Drupal and Moodle together? Really? Really.
In an earlier blog post, Sean Lancaster asked the following question:
i appreciate the effort that is being undertaken to create a terrific online learning environment that brings various resources together seamlessly; however, i am curious to better understand how Drupal and Moodle are different in what they provide. i mean, why would a person use both tools at the same time?
The short answer is that the best option is a subjective determination — kind of like Mac vs PC, etc, etc.
A slightly longer answer is that the choice of tool for the learning environment will be determined by the relationship between learners’ needs, instructors’ needs, and institutional needs.
A still longer answer is that making an across the board choice is no longer necessary, and we are at a place where it’s possible to match the tool to teaching/learning style. It’s possible for an institution to provide these tools side by side to support learners and teachers in the classroom.
Moving outside the classroom, Drupal is a pretty flexible tool that can be used to create intranets for different academic departments, club sites, a public facing school site, an alumni forum — and within each of these contexts, Drupal can be customized and focused to meet the specific needs of the site users. Some people have also used Moodle to meet these needs. The need for a “one size fits all” approach no longer exists, as we have options.
All of these elements (and others ) will factor into the decision. It’s possible to set up OpenAcademic without Drupal, or without Moodle. The solution is, by design, flexible and scalable. However, it’s necessary to stress that the choice of tool to use is just that: a choice. The user has options. The institution has options. The sysadmin has options. People and institutions do similar things in different ways. The work we’re doing at OpenAcademic is intended to provide a flexible, adaptable toolkit. Using the tools within OpenAcademic, you can create a simple web presence, or a learning network that connects learners and institutions on different sides of the world. You can choose to use the tools — in any combination — to meet your needs in your way.
If you’re still awake and reading at this point, I’ve written more about ideas related to this topic here and here and here.
August 5th, 2006 at 5:11 am
i really appreciate your comments and the links to previous postings that are relevant. for what it’s worth, i posed that question because i am *really* struggling with what to use for 2 online courses (two sections of the same undergraduate education course) i am teaching this fall . . . and this fall starts in about 3 1/2 weeks.
i got very excited when i learned that someone was using the Google summer of coding to make a module for Drupal that would be a grade book/assignment manager (i think you might be overseeing that development??? — yep - http://drupal.org/node/60031). that inspired me to install Drupal on my server because it seemed like the missing link. i spent about a week or 2 learning some of the intricacies of Drupal and also installing various modules and doing customization, etc. i could go with Drupal, but i really don’t like the forum. so, i am going to have my students use a phpBB forum i’ve installed and i’ve previously used this forum and know the ins-and-outs and features. that’s going to be two logins — plus, since the grade book is not done, my students will also have a login for our university provided Blackboard, which i’ll use for grades only. i’ll recommend that my students use the same login across all tools, but it’s still doing it . . . and, i’ll have them create blogs as well (i’ll be exploring Elgg later on).
on the other hand, this week i installed Moodle and have been fiddling with it as well. i don’t like the forum included with Moodle either. so, i’ll still link to my phpBB forum, but i could use Moodle’s grade book and that would eliminate BB — i like the idea of only using tools that are free as i work with preservice educators who will be on limited budgets in their own classrooms some day. but, i don’t want to go with Moodle over Drupal just for one feature. there’s just something i haven’t quite put my finger on with regard to Drupal, but i like it much more than Moodle. then again, if i can decide that Moodle is a better tool for my students this semester then i can’t let my bias get in the way of a better learning experience.
time is running out. i am going to continue preparing to use Drupal and Moodle and probably not decide until the final week. hmmm. hmmm. thanks again for your comments and attention to this matter.
August 6th, 2006 at 4:25 am
[…] i discovered a new resource that looks very promising for folks who want to have online learning resources. the site is called OpenAcademic and is all about helping educators to use various resources (e.g., Drupal, Moodle, Elgg, and MediaWiki). their first order of business is creating an integration across these various tools so that a student would only have to login one time and be able to use all tools an instructor chooses from the above list. that’s a big deal, for what it’s worth. well, i discovered the site and promptly posed a question about using Drupal AND Moodle at the same time. i received a quick response and left a comment, which is similar to the rest of my post here: […]
August 6th, 2006 at 7:35 am
Hello, Sean,
You comment here — and your post on your blog — raise some interesting questions.
First, RE:
This is true, but, if all you are using Bb for is grades, I wouldn’t feel too bad about using it over an open source option. More gradebook options in open source tools will come in time — I feel pretty comfortable promising that
RE:
This is a great thought process, and, imo, a very effective way to approach this question — ultimately, the choice of a tool to support a learning environment involves striking the balance between institutional needs, teacher needs, and learner needs. However, if you need to err in any direction, you generally won’t go wrong if you err on the side of meeting learner’s needs. Most schools have tech support on hand to guarantee that the institution can collect and store the data they need in the format they need, while the support for learners is frequently not as available.
Also, you mention bias — I think you can also call “bias” an instinct — and, while it’s good to be able to explain the source of our biases/instincts, I think they can also be very useful in making decisions. The more time an educator spends in the classroom, the better their instincts become — if you are honest with yourself and gird your biases with self-reflection, they can be useful in guiding you in the right direction.
On a practical note, have you looked at the Views module in Drupal? I mention this because you bring up the Drupal forums as a sticking point. The Views module gives you some incredibly flexible options for organizing and displaying content — arguably to the extent that forums aren’t particularly necessary. Within Drupal, you can set up a controlled vocabulary (to include the topics you know they will discuss) alongside a freetagging vocabulary (to allow students to categorize their posts as they want). Then, using the Views module, you can build different displays that provide almost limitless ways to find content.
— edit— the module in Drupal also adds some nice functionality to the Drupal forums. — end edit —
I’m working on a pre-configured download of a Drupal-based class site that will incorporate some of these ideas, plus some additional functionality (social bookmarking and groupwork), plus some documentation explaining how the site was set up (to help with site administration). The site is actually all set up, but the documentation takes some time to get just right. I’ll post a news item on the OpenAcademic blog when it’s ready.
Cheers,
Bill
August 28th, 2006 at 9:50 am
[…] Die Frage, die sich bei der Betrachtung dieser beider Projekte aufdrängt ist: Warum diese verschiedenen Systeme, die teilweise gleiche Funktionalitäten anbieten, zusammengefügt und nicht einfach jeweils um die fehlenden Funktionalitäten erweitert werden? Eine Antwort findet sich im Blog von OpenAcademic: Natürlich sei es möglich, manche dieser Systeme bei der Integration nicht einzusetzen: „It’s possible to set up OpenAcademic without Drupal, or without Moodle.“ (https://openacademic.org/news/?p=11). Die Teilnehmer des OpenAcademic Projekts wollen mit der Integration dieser Systeme Flexibilität beim Design der Lernumgebung gewährleisten. Das Ziel des Projekts ist, eine flexible, adaptierbare Open Source Toolbox anzubieten, mit der es möglich sein soll, allen komplexen Anforderung von Bildungsinstitutionen gerecht zu werden. Die Zukunft wird zeigen, ob es bei diesen verschieden Systemen bleiben wird, oder nur eins erweitert wird, oder ob doch aus der Symbiose ein neues System entsteht. […]