Link to OU LabSpace with links to videos of new question types developed for 2.1/2.2.

The paper identifies a set of universal instructional design (UID) principles appropriate to distance education (DE) and tailored to the needs of instructional designers and instructors teaching online. These principles are then used to assess the accessibility level of a sample online course and the availability of options in its LMS platform (Moodle) to increase course accessibility.

Richard Wallace has 10 years experience in Web design and development. He develops, designs, maintains and hosts numerous Moodle and CMSMS sites for small, medium and large organisations in Australia, the U.S., and Canada. He has presented several papers on educational topics at conferences and training sessions, including the North American Moodle Conference in Edmonton. Speaker at Moodle Symposium 2011

Several useful Moodle activities and some clever plugins.

An overview of instructional design principles that may be used to guide beginning instructors in the creation of online learning courses and materials that support learner engagement and knowledge construction.

New folder view format in development for Moodle 2.1

Extensive study on what students consider are the characteristics of effective teachers - both F2F and online. A quick summary of the characteristics on p.25.

Moodle support site with downloadable tutorials and how to videos.

Teaching and Learning principles from Carnegie Mellon

A video on how to clean up a Moodle course by changing a static web page (with a video and some notes) into an online activity without having to start from scratch.

Interesting video on using the HTML block as a way of creating links to navigate through course topics - avoiding excessive scrolling.

Useful site with lots of Moodle support resources. This page -Online Strategies and Best Practices for instructors has some useful resources - video interviews under Core Competencies for Online Teaching Success are interesting.

A consortium of US universities got together last month and analysed Moodle 2.0.1 and, based on a number of factors, decided it was not yet ready for them. The major show-stoppers for them included: ● Grade data is purged when a student is removed from the course ● Moodle 2.0 upgrades from 1.9 often fail or require manual intervention ● Moodle 1.9 backups can not be restored to Moodle 2.0 installations. ● Administrators can no longer perform mass uploads of files to courses.

Eye tracking research on how students view a Moodle course page. 7 recommendations for course design.

Demo courses from Moodle.org with demo accounts.

Winner of Cool Courses competition

Moodle.org competition winners and runners up for best course design in various categories. You can view the courses by using your Moodle.org login - easy to create if you don't have one. http://moodle.org/login/index.php

Moodle site that explains some of the Web 2.0 tools and their applications in teaching and learning. Aimed at school teachers but a nice summary of some of the tools out there.