Technology that Teaches: Jason Cole's "Using Moodle"

A Review by Jim Farmer

The review as submitted to O’Reilly Media Inc. and Amazon for publication:

Technology that Teaches: Jason Cole's "Using Moodle"

In Chapters 2 through 13 Jason Cole describes how to use Moodle from installation through creating various types of courses. The easy to follow text with illustrations describe, step by step, how to achieve a working system. Chapter 1 sets the context. Cole writes [Moodle creator] “Martin’s background led him to adopt social constructionism as a core theory behind Moodle.” And comments “Most [course management systems] have been built around tools, not pedagogy. I would call most commercial CMS Systems tool-centered while Moodle is learning-centered.” This captures the reason for Moodle’s overwhelming adoption by college and university faculty and K-12 school teachers—Moodle is designed to teach, and does it well. Chapter 15 “Putting It All Together” summarizes course design patterns for introductory survey, skills development, theory/discussion, and capstone courses—a chapter that every education graduate should be able to write. These patterns make the difference between “teaching as we were taught” and “teaching as we should be taught.”

A learning system “by educators for educators” continuously being improved by some very-savvy PHP developers. Cole describes their work well and argues the learning theory underlying the design has made powerful education technology, more than just a “cool” architecture.

Using Moodle

ByJasonCole
First EditionJuly 2005
ISBN: 0-596-00863-5
240 pages, $39.95 US, $55.95 CA, £28.50 UK

Jason Cole is currently the academic technology manager at San Francisco State University, where he's responsible for managing a Blackboard implementation that has over 15,000 users. A member of the Moodle community, he has developed a student data integration tool for the system, and contributed to discussions regarding a document management system and object model for version 2.0. Jason earned a Ph.D. in educational technology from the University of Northern Colorado.

Additional quotes from the text:

[Moodle creator] Martin’s background led him to adopt social constructionism as a core theory behind Moodle. Social constructionism is based on the idea that people learn best when they are engaged in a social process of construct6ing knowledge through the act of constructing an artifact for others.

Most CMS systems have been built around tools, not pedagogy. I would call most commercial CMS systems tool-centered while Moodle is learning-centered.

Moodle’s design philosophy makes this a uniquely teacher-friendly package that represents the first generation of educational tools that are truly useful.

If instructors can’t do what they’ve been able to do with their commercial systems, they’ll reject an open source alternative immediately Moodle is the only pen source system currently available that can compete with the big boy’s features.

Missing features [of Blackboard and WebCT]: student peer review, self-assessment of submission, student journals, and embedded glossary.

Jim Farmer, instructional media + magic, inc.11 August 2005