I finished out last year using version 6 of the IT Essentials course. Over the summer I wondered why so many instructors were complaining about the new V7 version of the course. I figured it was just because folks were getting used to the new Moodle CMS. After starting this week to build my IT Essentials course in the new CMS, I see why people are frustrated. Rarely would I vent in a public forum like this but I’m so frustrated I feel the need to speak out on this.

Let me preface this by saying I’m not opposed to Moodle, although Canvas is definitely a better CMS. I’ve used Moodle to teach my other classes for over 8 years. For 5 of those years I was the Moodle Admin for my district. In fact, I piloted Moodle for my district and trained over 150 teachers how to use it.

In CISCO’s version 7 of the IT Essentials course the curriculum is not the problem – the poor implementation of the CMS is. These problems are easily fixable by simply turning on some of the default Moodle features. Unfortunately, my new section of the class starts the Monday after Thanksgiving so I don’t have time to wait for requests to get voted high enough to get considered for implementation. Because of this, the new version is unusable in my situation and I have no choice but to use v6 of the class this school year.

Features that need to be immediately added:

1. The ability to upload assignments from multiple sources. Uploads from Google drive and OneDrive repositories should be turned on. With many of us teaching in a virtual format the ability to upload from these sources is essential. Yes, I know students can download their assignment from these sources and then upload them as assignments. They shouldn’t have to and since many students are stuck using Chromebooks this unnecessarily complicates the process. (See attached “Google drive upload” screen shot.)

2. The Moodle Annotate Assignment feature (similar to Speed Grader in Canvas) NEEDS TO BE TURNED ON. Without it teachers need to download assignments to grade and then upload them back to Moodle so students can see the results. This is ridiculously inefficient for instructors and this simple and easily implemented feature needs to be turned on. (See attached “grading screen” screenshot).

Other features that need to be turned on for better usability:

1. Collapsible Course Format (https://docs.moodle.org/310/en/Collapsed_Topics_course_format). This allows the topics in the center of the screen to open and close. Without it, later in the course the student has to scroll through multiple screens to get down to the unit they need to work on. (See attached “mainscreen” screen shot).

2. Side Blocks – Turn on the block feature so that teachers can customize the blocks on the right side of the screen. (See attached “mainscreen” screen shot for an example of the HTML side block). Granted a work around to this is to put content in Labels but for student usability the blocks are a better option.

3. Announcement feature – Turn on the Moodle announcement tool. Since many of us have to teach in a fully virtual format right now this feature is essential for communicating daily work to students. A workaround is to use the forum feature but the Announcement tool is built exactly for this task and it can be easily turned on in the Moodle admin panel.

Again, I’m not complaining about the CISCO curriculum which is excellent. Nor am I necessarily complaining about Moodle which is sufficient to do the job if the necessary features are turned on. My complaint is that so many of the basic easily implemented features in Moodle have been so disabled as to render the new version of the course unusable from a practical standpoint. I hope this get remedied soon because when the legacy version of these courses are not available any more , then what?