Using the Moodle Chat activity module for learning

By Matt  |  2012/04/12 20:58 Posted in Learning, Moodle  |  Comments (0)

Moodle chatThe Moodle chat activity module is a simple, basic chatroom platform specifically designed for learning and closely integrated with Moodle courses. Learners can chat, teachers can monitor and participate. Chats can be whole class or in small groups. Moodle saves the transcripts of all chat sessions. This means that teachers and learners can copy transcripts into other activities so that learners can analyse and reflect on their performance, correct errors and devise learning strategies to improve their future performances.

Learners can:

  • Role play dialogues
  • Ask for and give informal help
  • Collaborate on problem solving
  • Collaborate on projects
  • Do information gap and jigsaw activities
  • Play guessing games
  • Study transcripts for error correction, communication content analysis, etc.

Using chat

Why use Moodle chat when there are so many free online services that offer internet telephony, video and file transfer capabilities? Simply because Moodle chat rooms give you control over who can enter and interact with your learners. In order to participate in a particular chatroom, participants must be enrolled on that particular course. More importantly, you and learners have access to chat transcripts and since each chat is integrated with a course, it’s easier to keep track of learners’ participation for support, assessment, grading, etc.

Learner support and study groups

Some students find that online classes and courses can seem isolated. Having a strong social presence within a learning community is vital for cultivating learner engagement and reinforcing their cognitive presence. Additionally, as final exams and dealines approach, learners’ anxiety and stress levels rise and feelings of isolation can increase. Chat sessions provide much needed social contact and support for learners who are stressed and/or in difficulty. Learners can get the support they need from teachers and peers, and chat transcripts are a useful record of others’ help and advice. Something that we don’t normally get from face to face contact.

Creating study groups

An important factor in productive chat sessions is in limiting the number of participants. Some Human Behaviourism researchers claim that the maximum coherent interactive social group has up to five members at any one time and that more than five members becomes difficult to manage. With Moodle chatrooms it’s easy to create a single chat activity that automatically breaks large classes up into smaller assigned groups, each with their own sub-chatroom. A chatroom can be entirely separate or learners can be allowed to see but not participate in other groups’ chat.

Initiating new groups with review assignments

For learners who haven’t worked together before, it’s a good idea to get them started by assigning each one a review topic to prepare ahead of the chat session. You could assign the same topic for all learners in a group, e.g. for critical analysis, or you may want to assign different areas of a topic to create information gap activities.

The need for mediators

In online chat sessions, it’s easy for learners to “lurk”, i.e. watch without participating. This is where transcripts can be useful for assessment and for coaching learners towards more productive and collaborative participation but it’s also necessary for someone to be responsible for encouraging everyone to participate and draw lurkers into the conversation. Teachers can monitor chatrooms or individual learners can be assigned the role of mediator.

Encouraging learners to formulate questions

While it’s often necessary for teachers to provide initial questions to get conversations going, chat sessions can be more engaging and productive if learners are encouraged to think analytically and critically and formulate their own questions. This keeps chats from turning into teacher led question and answer sessions and encourages greater cognitive engagement in learners.

Using chat for tutorial review

Chatrooms are an ideal medium for tutorial reviews with individual learners. Teachers can encourage learners to be more responsible and reflective by discussing their submitted assignments and projects. Learners can review the transcript afterwards for further reflection and maybe even resubmission.

 

Using Moodle for written corrective feedback

By Matt  |  2012/03/01 10:06 Posted in Moodle  |  Comments (2)

Written corrective feedbackLearning management systems such as Moodle have many advantages over classroom and email based writing programmes. One such area is in corrective feedback and in this article I’m going to explore some of the possibilities for providing written corrective feedback for EFL and ESL learners.

What are the advantages?

  • Firstly, learners can do their writing assignments and submit them online and, in the case of blended learning, before their next English class, thereby speeding up the submission -> feedback process.
  • Unlike email, Moodle stores a single copy of the submitted work online. Only one copy in one place to keep track of. Simple. Easy.
  • Moodle also controls who can view and who can edit learners’ work and when. So learners can submit work, teachers get email notifications and go to Moodle to view the work and can make comments, recommendations and corrections on copies of the work that are stored alongside the original. Learners may be able to resubmit depending on how the writing assignment is set up.
  • Moodle’s Assignment module also facilitates peer assessed writing activities and automatically manages delegating learners’ work to their peers. Teachers and/or learners can define custom assessment rubrics and teachers can assess learners’ peer assessments. How cool is that?
  • Moodle has a central consolidated grade book for each course where teachers and, if permitted, learners can grade work and write comments.

Written corrective feedback options

There are a few options available to Moodle users:

  • Direct written corrective feedback
  • Indirect written corrective feedback
  • Metalinguistic written corrective feedback
  • Reformulation written corrective feedback

For a more in depth examination of these written corrective feedback types, Professor Rod Ellis gave a presentation which is available on YouTube.com. I’ve posted a video of the presentation and some accompanying notes in this article: Dr. Rod Ellis: TESOL Written Corrective Feedback. Right now, I’m going to focus on metalinguistic written corrective feedback because this offers the strongest advantages when implemented with Moodle. In the following section I’ve quoted from a paraphrased Dr. Ellis’ presentation:

Metalinguistic written corrective feedback

Metalinguistic written corrective feedback provides learners with some form of explicit comment about the nature of the errors they have made. This can be done in two ways:

Use of error codes

e.g. Abbreviated labels for different kinds of errors placed over the location of the error in the text or in the margin: art = article, prep = preposition, sp = spelling, ww = wrong word, t = tense, etc. Overall, there is very limited evidence to show that using error codes helps learners to achieve greater accuracy over time and it would also seem that they are no more effective than other types of written corrective feedback in assisting self-editing.

Metalinguistic explanations of errors

e.g. Numbering errors and providing metalinguistic comments at the end of the text. This is less common than error codes since it’s time-consuming and calls for the teacher to be able to write clear and accurate explanations for a variety of errors. Sheen (2007)* compared direct and indirect metalinguistic written corrective feedback. Both were effective in increasing accuracy in the learners’ use of articles in subsequent writing completed immediately after the written corrective feedback treatment but the metalinguistic written corrective feedback proved more effective that the direct written corrective feedback in the long term, i.e. in a new piece of writing completed two weeks after the treatment.

* The effect of focused written corrective feedback and language aptitude on ESL learners.

So, metalinguistic explanations of errors appear to be the most effective strategy but it’s time consuming and difficult to implement. This is where Moodle comes to the fore. We can make providing metalinguistic corrective feedback easier and less time-consuming by consolidating resources and making the metalinguistic explanations of errors freely available to learners and teachers. It’s a clever combination of error codes that link to the explanations.

A strategy using the Moodle Glossary module

The Moodle Glossary module allows teachers and learners to collaboratively create glossaries of terms which can include definitions and examples in text, images, audio and/or video. It also has a feature whereby Moodle will automatically insert links to glossary entries on any page in a Moodle course. For example, if we create a glossary entry with the term “lion” with photos and text, anywhere the word “lion” appears on that Moodle course will be automatically linked to the glossary term. When learners click on the link, the glossary term, definition and/or examples appear in a popup window.

For our purposes, we can create a glossary of errors commonly found in learners’ writing. We also use unique error codes as the glossary terms, i.e. cf-article = definite indefinite article error, cf-count = countable/uncountable error, etc. Here’s the metalinguistic corrective feedback glossary summary:

The metalinguistic corrective feedback glossary is a list of common errors found in learners’ written work that is created and maintained by teachers. It works like this:

  1. Learners submit written work, e.g. a writing assignment.
  2. Teachers identify errors in learners’ submissions, e.g. “a” and “the” as definite and indefinite articles.
  3. Teachers find the corrective feedback entries in this glossary that best match learners’ errors. If there isn’t a best match glossary entry, the teacher creates one.
  4. Teachers copy the corrective feedback glossary entry term short-code, e.g. cf-article, and paste it into learners writing.
  5. The glossary module automatically creates a link from the short-code to the corrective feedback glossary entry.
  6. Teachers submit learners’ writing assignment feedback.
  7. Learners review their assignments and when they click on the corrective feedback short-codes, the respective corrective feedback glossary entry is displayed in a popup window.
  8. Learners can then correct their writing and resubmit.

When learners are accustomed to this approach to receiving corrective feedback, the same process can be performed by learners themselves in peer review writing assignments, i.e. learners identify errors in each others’ writing to submit as peer review feedback.

Learners with higher levels of language proficiency can collaboratively create their own glossaries of common errors and find examples, correct them and write summaries of the rules.

Example

I’ve started a metalinguistic corrective feedback glossary on the Moodle for Second Language Teaching course on my R&D Moodle. The course allows guest access so you’re free to have a look. I’ve also included an example text that has the metalinguistic corrective feedback links automatically added.

Dr. Rod Ellis: TESOL Written Corrective Feedback

By Matt  |  2012/03/01 10:03 Posted in Learning, Moodle  |  Comments (0)

Professor Rod Ellis, gave a presentation which is available on YouTube.com. In it, he focuses on written corrective feedback. I’ve written a basic summary below. Get a drink, a snack, your notebook, make yourself comfortable and enjoy an allusive, informative explanation of the current state of affairs regarding written corrective feedback; the types and strategies, what we know, what we don’t know and what we should do.

Running time: 1:09:08

Why do we give written corrective feedback?

  1. To enable learners to revise their own writing, i.e. produce a better second draft
  2. To assist learner to acquire correct English

A Typology of corrective feedback types

  1. Strategies for providing corrective feedback
  2. How learners respond to the feedback

Written corrective feedback strategies

1. Direct written corrective feedback

Teachers provide correct form, i.e. crossing out an unnecessary word, phrase or morpheme, inserting a missing word, phrase or morpheme, inserting a missing word or morpheme, and writing the correct form above or near to the erroneous form (Ferris 2006)

  • Advantage – Provides learners with explicit guidance about how to correct their errors. Ferris and Roberts (2001) suggest direct written corrective feedback is probably better than indirect written corrective feedback with writers of low levels of language proficiency.
  • Disadvantage – It requires minimal processing on the part of the learner and thus, although it might help them to produce the correct form when they revise their writing, it may not contribute to long-term learning.

However, a recent study by Sheen (2007)* suggests that direct written corrective feedback can be effective in promoting acquisition of specific grammatical features (Low intermediate level learners).

* The effect of focused written corrective feedback and language aptitude on ESL learners.

2. Indirect written corrective feedback

Involves indicating that the learner has made an error but without actually correcting it. This can be done by underlining the errors or using cursors to show omissions in the learners’ text or by placing a cross in the margin next to the line containing the error. In effect, this involves deciding whether or not to show the precise location of the error, i.e. just indicate which line of text the error is on.

Advantages

  • Caters to ‘guided learning and problem solving’ (Lalande 1982) and encourages learners to reflect on linguistic forms
  • Considered more likely to lead to long-term learning (Ferris and Roberts 2002)

Disadvantages

  • Learners cannot correct if they do not know the correct form
  • Learners may be able to correct but will not be certain that they are correct

The results of studies that have investigated direct vs. indirect written corrective feedback are very mixed (cf. Lalande 1982 and Ferris and Robert’s 2002). No study to date (2012) has compared the effects on accuracy in new pieces of writing.

3. Metalinguistic written corrective feedback

Provides learners with some form of explicit comment about the nature of the errors they have made.

  • Use of error codes, i.e. abbreviated labels for different kinds of errors placed over the location of the error in the text or in the margin. e.g. art = article, prep = preposition, sp = spelling, ww = wrong word, t = tense, etc.
  • Metalinguistic explanations of their errors, e.g. numbering errors and providing metalinguistic comments at the end of the text.

Informal poll: learners were in favour of metalinguistic explanations but teachers were not. Rod Ellis suggested that it had something to do with hard work on the teachers’ part.

Studies on use of metalinguistic error codes

  • Lalande (1982) – A group of learners of L2 German that received correction using error codes improved in accuracy in subsequent writing whereas a group receiving direct correction made more errors. However, the difference between them was not statistically significant.
  • Robb at al (1986) – The use of error codes no more effective that three other types of written corrective feedback they investigated, i.e. direct feedback and two kinds of indirect feedback.
  • Ferris (2006) – Error codes helped learners to improve their accuracy over time in only two of the four categories of error she investigated, i.e. in total errors and verb errors but not in noun errors, article errors, lexical errors or sentence errors (e.g. word order errors).
  • Ferris and Roberts (2001) – Error codes helped learners to self-edit their writing but no more so than indirect feedback.

Overall then, there is very limited evidence to show that error codes help writers to achieve greater accuracy over time and it would also seem that they are no more effective than other types of written corrective feedback in assisting self-editing.

Studies on use of metalinguistic error explanations

This is less common than error codes. It’s time-consuming and calls for the teacher to be able to write clear and accurate explanations for a variety of errors.

Sheen (2007) compared direct and indirect metalinguistic written corrective feedback. Both were effective in increasing accuracy in the learners’ use of articles in subsequent writing completed immediately after the written corrective feedback treatment but the metalinguistic written corrective feedback proved more effective that the direct written corrective feedback in the long term, i.e. in a new piece of writing completed two weeks after the treatment.

Rod Ellis speculated that metalinguistic written corrective feedback forces learners to formulate some kind of rule about the particular grammatical feature and then they use this rule but it takes time for them to be able to use this rule effectively. Direct feedback might have an immediate effect but learners soon forget the correction, whereas if they’ve learned the rule, maybe it’s going to have a longer term effect on learners’ ability to avoid the errors.

4. Focus of the feedback

Focused vs. unfocused written corrective feedback

1. Focused written corrective feedback advantages, i.e. correcting just one type of error

  • provides multiple corrections of the same error
  • is more likely to be attended to by learners
  • is more likely to help learners to develop understanding of the nature of the error

2. Unfocused written corrective feedback advantage, i.e. correcting all or most of the errors

  • addresses a range of errors, so while it might not be as effective in assisting learners to acquire specific features as focused written corrective feedback in the short term, it may prove superior in the long term.

The distinction of focused and unfocused written corrective feedback applies to all of the previously discussed options. The bulk of written corrective feedback studies completed to date have investigated unfocused written corrective feedback. Sheen (2007) – Focused written corrective feedback, i.e. errors in the use of articles for the first and second mention, proved effective in promoting more accurate language use of this feature. However, to date (2012), there have been no studies comparing the relative effects of focused and unfocused written corrective feedback.

5. Electronic written corrective feedback

Extensive corpora of written English can be exploited to provide learners with assistance in their writing. Electronic resources provide learners with the means where they can appropriate the usage of more experienced writers.

An example of electronic written corrective feedback

“Mark My Words” (Milton 2006)

  1. An electronic store of approximately 100 recurrent lexico-grammatical and style errors that he found occurred frequently in the writing of Chinese learners
  2. A brief comment on each error an with links to resources showing the correct form
  3. Teachers use the electronic store to insert brief metalinguistic comments into learners’ text
  4. Learners consult the electronic resources to compare their usage with that illustrated in the samples of language made available. This assists learners to self-correct.
  5. An error log for each piece of writing, drawing learners’ attention to recurrent linguistic problems is generated

There has been no research to investigate whether this is effective or to investigate whether it has any actual effect on language acquisition, as measured in new pieces of writing.

Advantages

  • Removes the need for the teacher to be the arbiter of what constitutes a correct form. Teachers’ intuitions about grammatical correctness are often fallible; arguably a usage-based approach is more reliable
  • Allows learners to locate the corrections that are most appropriate for their own textual intentions and encourages learner independence

6. Reformulation written corrective feedback

This involves native-speakers rewriting learners’ texts in such a way as ‘to preserve as many of the writers’ ideas as possible, while expressing them in their own words so as to make the pieces sound native-like’ (Cohen 1989: 4) The writers then revise their writing by deciding which of the native-speakers’ reconstructions to accept. In essence then, reformulation involves two options ‘direct correction’ + ‘revision’ but it differs from how these options are typically executed in the whole of the learners’ texts are reformulated thus laying the burden on learners to identify the specific changes that have been made.

Sachs and Polio’s (2007) study

  • This study compared reformulation and direct correction.
  • Learners were shown their reformulated/corrected stories and asked to study them for 20 minutes and take notes if they wanted.
  • One day later, they were given a clean sheet of paper and asked to revise their stories but without access to either the reformulated/corrected texts or the notes they had taken.
  • Both the reformulation and direct correction groups outperformed a control group. However, the correction group produced more accurate revisions than the reformulation group.
  • It should be noted, however, that reformulation serves also to draw learners’ attention to higher order stylistic and organisational errors.

Types of learner response

  1. Revision required
  2. No revisions required
    • Learners asked to study corrections
    • Learners just given back corrected text

Rod Ellis notes that learners may only look at their grade and nothing more if they aren’t required to study their corrected texts.

Ferris (2006) study

Ferris (2006) identified a number of revision categories in the re-drafts of 146 ESL learners’ essays. Out of the corrected errors:

  • 80.4% were eliminated in the redrafted compositions either by correcting the error or by deleting the text containing the error or by making a correct substitution.
  • 9.9% of the errors were incorrectly revised
  • 9.9% no change was made

Overall, research shows that written corrective feedback assists revision. Ferris’ descriptors were as follows:

Label Description
Error corrected Error corrected per teacher’s marking.
Incorrect change Change was made but incorrect.
No change No response to the correction was apparent.
Deleted text Student deleted marked text rather than attempting correction.
Substitution, correct Student invented a correction that was not suggested by the teacher’s marking.
Substitution, incorrect Student incorrectly made a change that was not suggested by the teacher’s marking.
Teacher-induced error Incomplete or misleading teacher marking caused by student error.
Averted erroneous teacher marking Student corrected error despite incomplete or erroneous teacher marking.

An important theoretical issue

Theories of language learning differ in the importance they attach to:

  • Noticing the feedback in input
  • Revising the correct linguistic forms in output

But no research has addressed this issue.

Chandlers’ (2002) study

This compared indirect written corrective feedback plus the opportunity to revise with indirect written corrective feedback with no opportunity to revise. Results:

  • Accuracy improved from the first to the fifth piece of writing significantly more in the group that was required to correct their errors than in the group that just received indication of their errors
  • This increase in accuracy was not accompanied by any decrease in fluency

However, this study cannot be used to claim that written corrective feedback with revision contributes to L2 learning as there was no control group, i.e. a group that received no written corrective feedback. Rod Ellis notes that a great weakness of studies that have investigated written corrective feedback is that the studies have had no control groups and this makes it very difficult to say whether the written corrective feedback is actually having any effect on learning.

Conclusion

The situated nature of written corrective feedback

Hyland and Hyland (2006) commented, ‘it may be … that what is effective feedback for one student in one setting is less so in another’ (p.88).
A sociocultural perspective on written corrective feedback would emphasise the need to adjust the type of written corrective feedback offered to learners to suit their stage of development (Aljaafreh and Lantolf 1994) although how this can be achieved practically remains unclear in the case of written corrective feedback.

By teachers

Teachers need to consider the various options and formulate an explicit policy for correcting errors in learners’ written work. They also need to subject their policy to evaluation by evaluating the effects of their error correction, e.g. through action research.

By researchers

There is an obvious need for carefully designed studies to further investigate the effects of written corrective feedback in general and of different types of written corrective feedback. Guenette (2007) observed that is is important that studies are conducted in a way that make them comparable but sadly that has not typically been the case. A typology of written corrective feedback provides a classification of one of the key variables in written corrective feedback studies – the type of written corrective feedback – which can serve as a basis for research.

Safe social networking alternatives

By Matt  |  2012/01/08 18:54 Posted in Learning  |  Comments (3)

Social NetworkingIn a previous post that I co-authored with Jeff Dionne, A thorny issue: Protecting teachers’ and learners’ right to privacy, we highlighted some of the ethical and legal risks of using popular commercial social networking and micro blogging sites such as Facebook, Google+ and Twitter for educational purposes. Although modern LMS’ built on Social Constructivist approaches provide a number of tools for collaboration and social interaction, they don’t quite offer the persistence and immediacy of the services offered by Facebook, Google, Twitter, et al. So as a follow up to that article, here’s some secure, free and open source alternatives.

What are the criteria that make a social networking platform lower-risk?

For details about what some of the risks are, please see A thorny issue: Protecting teachers’ and learners’ right to privacy. Here’s a few points that make a social networking platform more ethical and legal for your learners to use:

  • Own and administer your teachers’ and learners’ personal information and user generated content.
  • Audit and monitor all channels of communication, including private messages.
  • Manage and define individual teachers’ and learners’ user access privileges.
  • Take down any inappropriate posts, comments or content as soon as they’re reported or detected.
  • Prevent inappropriate or distracting messages from being shown to teachers and learners, i.e. advertising, apps, games, etc.
  • In the case of younger learners, contact parents and/or guardians quickly and easily, e.g. via email, as soon as issues arise.

How can we achieve this?

There are free and open source projects that enable schools, academies, colleges, universities and companies to create and maintain their own social networking services. It’s early days but the outlook is promising.

StatusNetStatusNet

StatusNet is free open source micro blogging software that offers functionality similar to Twitter, Facebook and Google+. However, StatusNet seeks to provide the potential for open, inter-service and distributed communications between micro blogging communities by adopting the OStatus micro blogging communications standard. Enterprises and individuals can install and control their own services and data.

StatusNet is ready for production use (Version 1.0.1) and I’ve installed an instance on my server: http://statusnet.matbury.com

[update] Having explored StatusNet further, I think it’s still not ready for production use. For example, there’s no moderator or admin interface for managing user accounts so you have to go into the database to find the list of users’ IDs in order to discover their profile pages.

Diaspora*Diaspora*

Diaspora* is currently in Alpha development so it isn’t yet ready for production use. It’s a free personal web server that implements a distributed social networking and micro blogging service. Installations of the software can optionally form nodes (termed “pods”) which make up the distributed Diaspora social network. Diaspora is intended to address privacy concerns related to centralized social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+, by allowing users set up their own server (or “pod”) to host content; pods can then interact to share status updates, photographs, and other social data. It allows its users to host their data with a traditional web host, a cloud-based host, an ISP, or a friend. (Source: Wikipedia.org)

There are currently a number of experimental Diaspora* pods up and running that users can join. If you want to try it out, here’s a list of available pods.

The development team are currently working on a feature whereby teachers and learners can export their own data, making it easier for schools, academies, colleges, universities and companies to comply with existing freedom of information laws.

BuddyPressBuddyPress

BuddyPress is a plugin for WordPress which transforms it into a social networking platform. It’s smaller in scope compared to StatusNet and Diaspora* but it’s also ready for use on production servers. It isn’t possible to connect instances of BuddyPress into a network so users have to rely on RSS feeds and pingbacks to keep track of other BuddyPress sites. It’s suitable if you only want your social networks to run from a single site and collaboration between different schools, academies, colleges, universities, agencies and companies will be difficult.

I’m currently experimenting with an installation of WordPress + BuddyPress here. Please feel free to enroll and join in!

elgg.elgg.

Elgg is an award-winning open source social networking engine that provides a robust framework on which to build all kinds of social environments, from a campus wide social network for your university, school or college or an internal collaborative platform for your organization through to a brand-building communications tool for your company and its clients. (Source: http://elgg.org/about.php)

I’ve installed elgg. on my server and I’m exploring its functions and possible uses for educational purposes.

Do you want to get started with Moodle?

By Matt  |  2012/01/02 01:02 Posted in Moodle  |  Comments (8)

MoodleMy first article of 2012, and here’s a quick “How to” guide for teachers, directors of studies, academic managers or anyone who wants to get started with Moodle from a non-IT background. It’s easy, cheap (free) and doesn’t require you to make any commitments or sign any contracts.

About Moodle

As you may already know, Moodle is free and open source software. It’s distributed under a GNU GPL3 licence which means you get it for free and there’s no restrictions on what you can do with it, except that you have to maintain the same free and open licensing with any subsequent modifications you make to the software. However, any learning content, courses, teaching ideas, etc. that you develop on Moodle are yours to decide how you want to copyright, share, distribute, license or sell.

Why learn about Moodle?

Elearning is growing exponentially. At some point in the not-too-distant future, many job ads for teaching positions will include either a requirement or a preference for teachers with experience of using a learning management system (LMS). The best known open source LMS in the world is Moodle. I recommend having a look at Moodle’s statistics page to see just how widely used it is. If you have Moodle experience on your CV/Resume, it’ll make you a more attractive candidate for a teaching or teaching management job and broaden your horizons.

Also, Moodle is founded on a Social Constructivist approach to learning and teaching, making it an ideal platform for trying out or implementing alternative, progressive learning and teaching approaches such as collaborative or group learning, informal learning, second language acquisition, etc. as well as some of the more traditional approaches in EFL/ESL such as Communicative Language Teaching.

Getting started

I’m going to describe a 4 stage process in which you can install a working version of Moodle on your computer. It won’t be connected to the internet and so it’s a very safe way to play around, explore and learn about what it can do and how it works. The steps are as follows:

  1. Download and install a localhost server on your computer.
  2. Download and install a good text editor on your computer.
  3. Download and install Moodle on your localhost server.
  4. Participate in the Moodle community.

WampServerDownload and install a localhost server on your computer

This is the easiest part. I recommend using the free and open source (GPL3+) WampServer, assuming that you’re running Microsoft Windows on your computer. They give very clear installation instructions and support on their website so I won’t repeat any of that here. WampServer requires that you run it as an administrator on your computer. If Windows firewall asks you to let “Apache” to access the internet, click “Yes” or “Allow”. It isn’t actually connecting to the internet, it’s connecting to itself. If you’re running Linux, then you already know how to do this stuff (Why are you reading this?) and if you’re running Apple OSX, there are a number of localhost (MAMP) servers available.

NotepadDownload and install a good text editor on your computer

Microsoft Notepad is unsuitable for editing web files and pages. A good, free and open source (GPL3+) alternative is Notepad++. It’s also useful for “cleaning” text, i.e. removing formatting, before you paste it into a web page editor, wiki, forum, etc. Your web pages will look much tidier, more consistent and easier to read.

MoodleDownload and install Moodle on your localhost server

Installing Moodle is a little bit more difficult. You may not get it right first time but be patient and don’t be shy about asking for help (See “Participate in the Moodle community”). If you can install Moodle on your computer, then installing it on a server is basically the same process. First, download the latest build of the version of Moodle you want to use, either Moodle 1.9 or Moodle 2.2. Generally, Moodle 1.9 is easier to run on a public server and, since it’s been around longer, has a bigger selection of stable 3rd party activity modules to choose from, i.e. you can add on more features. Moodle 2.2 has quite high requirements for servers and may not work on all web hosting services. If you start with 1.9, you can upgrade to 2.2 or later at any time if you want to but you can’t downgrade from Moodle 2.2 to 1.9.

  1. Extract (unzip) the Moodle download and put the /moodle/ directory and all its contents into WampServers’ /www/ directory. (directory = folder)
  2. If you have Skype on, shut it down completely (Quit). Start WampServer and wait for the (W) icon to turn from red, to amber, to green. Open your favourite web browser and type “localhost” into the address bar. You should see the WampServer contents page. You can start Skype again, once WampServer has started.
  3. On the WampServer contents page, under Tools, click on the phpmyadmin link and this is where you’ll create a database for Moodle to install on. phpMyAdmin is standard database management software that you’ll find on most server hosting providers. The installation steps here will be much the same as you’ll use for your final public installation of Moodle and any other database driven software such as WordPress, MediaWiki, Joomla, Drupal and Mambo, so it’s really useful to know.
  4. Create a new database, e.g. “moodledb”, and set the collation to “utf8_general_ci” from the (very long) drop-down list. The default user name is “root” and the default password is blank, i.e. no password. You can change these if you wish but since you’re not connecting Wampserver to the internet, this is unnecessary.
  5. With a good text editor, e.g. Notepad++, open the file (/wamp)/www/moodle/config-dist.php and re-save it as (/wamp)/www/moodle/config.php. This is the file that you’re going to put the database name and password in so that Moodle can install correctly. In config.php, you need to locate and edit 5 lines so that they look like the lines after point 6*.
  6. In your web browser address bar, type in localhost/moodle/. The Moodle installation page should appear. Follow the instructions. If you have any installation problems, please don’t post questions here. REMEMBER TO WRITE DOWN YOUR MOODLE USER NAME AND PASSWORD. It’s very difficult to recover them if you forget them. Moodle.org forums and docs have everything you need to know to resolve almost any issue with Moodle, which brings us to the final part of, “Do you want to get started with Moodle?”

PHPEdit these lines in config.php:

$CFG->dbtype    = ‘mysql’;       // mysql or postgres7 (for now)
$CFG->dbhost    = ‘localhost’;   // eg localhost or db.isp.com
$CFG->dbname    = ‘moodledb’;      // database name, eg moodle
$CFG->dbuser    = ‘root’;    // your database username
$CFG->dbpass    = ”;    // your database password

* In later builds of Moodle, the installer edits these lines for you so it’s possible to skip this step and enter the details in the Moodle installation form. I just think it’s quicker and more reliable to do it manually.

Moodle communityParticipate in the Moodle community

If you’ve successfully got to this part, you now have a fully working installation of Moodle on your computer. You can do anything you like with it, safe in the knowledge that you have a secure sandbox to play around and experiment in. I strongly recommend joining Moodle forums. It’s a huge community of teachers, academic directors, course content developers, software developers, admins, education researchers, etc. who all use Moodle with varying degrees of experience who are very helpful and supportive. This is the best place to ask questions and get help with all aspects of using Moodle. You may even get help from me on there if it’s a Flash or multimedia issue you’re asking about.

If you like instruction manuals and specialised guides, PacktPub have a wide range of books and ebooks (currently 28) on many different aspects of Moodle.

Learning and teachingWhat’s next?

When you’ve played around with Moodle for a while and have some learning and teaching ideas that you’d like to try out, then you’re ready to install Moodle on your server or web hosting service provider (or find a web hosting provider), set up some courses and enroll some learners and teachers on them.

Useful links

Wampserver

MAMP servers for Apple Macs

Notepad++

Moodle downloads

Moodle 1.9 documentation

Moodle forums

Moodle books on PacktPub

FreeMoodle.org – A Moodle installation that is free for you and your learners to use. Funded through charitable donations.

Wikipedia.org – Moodle page.

[EDIT] Thanks to Dr Saurabh Bhatia for pointing out that there’s self-installing versions of Moodle on Moodle.org for both Windows and Macs. However, I don’t recommend these for two main reasons: (a) They aren’t fully functioning localhost servers and so some web services won’t work on them thereby limiting what you can try out on Moodle, and (b) they install Moodle as the only application and at the WWW root so that you can’t install any other web apps on it, for example if you want to try out an open source alternative to Facebook, StatusNet.