Using VLE Moodle to put research into practice

By Becka Currant, Senior Adviser, Learner Development Unit, University of Bradford

This session focused on providing participants with an overview of how Moodle has been used to support the collaboration and networking of colleagues within the HECSU Putting Research Outcomes into Practice (PROP) community.

Moodle, an open course management system (‘geek speak’ for virtual learning environment, VLE), was chosen for a number of different reasons. These included:

• A need for an area to share ideas and files between members of PROP but using something different to email.
• The site needed to be accessible by all and could not, therefore, be hosted within one institution’s current VLE.
• The site needed to be protected from public access, but open to guests.
• It had to be low cost - Moodle is free!
• It needed to be flexible enough to accommodate different needs, from sharing files to supporting the use of discussion forums, blogs and wikis.
• Finally, there was experience within the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services (AGCAS) of using Moodle to design an online learning course.

The session demonstrated to participants some of the more interactive elements of Moodle, including the use of discussion forums. Within the PROP Moodle site, a ‘social noticeboard’ has been established which enables any participant to post a message and read what other people have posted (see Figure 1). Examples of the types of messages posted are introductions from people, questions about content within the site and links to articles and websites of interest. In addition, the PROP community has been split into project groups and each project group has access to a private idea discussion space to enable them to progress their ideas (see Figure 2).

Figure 1. The social noticeboard in Moodle

Figure 2. private sub-group discussion space

Towards the end of the workshop, participants were able to engage in discussion with each other about how they might use this type of tool in their work to collaborate with colleagues.

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