number of Faculty & Staff asking for Moodle resources, and, besides the wealth of information at Moodle.org, a book entitled, "Using Moodle: Teaching with the Popular Open Source Course Management System" has proven to be a very valuable resource to help me wrap my head around Moodle. I got my copy on Amazon, but the LBCC Library has a couple of copies.

Make your Moodle Course Look Like a Webpage

What Makes a Successful Online Student?

#1 Be open minded about sharing life, work, and educational experiences as part of the learning process.

#2 Be able to communicate through writing.

#3 Be Self-motivated and self-disciplined.

Read more of this article here.

Google Apps Education Edition

"Imagine how valuable it would be if your entire campus community — students, faculty, and staff — could share information and ideas more easily. With Google Apps Education Edition, you can start bringing that vision to life."

Faculty & Staff: Login to LBCC's Google Apps for Education account here. If you don't have an account, contact Paul Tannahill at x4647 to get one.

Moodle: The World's Favourite LMS

"It came as little surprise to us that Moodle has become the most used LMS by organizations of all sizes or that it was the most cost-effective LMS to install and customize. On-going costs of Moodle were also the lowest per user, not surprising given Moodle is Open Source and licence free. "

Read more here.

Why Google Apps for Education?

Jeff and Sam from Google talk about Google Apps Education Edition

The Philosophy Behind Moodle

The design and development of Moodle is guided by a "social constructionist pedagogy".

From a constructivist point of view, people actively construct new knowledge as they interact with their environments.

Constructionism asserts that learning is particularly effective when constructing something for others to experience. This can be anything from a spoken sentence or an internet posting, to more complex artifacts like a painting, a house or a software package.

Social constructivism extends constructivism into social settings, wherein groups construct knowledge for one another, collaboratively creating a small culture of shared artifacts with shared meanings. When one is immersed within a culture like this, one is learning all the time about how to be a part of that culture, on many levels.

Read more here.

LBCC Is Switching to Moodle

You may have heard the rumors, and now it's official: over the next 18 months we will be transitioning from Blackboard Academic Suite to Moodle as our CMS of choice.

We currently aren't quite ready to create new course shells in LBCC Moodle for Summer Term 09 enrollments, but anticipate being able to soon. Until then, we can created a development (sandbox) shell for you. You can build your course in that shell and (unlike Blackboard) change the Course ID number to that of your course whenever you want.

If you are an LBCC Instructor, and would like an LBCC Moodle development shell, email Paul Tannahill.

Recomended reading: Using Moodle: Teaching with the Popular Open Source Course Management System by Jason Cole & Helen Foster.

Stay tuned here for more updates!

LBCC Academic Google Calendar

Here it is!

LBCC Moodle Introduction Videos

"The Two Pauls" (Hagood & Tannahill) have teamed up to deliver some videos to introduce Moodle to LBCC Faculty and Staff involved in the CMS decision-making process. Here is Paul Hagood's Moodle Rationale document, in case you haven't seen it yet.

Paul Hagood's video gives a broad overview of various Moodle features:


View the high-resolution version here.
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Paul Tannahill's video shows Moodle Blocks and Themes:


View the high-resolution version here.
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Feel free to share your ideas for future screencasts, as they serve as a valuable tool to proactively answer questions and to promote good eLearning knowledge and practices among all LBCC Faculty and Staff.

Moodle Scales

Scales are a way of evaluating or rating a students' performance. Moodle offers a standard set of numeric scales. It is also possible to create custom scales which can be available on the site. For example, you can give the student a word or small phrase as a way of rating or giving a student feedback.


Read more here.

Moodle Presentation

Using View/Complete Assignment in Blackboard

Blackboard's Digital Dropbox can represent challenges and issues for Instructors and Students alike. View/Complete Assignment often works better for deploying assignments in Blackboard.