ImagineU Online:
Moodle Learning Platform

After a great deal of research, the Imaginal Institute has chosen Moodle as its online learning system for ImagineU.

We wanted to be able to give learners more opportunities for engagement than simiply offering online courses via email, and we are really pleased with Moodle. It is a state of the art learning platform, being used internationally (over 12 million users world wide!).

Moodle Background

Moodle is the brainchild of Martin Dougiamas, Ph.D., who was a system adminstator and webmaster at Curtis University of Technology. Convinced that there were better models awaiting development

 

(getting better reviews than Blackboard, the most popular system that's being used by universities around the US), and offers students a wide variety of ways to access information and share ideas. It includes tools such as:

* live chats
* forums
* glossaries that learners can add to, as well as instructors
* a Wiki feature (like Wikipedia, if you've discovered that) wherein a particular group can co-create a story, poetry, or collect images
* links to other websites
* imported web pages
* graphics and audio files
* exercises and assessment tools, so you can check your own comprehension and evaluate the experience

Even with al of these tools, Moodle is pretty easy to navigate. And, we're pleased and amused to note that the developers of Moodle have defined it as follows:

"The word Moodle was originally an acronum for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning environment, which is mostly useful to programmers and education theorists. It's also a verb that describes the process of lazily meandering through something, doing things as it occurs to you to do them, an enjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight and creativity. As such it applies both the way Moodle was developed, and to the way a student or teacher might approach studying or teaching an online course. Anyone who uses Moodler is a Moodler."

Meandering, yes, that's just our speed!

You can check out our quick tutorial on Moodle right here.
Just look for course called Learning at ImagineU: Free Tutorial, and follow the prompts.