REDESIGNING THE MOODLE INTERFACE FOR USE IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS WITH A RATIO OF 1 COMPUTER PER STUDENT Alexandros Kofteros1, Avraam Triantafillidis2, Antonis Skellas3, Anna Krassa4 1ApoplousLearning,Nicosia,Cyprus,akoftero@spidernet.com.cy

2KalyviaPrimarySchool,Athens,Greece,abraam@yahoo.gr 3KalyviaPrimarySchool,Athens,Greece,antoniskellas@gmail.com 4UniversityofMacedonia,Τhessaloniki,Greece,annak@uom.gr Abstract: The growing trend of one laptop (or one computer) per child, and its pilot implementations in schools in Greece and Cyprus, has shown the need for reexamining the way we administer and deliver content in the classroom. Especially in Cyprus and Greek public (primary) schools, the mixed-ability groups that exist in every classroom require the teacher to handle simultaneously at least 5 different levels of students. A case study of using Moodle for teaching Language, History and Geography in a primary school in Cyprus and a primary school in Greece (http://www.mathisis.org), has shown the benefits that can arise from such an implementation. Moodle can enable the teacher to deliver content in an organised way to the students through lessons that are closely tied to the curriculum, whenever and wherever that is appropriate. By defining the topics (Language, Geography, History) and then evaluating the chapters in which technology will have an added value, we begun developing content for the lessons. One of the main obstacles in the implementation was the interface of Moodle. Moodle was never designed for use in primary education, especially for delivering and administering content. The open source nature of Moodle, along with the versatility of its themes and the expandability provided by add-on modules, allowed the heavy customisation of the interface, as well as the addition of several modules that were considered of great added value to the learning process. Such modules allow the deployment of interactive educational games (using the Game module) or video conferencing using DiDio (under test), or third-party whiteboard tools such as Scriblink (http://www.scriblink.com). Guidelines were also created for the development of lessons, so that consistency was kept even one volunteer groups of teachers were developing content. Parents were also introduced to the environment of Mathisis.org, and they were given a number of presentations to familiarise them with the benefits of Learning Management Systems. For various lessons, students from Dasoupolis Primary School (Cyprus) collaborated with students from Kalyvia Primary School (Greece) using Forums, Chatroom, Instant Messaging Software (Skype). Lessons were developed that encouraged the collaboration between students from both countries, covering such topics as the need for schoo uniform, environmental education etc. User logs showed that students were using the Chat room to talk on various issues (including leisure topics) even during weekends. Currently, Mathisis.org is at version 3 and a major revision is expected September 2008 with additional content development. The first part of the implementation was focused on the useability of the platform itself. The second part

of the implementation (September 2008 – June 2009) will focus on learning outcomes using Moodle.

Keywords: Moodle, Open Source, elearning, Learning Objects

1. Introduction

The Ministry of Education & Culture (Cyprus) is promoting the implementation of ICT in education (K12) with the Evagoras I and Evagoras II plans. By the year 2010, every single classroom will be equipped with at least 3 workstations, broadband internet connectivity, an interactive whiteboard, and access to a central Learning Management System for every teacher and student. Similarly, the Greek Ministry of Education is promoting its own strategy of one laptop per child, with a pilot study of 20 000 laptops set for the year 2008 – 2009. The Greek Ministry of Education is relying on Moodle as part of its Panhellenic School Network for delivering content to both educators and students. In both cases, however, the Learning Management System is used as a general portal towards content that serves both teachers and students.

For this case study, the Moodle platform was selected because it is the leading open source LMS platform, is highly regarded in the academic world, and is strongly supported in Greece by the Ministry of Education and a number of universities, including the University of Macedonia. In order to be able to enable students to work on the LMS, two schools (Greece and Cyprus) were selected that had computer labs capable of supporting one to one computing. Both schools (Dasoupolis Primary, Cyprus and Kalyvia Attikis, Greece) have computer labs running open source software such as Linux and OpenOffice. These computers are also thin client devices, therefore eliminating technical issues that might impact the availability of computers. The fact that the main operating system was Linux, enabled teachers to work without worrying about spyware or viruses.

The teachers in both schools were very experienced with at least 8 years of teaching in primary schools (4th to 6th grades), Masters degrees in pedagogical areas, and extensive experience in using computers. The experience of teachers in using computers as well as their experience in actual teaching is a crucial factor in the success of any ICT implementation (Becker & Ravitz 2001).

2. The Moodle Learning Management System

Moodle is an open source and extremely versatile learning management system. Since it is open source, there are no costs involved for user licences or for the platform itself, as opposed to competitive platforms such as the Lotus Learning Management System from IBM or WebCT. Moodle is heavily supported by a number of volunteers and academics, and is the primary LMS for many universities and large organisations, including the Greek Ministry of Education, the University of Macedonia, and the Open University of Cyprus. As an LMS, it supports the extension of its functions through the installation of additional modules that can offer its users or content creators, among other functions,

tools for synchronous and asynchronous communication, shared whiteboards, interactive educational activities, quizzes, questionnaires etc. Moodle also has its own flexible, easy to use tools for developing content and it can also support the interoperability between educational content developed using common and freely available tools such as HotPotatoes or Jclic. The bibliography is extremely weak as far as implementation of LMS as a learning delivery platform in primary education is concerned. The vast majority of implementations of Learning Management Systems bibliographically, are dealing with adult education. However, the possibility of delivering the content to students in primary education, in an environment that supports one computer per classroom, in conjunction with the capability of keeping a record of children activities and the added value of teacher – student interaction even after school hours, urged the rethinking of the implementation of Moodle in the classroom. The normal interface of Moodle (or any other LMS) is dictated by the amount of information the administrator wants to keep on the front page. Also, the interface itself is subject to the themes or templates either selected by the administrator or enforced by the system itself. Moodle themes are readily available on the internet, either through the official web site (www.moodle.org) or through various third parties. The available themes, even the commercial ones, were not found to be satisfactory as they didnt offer an attractive and extremely easy to use environment. They all shared a similar ‘entry’ screen with various text boxes and other information, including long lists of lesson categories.

Figure 1: The official Moodle page of the Cyprus Ministry of Education Given the fact that students in Cyprus and Greece are placed in mixed-ability classrooms, and the need for engaging all students, one requirement was to redesign the interface in such a way that was intuitive, easy to use and attractive to children. By employing a graphic designer and custom HTML (HyperText Markup Language, the code with which most web pages are created) the Moodle interface was completely revisited so that only the calendar (in Greek) and the main lesson categories were visible.

Figure 2: The Mathisis web site as used in this case study Children were faced with a very easy to understand Moodle interface. Even the login screen was altered so that newcomers could create their own user accounts very easily. Special parents pages were created to welcome their feedback and support, and a general Chat section was established that allowed only the students from the two schools to participate. Normal Moodle courses show a list of all subjects and categories, including sub categories. This can create an overwhelming list of lessons and it was avoided by using custom HTML code on the graphic buttons (Figure 2) that linked directly to the category involved (ie Geography). Therefore, from the main menu, students could navigate with just one click to a given Subject and from there to the lesson of the day. Each student was encouraged to complete his/her profile in order to allow students from each school to learn more about them. However, strict rules were put into place to protect sensitive information such as home phone numbers, photographs (after a request by the Ministry of Education Cyprus) and other information (ie marital status of parents). Children had the option of using the built-in Blogs of Moodle, a feature that was never fully utilised as most students interested in blogging had already created Hi5 accounts. Hi5 is an extremely popular social networking web site, attracting many people across all ages to exchange information, photographs and inform on activities. Out of 46 students involved from both schools, 13 had Hi5 accounts. Apart from the Calendar of the first page, the only other feature that was left visible was the Connected Users module. This was left deliberately functional and visible, so that students logged into the system could ‘see’ other students and exchange messages. Children were aware that teachers could see these instant messages, so they were very careful on the language used. Logs showed that children were using the Chat room in the afternoons on a regular basis (65%) to chat, and the instant messaging during classroom work for exchanging advice on the lessons (98%). Since collaborative work was one of the areas we wanted to improve on using online tools, we encouraged this exchange of information between students, especially when they

started exchanging messages not only between their classmates but also between the children from the other country. An interactive whiteboard was used in both classes, with shared whiteboard used to exchange information between the two classrooms, whenever needed. Skype was used for delivering speech and image between classrooms and students could have discussions on various topics in order to exchange views and findings. Since both schools have broadband access to the internet (1.5Mbps), the use of sound and video over skype was possible with headsets helping deliver voice from one place to the other. The interactive board was also used at the beginning of the lesson, as an introductory tool, and at the end of the lesson to summarize the findings and results.

3. Development of content A very important part of any Learning Management System is the content. The European Union during the eLearning Summit (2001) has recognised the need for quality content that will allow the proper implementation of elearning. However, the cost of developing content for elearning applications can be very high (Boyle 2003). In order to minimize the cost of content development, the various common topics were broken down into Learning Objects. The use of Learning Objects can have a significant impact to both the time required to develop lessons as well as reducing the cost and complexity of digital content (Kramer 2005). Learning Objects, in Learning Management Systems, are entities that can be used and reused to enhance learning (Wiley, Gibbons, Recker 2000). According to Wiley (2004), Learning Objects are based on the principal of breaking the content into small parts that can be updated or reused in a considerably short amount of time. This does not deviate from the normal procedures followed by educators. According to Gibbons, Nelson and Richards (2000) when teachers have access to education content for the first time, they tend to break it down into small parts and then reassemble it in such a way that can better reflect the learning goals. The subjects of History, Language and Geography were selected by both schools. Greece and Cyprus share the same curriculum for History and Language, and similar curriculum for Geography. Also, content already available through other sources such as the Ministries of Education or the internet can cover parts of the curriculum of these subjects. The use of online tools such as Google Maps or Google Earth can be implemented in Moodle lessons through the use of hyperlinks, allowing the rapid development and deployment of content. In some cases we embedded flash video through YouTube, using the html code provided by the online video service. This video footage was primarily used in Language. One of the main obstacles in using computers, especially with fifth grade students, is their inability to write long texts – even long sentences- on the computer. Therefore, we divided the actual text into two categories: we used forums with either open- ended discussions on specific topics, and forums with specific questions for discussion which required little text. In these cases, one or two sentences was adequate as an answer, since what we wanted to achieve was mostly for the students to get engaged in a discussion. In cases where we had questions or topics that needed more thorough answers and thus more text, we relied on pen and paper assignments.

This might seem as if we missed a lot of the point of using a digital content delivery system, however especially at this early age, writing skills are a requirement and we needed to stay focused on a blended approach. Every lesson in Moodle was comprised of various topics, structured using Bloom’s taxinomy. Even though there was an insistence by various partners to push a more constructivistic approach, the necessities and requirements of both Ministries of Education could not make that possible, at least not to the extend we would like. In order to keep the students focused on what they should be researching, a set of questions was created for each lesson. These questions worked as the basic guideline of how to approach information given through the topics of each lesson. The questions were structured in such a way as to guide students from simpler to more complex terms, while allowing students to exchange views using the tools they had readily available (instant chatting, peer discussion).

Figure 3: the structure of a lesson (Language) on Mathisis The lesson always begun with an introduction, clearly stating the learning goals of the day. Each Language lesson had a duration of 2 periods (80 minutes) while History and Geography lessons had a duration of 1 period (40 minutes). Students were free to answer the questions in any order they liked, even though they were structured from simpler to more complex. Each lesson had at least one Forum exercice, one multiple choice exercise, and a set of 4-5 questions to be answered on pen and paper. For more advanced students, each lesson offered the chance to use additional content (images, additional text) in order to create a project. Each project was in the form of a presentation file (OpenOffice Impress or even PowerPoint) with clear guidelines on what was expected of its content, and it required the studying of more sources of information that resulted in a summary – and extension- of the content of the lesson. One of the main problem faced by the teachers and content developers, was the lack of appropriate content in Greek. For english speakers, there is a lot of quality content

for all ages developed by universities, companies or organisations, including National Geographic, NASA, BBC. For Greek speaking primary school students, there is little to no content available, at least not for the specific age groups. In many cases, when text from Wikipedia or Livepedia or other sources was not acceptable or suitable for fifth graders, the teachers rewrote some of the text and created additional web pages which they linked to the Moodle lesson, so that students could more easily understand it. 4. The role of the teacher

An LMS, and a one to one computer implementation can change the way educators interact with their students. Students were encouraged to work on their own and the teacher was given a role of facilitating learning. In many cases, students would struggle to understand which link might ‘hide’, in their own saying, the answer, and they had to figure themselves which information was necessary and which was redundant. As the vast majority of students were engaged most of the time on their own, with their assignments, teachers could focus their attention on the students that really require their help in order to learn. Contrary to more constructivistic approaches, in this particular case the content was the center of the process and not the student him/herself.

Even after school hours, teachers from both schools would regularly log on the LMS or use their instant messaging accounts to talk with children. In many cases, parents would join the discussion using their children’s IM accounts, and discuss assignments or other school-related issues with the teachers.

Figure 4: The Learning Model

Parents could have access to their children’s records on what they did at school, and even communicate with the teachers regarding their performance. In order to bring parents closer to the whole process, a special lesson was organised with all parents present at school, to observe their children working using the LMS (Cyprus).

A similar lesson but in the afternoon took place in Greece, and almost all parents participated to observe first hand the way their children worked under this approach.

L.O.LMS

StudentsContent

Forums

Grades Parents

Teacher

5. Stages of implementation During the first 2 months (September to October 2007), students got used to working with their computers. Even though some of them already had computers, the proper terminology and basic use was demonstrated to make sure everyone was almost at the same standard. In some cases, computers were donated or given for a certain period of time to ensure that all children had a PC at home. This was made possible thanks to a recycling programme in which obsolete computers are made useable again using the Xubuntu Linux. From October to November 2007, students worked on Moodle with simple projects focusing mainly on collaboration between their classroom and the classroom from the other school, exchanging such views as the necessity to wear a school uniform or not (students in Greece dont wear uniform, as opposed to students in Cyprus). November to December was the period in which students had to start working on actual assignments using a blended approach (pen and paper as well as online activities). During Christmas holidays, lessons were reworked and improved, to allow students to more easily identify the steps they had to take to reach the learning goals of a lesson. Initially, there were no structured questions and students had no idea where to click and what to search for, even when the links were given to them. Generic assignments of the type ‘create a presentation on China’ resulted to very poor results, since students had no guidelines on what was or was not important to include. Therefore, the structured questions strategy was implemented, in order to help students define the core of the assignment, with the freedom to add additional content as they saw necessary. Between January and May 2008, students were more comfortably working under the LMS, loging into the system easily, and understanding the course of action to take in every lesson. By the end of the year, some students became accustomed to identifying the necessary information in various sources, in order to either complete an assignment or answer a question. However, in this first year the main aim was to redesign Moodle to make it more user friendly and then identify and implement the various aspects that would allow an LMS-based lesson to be easily understood by students. 6. Conclusions Learning Management Systems are very important tools not only for higher education but also for primary and secondary. By the end of the year, students were motivated to log into their Moodle site, which they found very attractive and easy to use, and work with the lessons we had prepared well in advance. The redesign of the Moodle site (http://www.mathisis.org) is far from perfect, since we lacked proper funding to actually move under the codebase and change even more aspects. We have, however, identified various parts that must be addressed such as the need to create student profiles that show specific information to specific students. In that way, a student with low attainment in maths will be faced with simpler exercises, whereas a student who is very good or even charismatic, can have access to far more difficult assignments. The need of investing more time and resources in developing and improving the LMS for primary schools has become so evident that even Moodle’s creator, Martin

Dougiamas, has joined the OLPC team in bringing access to the XO laptop and thus children from most countries of the world to the System. For school year 2008 -2009 our intention is to focus on the learning outcomes, based on the structure and design we have previously created. Α collaboration between the members of this case study and the pedagogical department of the University of Cyprus will allow a more thorough analysis of the impact the LMS and online lessons, as well as the deployment of synchronous and asynchronous communication that brings students, teachers and parents more closely together in order to improve or change learning.

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