Confessions of a Moodle Convert

Can Moodle change the student-professor relationship for the better? The learning environment and course management software just might, and make education more democratic and participatory, says Luke Fernandez, assistant manager of program and technology development at Weber State University, in Utah. He muses on the educational effects of Moodle in a post on Academic Commons.

Mr. Fernandez went to Moodlemoot, a conference of Moodle users, last month in San Francisco. He heard that the software embodies a philosophy, one that emphasizes learning as something accomplished socially, through interacting with peers, rather than through isolated inquiry.

“I wasn’t sure I wanted a philosophy of education built into the software I used in my class,” Mr. Fernandez writes. “After all, what if I subscribed to some other teaching philosophy? Wouldn’t a more agnostic technology be more consonant with a professor’s need for ideological freedom? Mine are common sentiments, and they explain why some harbor reservations about the Moodle software.”

But he says he left the meeting feeling “evangelized.” Moodle, he decided, was both a technology and a community, where software developers interact to create a collaborative environment, and teachers build on that collaboration.

But back home, he’s had two second thoughts. One is that, in his own teaching, things haven’t been as collaborative as Moodle developers preach. Software, he concludes, can only take you so far. Teachers have to go the rest of the way.

Mr. Fernandez had another reservation. “I wonder whether in the rush to celebrate the virtues of openness and the fun of group learning, we’re forgetting the virtues inherent in learning in private, in reclusive Walden-like settings,” he writes.—Josh Fischman