Moodle

http://ccnmtl.lamp.columbia.edu/moodle/moodle/

I have recreated the Global Classroom Course from Sakai in Moodle 

Overall Impression: - In Sakai it is possible to have a list of all the Class tools, Communication, and Collaboration on one side of the page. It is specially useful for students to find easily the links and materials they look for. In Moodle, choosing the “Topic Outline” format, all the course materials gets added to the Topic Outline in the main page. To have the same format as Sakai I added an HTML block as “CLASS TOOLS” to the page which contains hyperlink to all the class tools that are outlined in the “Topic Outline” section of the page. Same has been done for “COMMUNICATION” and “COLLABORATION”. - Overall, comparing the layout of the two systems, in Moodle the page may look busy specially for the new students and it may be hard for them to navigate through the material. However, Moodle provides a lot of flexibility to the teacher to organize the material and configure the page layout by adding blocks and changing their position on the page, and by inserting multi labels to a topic section. For instance the teacher can add all the course materials to one section and add multi labels if necessary (instead of adding each tool in a separate section). So, the usability of the page is highly dependent on the way teacher design the page layout. - In Moodle it is possible to add the “Activity” block to the page. This block shows all the resources and activities that the teacher has added to the course. - In Moodle, the option of changing roles from teacher to student is really convenient for the teacher while preparing the course and the page layout.

In the file "Moodle Table.pdf" attached bellow, I will explain how I have recreated the Global Classroom Course from Sakai in Moodle. In addition, I will outline feature differences between the 2 systems, advantages and disadvantages of Moodle over Sakai, and point out any red flags that I came up when creating and populating a course in Moodle. Notes on the Moodle page layout: In order to have all the links for “class tools”, “communication”, and “collaboration” together (The same as it is done in Sakai), I added a new HTML block for “class tools”, another one for ““communication”, and another one for “collaboration” tools. Then, after adding each resource or activity to the “Topic Outline”, I added hyperlinks of each tool to the associated block. One other way to organize the tools is to add the relevant activities or resources in one topic on the “Topic Outline” and add multiple labels.