Request for Opinions; MOODLE courseware

[btiffin]

Hello everyone,

I'd like to ask for opinions on MOODLE. As part of the efforts with OpenCOBOL, I'd like to create an introductory tutorial, followed up with some advanced technical information.

Would a MOODLE course (or two) be a worthwhile use of time? I can imagine that setting up a course will be fairly easy, but a good course may take some effort and hours in.

Has anyone created a course in MOODLE before? And be willing to offer up hints, tips and pitfalls?

Has anyone been through a MOODLE course? Opinions on likes, dislikes, wishlists on how it could have been better? Prefer a sequence of short courses or one meaty detailed session?

Any and all opinions appreciated.

Cheers,
Brian

[rdrake]

The best person to ask about Moodle would be Dan.

I'd make a series of short courses. This way you can feel as though you've mastered each one before moving onto the next one instead of it being an uphill battle throughout.

[Dan]

Moodle has enought options and customization that you could make almost any kind of course you want.

However a big part of what you want to do will be more dependent on the OpenCOBOL comunity and what they think of the idea of online courses to learn OpenCOBOL. Before you start working on courses i would try to get the opinons of the comunity about the idea and if they would be intrested in doing such a course.

There are serveral books on making moodle courses and tips and tricks realting to moodle. I blive they list them on the moodle web site.

Personaly i think one course with serveral units would be better then muptial short courses but that might just be personal perfernce.

[btiffin]

Yes; I'm looking forward to Dan's opinions, if he finds time to respond.

Edit; Thanks Dan, posted while I was typing.

But I'm also interested to hear views of some people a little more removed from the development side of things and a little bit of usage experience too.

Cheers
P.S. I've already started building up a course, being an impatient git, and I'm leaning toward more numerous shorter materials and resources than less but longer diatribes; within the single "course" OC101.

[Dan]

btiffin @ 23rd December 2008, 1:19 pm wrote:

But I'm also interested to hear views of some people a little more removed from the development side of things and a little bit of usage experience too.

That would be a good idea, i could help if you wanted to edit the grading system but i have not used Moodle much as a student as lakehead uses webct.


Are you planing on having any tests or quizes for your materal in the course?

[syntax_error]

To be frank, I had not heard of MOODLE before btiffin mentioned it [well there are many things such as that ]; to me it seems like a upgraded version of the virtual school set-ups the TDSB has


The fact its much more cleaner and with a myriad of additional features; I personally wouldn't mind learning with a whole lesson plan set up and such, grab on your own time type work on your own time.


Tell me when its done, if its before the winter break, I might be your first student

[btiffin]

Excuse the necrobump.

Dan, if you see this; I've restarted on a hosted site finally. http://www.peoplecards.ca/opencobol/ and I could use a few Moodle pointers.

I'm using a browser that doesn't support the WYSIWYG editor (well, it can if I spoof the browser id, and I prefer without), but it is completely stripping down html when entered in the normal form text area. Hello topic blows in terms of looky feely. Any hints? I'd rather not be stuck running WYSIWYG to get past stripped down Moodle Auto-Format.

I've scanned over the admin settings, but I'm still getting auto-format, unless I turn on the text editor. And, don't want to.

If you need more deets about how I have the site configured ... I'll add them here.

Everyone else;
Anyone that looks at it, it is desperately shy of content as of yet. I plan on this course taking me years elapsed to finish. I'm in no rush and there is only one page so far (that at time of writing looks like crap imho). http://www.peoplecards.ca/opencobol/mod/resource/view.php?id=4 The first actual assignment should be up soonish, as some very simple Inform-7 interactive fiction that will generate a piece of Hello source code with the four COBOL divisions in the correct order (or straight up typing for the less gamey). COBOL is 50, isn't going to go away until humans no longer need banks, so this course can take a while without fear of 'missing the trend'.

Anyway, I'm hoping for some hints on what settings to allow unfettered HTML in the course resources, (without losing secure(r) auto-format for everything else).

Cheers

[Dan]

I have not touched moodle in some time, you may want to post on the moolde forums and ask for help there.

[btiffin]

Cool. Thanks Dan.