استفاده از مودل نرم افزاری آموزش الکترونیکی: مطالعه در دانشگاه پرتغالی

This article describes a study carried out at the University of Aveiro (UA), Portugal that analyses the functionalities and tools of the Moodle platform and their use by the students. The data was collected based on content analysis, one non structured interview with the responsible of the Moodle from UA and a questionnaire applied to 278 students. The results show that despite Moodle has a great potential, it is mainly used as a repository of materials. However, students recognize the importance of the use of other functionalities of this platform in order to promote the success of the teaching/learning process.

Nowadays it is not possible to think about the teaching and learning process without associating it with the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Actually, ICTs are present in all processes that involve collection of data, processing of information and knowledge creation, being the teaching and learning one of the most typical processes having these characteristics. ICTs play an important role in education, having a special relevance in the instructional component,supported by Learning Management Systems (LMS), such as Moodle. However, these platforms have many capabilities provided that they are used in their fullness. For example, interaction, feedback, conversation and networking are some of the possible actions using learning platforms. Furthermore, they provide a lot of opportunities to explore new methods of teaching and learning. Particularly, the Moodle platform adopted by the University of Aveiro (UA) integrates several modules which allow creation, organization, delivery,communication, collaboration and assessment activities. The present paper analyses the main functionalities and tools available in the Moodle platform and their use by the UA. Additionally, it discusses the results of a study carried out in the Department of Economics,Management and Industrial Engineering (DEGEI) through the application of a questionnaire to students with the objective of characterizing the use they make of the Moodle and of its main tools. In this way, the paper intends to contribute to a systematization of the activities and the respective modules provided by Moodle, as well as their importance in the students’ perspective, revealed in an exploratory study.

This paper analysed the main functionalities and tools available in the Moodle platform and their use at the University of Aveiro. It was found that the Moodle@UA contains some of the main tools of the standard Moodle platform, like Assignments, Chats, Forums, News and Quiz/Survey. Furthermore, it incorporates some external tools like Blogs UA, Wikis UA, Questionnaires and Video-conference. The analysis of the students’ answers to the applied questionnaire revealed that the most mentioned purpose of the use of the Moodle@UA were ‘Download materials’, ‘News’ and ‘Deliver assignments’ and that the most used information materials are ‘Texts’ and ‘Slides’. Additionally, students gave more importance to ‘News’ and ‘Assignments’. These results are compatible with the hypothesis that the Moodle@UA is being used mainly as a repository of materials and information. Besides, it can be noticed that students that use the tools typically assign more importance to them, being the difference statistically significant at 5% (except for Forums). It can also be noted that the not so used tools and thus not so important for students, enable the interaction,the collaboration and the real time communication. To overcome the constraints just presented it should be taken into account that the successful use of e-learning platforms in the teaching and learning context critically depends on the teachers having knowledge about the tools, being aware of how they should be used and being capable of organizing all the communication process. As future work it is considered important to perform a careful analysis of the underlying reasons for the use, or not, of the e-learning tools by the academic community, as well as to investigate on how these tools can help on promoting the success of the teaching and learning process.