Below are collection of resources related to a presentation given at Moodle Moot’AU 2016, titled “How and why do people use the Moodle Book Module?”
The Graphs section below provides links to individual web pages that contain many of the charts included in the presentation slides below. The graphs are interactive. Roll the mouse over the graph to see some numbers, zoom in, pan around, etc.
Slides
Abstract
The Moodle Book module “makes it easy to create multi-page resources with a book-like format”. During the first half of 2012 the Moodle Book module was used in only 2 courses at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ). Those 2 courses contained 32 resources produced with the Book module. By the second half of 2015, 68 courses used the Book module to produce 396 resources. This presentation will report on some of the findings of an exploratory case study that is interested in answering the question: How and why do learners and teachers use the Moodle Book module?
The presentation will aim to
- examine the characteristics (media used, readability, structure etc.) of the of content of the Book resources;
- reveal the patterns and paths behind how authors and readers interacted with the Book resources;
- suggest possible relationships between the content characteristics and usage by authors/readers;
- identify factors that contributed to why teaching staff made the decision to adopt (or not); and, continue using (or not) the Book module;
- outline some initial implications that these findings might have for the support and development of the Moodle Book; and,
- invite alternate explanations, implications and suggestions for what was found and what might be done next.
Pointers to graphs
The following provide links to web pages that contain charts etc that are used in the presentation.
How big are the courses?
- How many students in courses using the Book?
- How many students in all courses?Compare the two and it appears that courses using the Book tend to be larger than other courses.
- In the courses using the Book, how many Book resources do they have?
- How many chapters did each Book resource have?
- How many words did each Book resource have?
What percentage of students are online?
- What percentage of students in Book courses are online students?
- What percentage of students in all courses are online students?It seems originally Book courses had a smaller percentage of online students than all courses. But in 2015 the Book courses became more similar in terms of % of online students.
When are the books used?
- When (hours of the day) are the Moodle books used? – viewed, printed, updated
- When (days of the month) are Book resources viewed?
- When (hours of the month) are Book resources printed?
What percentage of the students are reading all of the Book
- For Book resource from all courses, what percentage of students read all of the book?
- For Book resources in unusual courses, what percentage of students read all of the book?
Unusual is defined as:- Import – courses that used the Book import (~10% students)
- Big – courses that have really big books.
- Many – courses that have a large number of books.
- High revisions – courses that that have books that have been modified a high number of times.
It appears that the unusual courses are completed by lower percentage of students than all other course.
- For the course EDC3100, what percentage of students read all of the book?
This course is explicitly designed to use the Book as a core part of the course design. In addition, activity completion is used to track completion and it contributes (a small amount) to the students’ final mark.Not suprisingly, higher percentage of students have completed the book resources in this course than others.
Misc other
- How many times do Book resources get revised?
- How readable (Flesch-reading ease) are the book resources?
- How many hyperlinks do the Book resources contain?
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