Timothy Takamoto, posting in the Penn State Distance Education Online Symposium (DEOS) LISTSERV, describes how and why one educational CMS — Moodle — natively supports constructivist-based learning. Insightfully, he also points out how (thanks to Moodle’s active open-source development) users can take advantage of Moodle’s triggering and testing modules to produce a drill-and-test course design that competes with the best (or worst?) WebCT or Blackboard has to offer.

(Link compliments of David Carter-Todd)

Says Takamoto, a self-described mere “satisfied user” of Moodle:

The Moodle software suite is particularly effective at: providing information (resources, documents, images etc), opportunities to discuss that information (e.g. one click creation of forums, and chat spaces), and cooperate in providing information (eg. student uploaded resources, and wiki-style cooperatively produced archives). Thus, Moodle is learner-centered, cooperative, interactive, transparent, and geared towards developing intrinsic motivation through these means. Hence Moodle is “constructivist”, and generally ‘right-on.’

If only all edu-CMS consumers could be so enlightened!

In his comments comparing the open-source Moodle platform to Blackboard and WebCT, Takamoto reveals a solid understanding of how an edu-CMS can either enable or impede constructivist learning approaches. Yet at the same time, he pragmatically recognizes the need for (or reality of?) “teacher-centered control” features including triggering (what in our own Ellis Community Learning Platform we call “gating”) and testing — features that were the traditional strengths of the commercial heavyweights. Indeed, Takamoto points out how one can turn a “constructivist-to-the-core platform” into yet another “drill-and-test platform:”

… the Moodle software suite has a functionality which now overflows the boundaries of the original creator’s particular pedagogical proclivities. You can now use Moodle to put your students in an electronic straightjacket, jump through hoops, and make’em memorise, using a very non-constructivist pedagogy.

I like Moodle. Alot. Let’s just hope that in the arena of edu-based content/course management systems, even if the features are there, we don’t end up settling for the lowest common denominator syndrome that seems to rule supreme in (edu) software development.

Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it, about it, and subscribe to the blog RSS feed.

Related posts:

1. An opportunity to make a difference
2. Community, Content and Collaboration Management Systems: Finally, someone gets it!
3. LAM’S, PLE’s, and Hub’s
4. Don Norman laughs last
5. The Ellis Community Learning Platform: described in equal parts whitepaper and marketing communcation