Technology & Instruction for UNEX

I first came across the idea of learning styles when I was teaching online courses for CSU Hayward (now East Bay) about 12 years ago. Someone teaching one of the other courses in the program must have emphasized learning styles because many students brought it up in online discussions. I was not familiar with the idea, but I looked into it, found very little other than learning preference surveys and thought that was the end of it for me. However,  since then, learning styles seem to follow anywhere you find discussions of online teaching and learning. This is true despite the absence of academic research supporting any benefits related to designing for learning styles. Guy Wallace's article from the November, 2011 issue of eLearn magazine, Why Is the Research on Learning Styles Still Being Dismissed by Some Learning Leaders and Practitioners? is a nice summary of the learning styles issue along with a discussion of why people sometimes believe things despite evidence to the co

Moodle 2.x has a cleaner look compared with version 1.9, but it also allows you to move blocks off the course page and into the left side of your browser window -- the dock. This removes even more of the visual clutter. Since the activities and resources in the course usually occupy more of your time than the information in the blocks, it makes sense to minimize their impact on the display. Here is a before and after look at the same course in Moodle 1.9 and then in version 2.1 where the blocks have been moved into the dock. Subtle differences but I prefer the 2.1 appearance, although I don't like the presence of the horizontal scrollbar at the top. I wasn't able to remove it even though the table with the text and graphic is not as wide as the available area for the course materials.

If all goes as planned, we should be upgrading to Moodle 2.x at the end of December. Currently, the most recent version of Moodle is 2.1, but 2.2 should be released in time for our upgrade. Over the next few weeks, I will be highlighting some of the changes as we move from version 1.9 to 2.2. I'm optimistic that the transition will be a smooth one. There are a variety of changes, but I think most instructors and students will find the next version of Moodle a little easier to use. Visually, the appearance is less cluttered and with the new dock option, all of the information currently displayed in blocks can be moved to the dock on the side of the browser window. When we make the move to Moodle 2.2, we will also introduce a single custom theme for our site and all of our Moodle courses. This should simplify things for everyone and although there may be some who prefer to choose the theme for their course, I think sticking with one theme will be best for our students.