How does a Learning Management System relate to established principles of good practice in undergraduate education? De Anza College has an entire online course answering this question.
Here are some easy examples:
| Good practice: | How Moodle supports good practice |
| 1. Encourages student-faculty contact. | Students can double-click the teacher’s name, anywhere it appears, and send a short message. It will be delivered by email if it cannot be displayed immediately.Easy-to-create forums can allow students to start a discussion within a course context, visible to the course faculty and students. |
| 2. Encourages cooperation among students. | Easy-to-create forums, wikis and glossaries can allow students to start a discussion or document or collection within a course context, visible to the course faculty and students. |
| 3. Encourages active learning. | Forums, wikis, glossaries and many other activities excite and track the level of contribution of individual students. |
| 4. Gives prompt feedback. | Automated marking and feedback can easily be set up in quizzes, choice, various game components, hotpotatoes.Peer ratings (voting) and comments can be invited in activities such as forums and glossaries. |
| 5. Emphasizes time on task. | The collaborative activities can become large projects. For feedback, students can view their own machine logs and contribution history in their profile. |
| 6. Communicates high expectations. | Gradebook collects teacher feedback and scores from all activities, both automarked and manual, in a course. Quizzes can permit repeated attempts to encourage mastery. Projects (workshops) support iterative improvement subject to review by teachers. |
| 7. Respects diverse talents and ways of learning. | Moodle supports a wide variety of activity types. |
References:
- Chickering, A.W. et al., 1987. Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education, Johnson Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.uis.edu/liberalstudies/students/documents/sevenprinciples.pdf
- Taylor, V., 2008. Technology Supported Learning and Retention (TSLR). Available at: http://faculty.deanza.edu/taylorvalerie/stories/storyReader$524
- 2008. Technology Supported Learning & Retention Course Evaluation Checklist. Wikibooks. Available at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Technology_Supported_Learning_%26_Retention/Course_Evaluation_Checklist
- McHutchins, H., 2003. Instructional Immediacy and the Seven Principles: Strategies for Facilitating Online Courses. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, VI(III). Available at: http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/fall63/hutchins63.html