Moodle, the popular course management system for educators, has been integrated with Second Life and early work has been done to bridge Moodle to Metaplace and other platforms. The system, called SLOODLE, gets an update today with the launch of version 4.0.
According to a release:
Tutors and students world-wide are used to working with web-based Learning Management Systems, sometimes known as Virtual Learning Environments, which provide secure spaces for sharing documents, holding discussions or conducting online assessments. In recent years Learning Management Systems have found themselves at the centre of teaching and learning in both classroom based and distance learning education. Moodle is the world’s most popular open source learning management system, with over 30 million users, and SLOODLE brings this world class eLearning platform to Second Life.
As institutions from around the world grow in confidence with exploiting 3D virtual worlds to support teaching and learning, so is awareness growing in the benefits from integrated eLearning solutions that cross the web/3D divide. As an open-source platform SLOODLE is both freely available and easily enhanced and adapted to suit the needs of diverse student bodies. A number of third-party web-hosts now offer Moodle hosting with SLOODLE installed either on request or as standard, making easier than ever to get started with SLOODLE.
The new version of SLOODLE will be introduced at a launch party today in Second Life, hosted by Jeremy Kemp of the San José State University, School of Library & Information Science (“Jeremy Kabumpo” in Second Life). The event is at 2:00 pm SLT.
SLOODLE tools were developed with feedback from developers, educators and students, and include:
• Web-intercom. A chat-room that brings Moodle chatroom and Second Life chats together. Students can participate in chats in Second Life using the accessible Moodle chatroom. Discussions can be archived securely in a Moodle database.
• Registration booth. Identity management for Second Life and Moodle. Links students’ virtual world identities to their college user accounts.
• Quiz tool and 3D Drop Box. Assess in Second Life – grade in Moodle. Set quizzes or 3D modelling tasks in an engaging 3D environment. Review grades quickly and easily in the standard Moodle gradebook.
• Choice tool. Allow students to vote (and see results) in Second Life as well as in Moodle.
• Multi-function SLOODLE Toolbar. Enhances the Second Life user interface. Use a range of classroom gestures, quickly get a list of the Moodle user names of the avatars around or write notes directly into to your Moodle blog from Second Life.
• Presenter. Quickly author Second Life presentations mixing slides, web-pages and video on Moodle. Present in Second Life without having go through lengthy processes to convert or upload images, while enabling web-based access to the same materials via Moodle.
A recent user-contribution extends this – enabling one-click publishing of PDF documents to Second Life.
SLOODLE is funded and supported by Eduserve.
Re: “Moodle is the world’s most popular open source learning management system, with over 30 million users”
I question this claim. I think what happens is that in-group of opensource boosters tell each other on forums “Oh, I’ve just installed Moodle and I teach a class of 100″ or “I have 2,000 students in all my courses” and that way they can all claim “users”. These hapless users have Moodle pressed on them.
I encountered Moodle in that massively ridiculous massively multiplayer online course in “Constructivism” this last fall, and I found it clunky, annoying, filled with opt-out features people hated, etc. Like Drupal. Like other opensource thingies we are all “supposed” to like. If it worked, if it wasn’t clunky and non-user-friendly, if the people flogging it weren’t so religious about it, it if were self-evidently easy to use and helpful, I’d have no need to post here.
I love it when Black Board employees post.
I’m pretty sure Dan, if you’re referring to Prok, that he’s not a Blackboard employee.
I have issues with Moodle as well, by the way, and I do feel it’s the victim of one of the perils of open source projects: it is not as polished as it should be, and it ends up with clunky bits and pieces and a crappy interface. I can’t really comment on the install base, it’s a good point however - metrics like that can be a slippery issue. Besides - maybe half the users are bots.