developing thoughts on Moodle

Well it's been 2 weeks of working with Moodle, although just one week where students are trying to access the stuff that I think I'm posting. Here's what I think so far:

Good stuff

• really easy to work in external information
• very easy to rearrange material within the course plan to help plan/design a course
• the ability to switch to "student" mode and see what they see is fantastic
• activity reports are very intuitive

Confusing stuff or stuff that I'm still trying to figure out....

• gradebook is very complicated. Also, can't seem to have anything be worth more than 100 points
• use of user roles is confusing, may be why I've had some access issues
• for some reason my announcements get put either into a "news" or a "forum" which seems to have some different implications for how they get displayed
• spent a lot of time this week ensuring that the students are getting my posts and that they can access the files I upload. There is definately a learning curve to deal with and it's worth nailing that down quickly in the semester before more critical info gets online.

Things I'll be playing with in coming weeks

• online submission and grading of assignments
• getting a quick survey up and running
• ironing out the gradebook so it makes sense

more to come.....