Setting up the Moodle
The idea to use a moodle, rather than blackboard or some other alternative, has been an on-again, off-again discussion for me for what amounts to a couple of years.
As mentioned a few days ago, I set up a moodle for my social psychology class this summer. The course starts July 13th at Hunter. If you want to look at what’s up so far, you must enrol: ourfutureenvironment.org/moodle
If you have taught social psychology or used the moodle with college students, please give me some advice!
I decided to set my moodle up just a few weeks ago (as opposed to talking about doing it) after discussing with a friend (as most ideas tend to happen) about whether we liked bluehost and what it offered compared to other hosts. I had never explored any of the extra available plugins on the bluehost c-panel, and was surprised to see they endorse/make available a moodle. Setting up a basic moodle within bluehost was a simple point and click operation.
(I briefly considered buying a new domain separate from my blog but thought keeping the two related might help me maintain my blog and moodle if this process is more transparent to students. What have other instructors done in this situation? Are there very many out there who run an online learning environment separate from the institution?)
I would think an instructor with at least a blog, regardless of technical ability level, would be more likely to take the initiative to use a moodle within a class if he or she knew it was easy to set up and use. I know I’m being too optimistic. But, from my current work experience as a fellow in a technology and literacy program in NYC public schools, the teachers who are in their 20s to mid 30s and have been teaching only a few years are more likely than others to spend time using technology in the classroom. This translates into only the CUNY adjuncts who dislike blackboard or the commodification of education being the only ones most likely to use a moodle….
Blog posts to come:
Help, everyone thinks I’m spam!
Moodle, despite its tendency to one-sided creation, does incite creativity and interaction unheard of in blackboard.
Ok, so its set up, now what?
I teach a college public speaking class. I just discovered Moodle and I really like the idea of having my own CMS separate from my university’s CMS.
In a perfect world, I would host Moodle on my university webpage (but that will not happen). So I would be forced to use something like bluehost.
To answer your question, you can do either. Have two separate websites: one for the blog and one for Moodle. But I would do what you did. Have the blog as the main website and have the Moodle CMS as a part of my blog.