E-learning and Moodle: Where we’ve been and where we’re going — from techvibes.com by Jonathon Narvey
Excerpt:
According to Dougiamas, the next phase for Moodle (and quite a few of the Moodlers in the room, I’d wager) is looking at learning outcomes. He’s big on conducting research on how these tools are being used now and how they actually contribute to learning, as opposed to old-school methods.
“Most of us didn’t learn online,” Dougiamas says, looking at his audience with a smirk and a shrug. “We had a more traditional education and we’re muddling through. In fact, we run the world. What are the things we’re losing sight of as we move online? What are we losing?”
Moodle will keep adding functionality to make offering courses and tracking outcomes easier, he says. “Whatever your reasons for education, one can always throw in efficiency. Why waste time? Why reinvent things when we don’t need to? There’s a lot we can do purely from that perspective. The best way to do that is by putting the best possible tools in front of people so they can decide what to do in a local situation.”
In other words, he wasn’t there to tell attendees what the future of e-learning would be like—because apparently, a lot of them would be creating it themselves. That’s a nice lesson and it shows how open-source LMS platforms are like the social media platforms that tend to grab the spotlight.