Α Technique to Adapt Course Presentation in Moodle

Abstract

Learning styles play a crucial role in students’ success in a course. This article presents how a course can differ among learners with different learning styles regarding the position of the learning objects in the particular course. The proposed technique was implemented in Moodle so as to be used either for an e-learning course or for blended learning. Although this technique is implemented in Moodle it can be easily integrated in any other Learning Management System as long as it is able to provide the same types of learning objects. Two evaluation studies of a Moodle course were conducted in the context of an introductory programming course in order to examine the effectiveness of the proposed technique and students’ feedback on it. In both studies, two groups were formed, namely the experimental and the control group. The adaptation technique described in this paper was applied for the experimental group, while the control group had access to the standard version of Moodle. The studies were conducted during the winter semester of the 2015/16 and the 2016/2017 academic year, respectively. Both studies were conducted over the first six weeks of the course, up to the mid-term exam. On completion of the respective course sections but prior to the mid-term exam, all students had to answer a questionnaire evaluating the attended course. The questionnaire consisted of five-point Likert type questions evaluating the proposed adaptation technique, system usability and motivational appeal. The aim of our analysis was to investigate whether our adaptation technique helped students to improve their learning outcomes without increasing Moodle’s complexity. Summarizing the findings of the study, we come to the conclusion that the implementation of the proposed technique into Moodle is positively evaluated by the experimental group, resulting in significantly higher grades on the mid-term exam comparatively to the control group.