Implementation of a learning card in Moodle

• Author(s): Rocio, Vitor ; Coelho, José ; Pereira, Alda
• Date: 2008
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.2/1941
• Origin: Repositório Aberto da Universidade Aberta
• Subject(s): Pedagogical model; Assessment; Moodle; Learning management system
• Document Type: Article
• Language: English

Description

A credit card is the metaphor for the learning card, a device used in 1st cycle courses, as established in our pedagogical model for online learning. Through it, the student accumulates points earned in assessment activities that contribute to the final evaluation in a course. In this paper we describe the implementation of this device through the adaptation and configuration of Moodle’s features. The new grades subsystem in Moodle 1.9 enabled us to configure courses to conform to our model. This gives both teachers and students the feeling of granting and scoring points in a card, as a reward for accomplishing the goals proposed in particular activities, as opposed to globally compute a final grade as a function of its components. Additionally, code changes to the standard assignment module software were necessary, to allow finer-grained grading. The new groupings feature was also exploited so that we can accommodate in the same space both students in continuous assessment and in final assessment modes. The end result of this work is a template course that easily allows teachers to start building courses according to the pedagogical model, avoiding complex parameter configuration.