Moodle Course Conversion

Moodle is an open source course management system with a wide following. The Open University in the UK uses it to support 200,000 distance learners. My friends at CV&A in Spain have implemented Moodle to support informal learning in numerous corporations.

Ten years ago an Aussie webmaster named Martin Dougiamas at Curtin University created Moodle as part of his PhD thesis. The thesis was titled “The use of Open Source software to support a social constructionist epistemology of teaching and learning within Internet-based communities of reflective inquiry.” Moodle (the “M” is for modular) has sprouted extensions and capabilities you’d expect in a constructivist environment such as forums, chats, and wikis to supplement traditional course management features.

If you’re a teacher and you’re wedded to content-delivery as your primary means of instruction, Moodle can be an excellent choice of platform. Unlike Drupal or ELGG, Moodle enables you to set up courses and learning environments without any programming skills… as long as you have a step-by-step guidebook like this one.

Moodle Course Conversion is a step-by-step cookbook for transferring existing course material into Moodle. While I haven’t attempted to try this out, the instructions appear sound, and there’s plenty of hand holding provided by an author who clearly wants to help you succeed in putting courses online.