Moodle as an Assessment Tool: Feedback, Forums, and More

Course management systems (CMSs) can deliver asynchronous, point-of-need online instruction, as well as support and enhance real time, in-person learning. Making use of institutionally-supported CMSs allows librarians to present online materials in a format familiar to students and provides an easy-to-use infrastructure for managing a variety of course resources (handouts, videos, etc). This session will focus on using Moodle, an open source CMS widely used at our institution, to facilitate assessment of user needs and achievement of learning outcomes in library instruction. We will provide a survey of the variety of assessment tools offered in Moodle and highlight the tools that we found most useful for the purposes of engaging students with online content, providing support and feedback, and evaluating the usefulness and effectiveness of online content to our users. Some of the specific tools we will explore are Feedback, Forum, and Quiz. We will show practical, real world examples of the ways that we have implemented assessment tools in our Moodle workshops and facilitate a discussion on the ways in which this technology could be used for assessment in other contexts. ABOUT THE PRESENTERS: Megan Kocher is a Library Assistant II at the University of Minnesota Libraries - Twin Cities; Jon Jeffryes is an Engineerung Librarian at the University of Minnesota Libraries - Twin Cities