Book Image

Moodle 3 E-Learning Course Development - Fourth Edition

By : Susan Smith Nash, William Rice
Book Image

Moodle 3 E-Learning Course Development - Fourth Edition

By: Susan Smith Nash, William Rice

Overview of this book

Moodle is a learning platform or Course Management System (CMS) that is easy to install and use, but the real challenge is in developing a learning process that leverages its power and maps the learning objectives to content and assessments for an integrated and effective course. Moodle 3 E-Learning Course Development guides you through meeting that challenge in a practical way. This latest edition will show you how to add static learning material, assessments, and social features such as forum-based instructional strategy, a chat module, and forums to your courses so that students reach their learning potential. Whether you want to support traditional class teaching or lecturing, or provide complete online and distance e-learning courses, this book will prove to be a powerful resource throughout your use of Moodle. You’ll learn how to create and integrate third-party plugins and widgets in your Moodle app, implement site permissions and user accounts, and ensure the security of content and test papers. Further on, you’ll implement PHP scripts that will help you create customized UIs for your app. You’ll also understand how to create your first Moodle VR e-learning app using the latest VR learning experience that Moodle 3 has to offer. By the end of this book, you will have explored the decisions, design considerations, and thought processes that go into developing a successful course.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Title Page
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

The Chat module


Sometimes it is helpful to have synchronous or real-time communication. We often use our smartphones for texting when we need a quick answer or want to ask a rather informal question. The Chat module in Moodle is similar. In certain ways, the Chat module is a bit redundant, because students may be already chatting with each other via social media such as Google Hangouts or Skype. However, the good thing about using the Chat module is that it is a bona fide Moodle product, and it is possible to save the chat conversations within Moodle. Saving the transcripts of chats can be very important for instructors who want to ensure that they are communicating, and also for students who may wish to keep a record of what they have said.

Another advantage of chat is that your students may use speech-to-text applications (Dragon or Google), which automatically inserts a microphone avatar or logo. It is a good way to have students practice speech-to-text, and also can be very helpful for...