Moodle is a leading open source Virtual Learning Environment – a web platform for designed to deliver teaching material online as well as promote interaction between students and teachers – and it formed the core of the Subject Learning Coaches programme ran by the Department for Education and Skills. The system was designed and developed by my employer, and I was brought in to provide ongoing support and development to the live environment.
One such development task was to implement an entirely new Moodle course theme for a forthcoming module. The design of the theme was based around established pedagogical patterns: it was done with little thought to how it could be fitted into Moodle and it was made very clear the that the accuracy of the final HTML was extremely important. Having spent eight months supporting the site, including manually merging official Moodle patches into the code base, I was concious that the solution must be “low impact” – not requiring substantial changes to Moodle itself, thus making it much more maintainable.
With a bit of lateral thinking, I manipulated Moodle’s course system to provide a flexible solution that supported all of the functional elements whilst presenting them in the desired format. The “teacher view” for editing the course presented the contents in the standard Moodle format, meaning educators did not require additional training on how to load their course with content. The “student view” took the flat content of the course and dynamically arranged it into the Five Discoveries format resulting in an engaging and motivating user experience for the students.
SLC Moodle - Five Discoveries overview
SLC Moodle - Five Discoveries topic
