Building a Global Repository for Language Learning Materials in Moodle

Sharing materials and online activities among teachers in Moodle can be a complicated adventure. This workshop demonstrates how to easily share learning resources and activities in a single Moodle site and across multiple Moodle sites using three newly developed tools. First, the Sharing Cart is a plug-in serving two purposes: 1) to copy and move one's own activities and 2) to collect and copy other teachers' activities. It also serves as a library of frequently used activities that can be inserted into any course. When the Sharing Cart is turned on, it will follow a teacher anywhere he or she roams within the Moodle site. While this tool is designed to handle individual learning objects(resources or activities), a second tool, the Project Course Format, is able to handle a group of learning objects. This format allows a teacher to move whole collections of quizzes, resources and other activities to another section of a Moodle site. Finally a third tool is a central repository(located at http://moodlelang.org) designed for sharing both 1) Moodle learning objects and 2) various documents and multimedia for use both in and out of Moodle. Five aspects of the design of the repository will be discussed: 1) searching strategies, 2) learning object meta data, 3) rating, editing, and reviewing features, 4) contribution and incentive systems, and 5) inter-site strategies. In this workshop, all participants will see a demonstration of the repository and sharing cart, and then have a chance to experience transferring Moodle activities across sites using the newly opened global Moodle for Language Teaching Repository