Muddling Through Moodle

By Thalia Staikos, 17

Free Space A column by the staff of Freestyle

THALIA STAIKOS, 17

Moodle sounds like a color from the huge Crayola crayon box that we coveted as children. It seems, however, that Moodle, which is an interactive online forum for students and teachers, is far from being coveted by students! The program (which is modeled after Blackboard, another interactive forum used by many colleges) allows teachers to post questions for their students to answer, articles for their students to read, or even class notes. Many high schools have adopted the program, and locally Hempfield has made an effort to put this program to use.

So, here’s how it works as a forum. Let’s say a teacher or a student posts a news article they have found. The rest of the class logs into their Moodle account, accesses the forum and provides a response using their opinion and outside facts. Thus, the program turns into a discussion board as students read the posted article and the responses of their peers.

This year, Hempfield teachers have started to take full advantage of this resource. The students have varying opinions on this new learning tool.

“It’s the initiative right now across the country,” said Dana Depaul, an AP Economics teacher who uses the program. “We want to find out how to use it more effectively. You will be exposed to it in college. Maybe not Moodle, but Blackboard,” he explained.

Here is what an AP Economics class thinks of the whole idea. This class uses Moodle on a weekly basis (at minimum) in order to post articles regarding current economic issues and note student responses to the issues.

“I think it’s a waste of time. I think with most of the articles you just end reading other people’s response. It’s not beneficial,” said senior Steff Kulis.

Another senior, Andrew Kontra, finds Moodle to be useless for a different reason. “It’s pointless when there aren’t news stories,” said Kontra.

He went on to talk about a slow period for the economy which caused the use of Moodle to be meaningless. “We went three weeks straight talking about gas!” Kontra said.

“There’s not much of a connection with the curriculum,” commented senior Kelly Freund.

Steff Kulis agrees. “The stuff we do on Moodle is so detached from what we do every day.”

Kontra brings up another point to the downfalls of Moodle. “It’s pointless for a high school class because we meet for 45 minutes every day.” Kontra believes it would be a beneficial program if utilized for a college class whose students do not have the chance to meet every day. Perhaps then the program would be more beneficial.

Senior Joe Jacobs, however, believes the success of the program depends on the teacher. “A teacher that’s active in Moodle will be more effective than a teacher who’s not,” he explained. His belief is that a teacher who regularly posts articles to respond to or notes to read over will have more success than one who uses it arbitrarily.

Regardless of whether or not the class finds this forum to be academically helpful, some students have found other positives to using Moodle.

“It brings our class together and it unifies us,” senior Colleen O’Grady said. Colleen said that some students use the “Mood Shout Outs.” These are messages students write at the end of their posts, after responding to the teacher’s questions.

“It allows for creativity,” said senior Selena Strandberg, who typically gives her Moodle Shout Outs in the form of song lyrics.

So regardless of the students’ perceptions of the academic benefits of Moodle, this class has certainly found the positive aspects of this forum.

(c) 2007 Intelligencer Journal. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.