Towards PLEs through Widget Spaces in Moodle

Evgeny Bogdanov1, Carsten Ullrich2, Erik Isaksson3, Matthias Palmer3 and Denis Gillet1

  1. Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
    1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
    {evgeny.bogdanov,denis.gillet}@epfl.ch
  2. Shanghai Jiao Tong University
    200030 Shanghai, China
    ullrich c@sjtu.edu.cn
  3. Uppsala University
    Box 256, 751 05 Uppsala, Sweden
    {erikis,matthias}@kth.se

Abstract

Bringing flexibility and extensibility into Learning Management Systems is crucial because it gives teachers and students a free choice of technologies and educational materials they want to use for their courses. This paper presents a solution by enabling widgets (OpenSocial apps) within Moodle. Our first Moodle plugin allows teachers to freely choose a set of tools they want to use in their courses, although students cannot change widgets proposed by teachers. Additionally, the plugin enables the flexible interaction interfaces inside Moodle and improves the interoperability of Moodle with other Web platforms. The environment was evaluated with students within several courses. Even though the environment was perceived as useful by students, they lacked their own personalization. The second Moodle plugin described tackles this problem.

Key words

widgets, opensocial, learning management systems, personal learning environments, flexible education

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.2298/CSIS121216016B

Publication information

Volume 11, Issue 1 (January 2014)
Year of Publication: 2014
ISSN: 2406-1018 (Online)
Publisher: ComSIS Consortium

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How to cite

Bogdanov, E., Ullrich, C., Isaksson, E., Palmer, M., Gillet, D.: Towards PLEs through Widget Spaces in Moodle. Computer Science and Information Systems, Vol. 11, No. 1, 443–460. (2014), https://doi.org/10.2298/CSIS121216016B