I recently did an hour Introduction to Moodle presentation for the Lebone II College staff.

It was quite a challenge to fit in all the best aspects of Moodle into 60 minutes. I didn't want to go too deep into any one topic while not brushing over anything to quickly.

I definitely didn't get it spot on, but it got me thinking about how to distil Moodle down to its best parts. Here are my slides.

The Platform

I found this difficult to explain and question whether it realy is neccessary. The problem is, VLEs and LMSs are becoming so popular that there are a lot of misconceptions and confusion aa to what they actually are. I explained it as follows.

At a basic level, Moodle is a Website. It is installed on local servers (speed benefits), it is open source (there is a huge community of sharers) and it is the most popular of all the LMSs.

Simple, but I think critially important to know.

How does it Work?

In my opinion, if you understand what a Moodle course is and how students interact with it and each other through a course, you understand Moodle - from an end user point of view.

A course is essentially a community of users, centered around a set of resources and assessments. Which leads on to the most important aspect of Moodle...

Assessment

I think this is the most significant aspect of Moodle. This is the area that will revolutionise the way schools do things.

The best way to get an understanding of Moodle assessment is to use it. Both answering a quiz and setting one. My quiz was on a local server, but I used eaach of the following question types to demonstrate.

• Multiple Choice
• Short Answers
• Numerical
• Drag and Drop

This should be the topic for most Moodle workshops. A Moodle course creator (at least at school level) should spend most of their time here.

Markbook (Grades)

This is a a massive draw card for teachers. I demonstrated its ease of use and comprehensive statistics. So much depth to go into here, I thought it best to keep that for an advanced workshop.

Conclusion

I would love to refine this presentation. As an Introductory course I think it is sufficient, but should be more practical.

I would love to develop workshops centered on each core assessment type - STACK, MCQ, Rubricks etc. in future.

Feedback would be much appreciated on how to improve this presentations focus.