Computer-based concept mapping combined with learning management system use: An explorative study under the self- and collaborative-mode

Purpose: This study aims to examine the implementation of technology in educational assessments, specifically using the Learning Management System (LMS) Moodle at SMK Brantas Karangkates. Traditional paper-based tests limit multimedia integration and efficient scoring, whereas online exams offer a more effective and streamlined alternative for learning evaluations. Method: The research focuses on Moodle’s implementation process, detailing steps like preparing questions, setting up quiz features, conducting exams, and managing automated scoring. Observational data and school records were used to analyze Moodle's application. Practical Applications: Using LMS Moodle, with its multimedia and automated grading capabilities, enhances exam efficiency, accessibility, and result management. This practical approach supports schools in modernizing their assessment processes. Conclusion: SMK Brantas Karangkates has effectively used Moodle for online exams over the past five years, showing significant improvements in assessment efficiency. This study illustrates how e-learning platforms like Moodle can support schools in adapting to technological changes in education.

Purpose: This study had as purpose to examine the factors influencing instructors and students use of the Moodle Platform in teaching online courses in the ICT University, then the theories used in the use and adoption of Moodle platform.Methodology: The article focuses on the systematic review of empirical studies in the use and adoption of Moodle Learning Management System (MLMS) in higher institutions. The authors examined 58 publications on the subject from 2010 to 2019, making critical analysis of theories adopted in the study, the research approach, adoption factors, barriers, constructs used and research context.Findings: Findings from the literature review shown that technological factors, social factors, human factors and reinforcement factors affect the adoption and use of moodle platform. Most publications on this subject are reported using the quantitative research approach. Only a few studies have gained the attention of qualitative approach. Among the technology acceptance models used in the studies, TAM has gained more attention than any other has. The systematic review of literature has brought to the understand that institutes of higher learning in developed as well as developing countries are making remarkable progress in the Moodle Learning Management System (MLMS) as distance-learning tool for knowledge disseminate and acquisition. This practice however, has received more attention in the developed than in the developing countries. The outbreak of CCOVID-19 led to the promotion of social distancing. Institutions of higher learning can only become sustainable in the present dispensation if they promote the use of distance learning tools such as MLSM.

The purpose of the study is to highlight the theoretical and methodological aspects of preparing the test questions of the most common types in the form of text files for further import into learning management system (LMS) Moodle. The subject of the research is the automated filling of the Moodle LMS test database.The objectives of the study: to analyze the import files of test questions, their advantages and disadvantages; to develop guidelines for the preparation of test questions of common types in the form of text files for further import into Moodle LMS.The action algorithms for importing questions and instructions for submitting question files in such formats as Aiken, GIFT, Moodle XML, “True/False” questions, “Multiple Choice” (one of many and many of many), “Matching”, with an open answer – “Numerical” or “Short answer” and “Essay” are offered in this article. The formats for submitting questions, examples of its designing and developed questions were demonstrated in view mode in Moodle LMS.

Digital technologies are an enabler for the enhancement of the quality of learning and teaching. By incorporating ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) in the learning process (and therefore achieving blended learning), HEIs (Higher Education Institutions) have the potential to complete the shift from the ,,old way" of teaching and learning (based on the mere transmission of information) to the development of a partnership between the student and teacher that can have a significant impact on the learning and teaching experience overall. Therefore, in order to augment academic performance and to withstand the challenges of an increasingly competitive environment, the Romanian HEIs have concentrated their efforts to develop or configure e-learning platforms that enable the implementation of the blended learning concept. In our previous research we identified that in the Romanian higher educational system, Moodle LMS (Learning Management System) or VLE (Virtual Learning environment) is frequently chosen as the solution for offering e-learning services (56,81% of the Romanian HEIs, both public and private, which have implemented an e-learning system have adopted Moodle LMS). In this paper we will present the case of the University Of Economic Studies Of Bucharest that offers new and improved services for its students by implementing an e-learning platform available as online.ase.ro. The e-learning platform implemented by the University Of Economic Studies Of Bucharest is the Moodle LMS. We will present which were the challenges of this project (for example, the modality in which Moodle LMS was integrated with the university information system - SIMUR) and we will highlight the solutions that have been adopted to overcome them.

This study examined the use of Advancity Learning Management Systems (ALMS) and the Moodle Learning Management Systems (LMS) in learning settings, as well as online exams, within the framework of Transactional Distance Theory. With 146 college students (nfemale = 102, nmale = 44) as voluntary participants, data was gathered through an online questionnaire. A time series design was used for two different LMS sessions, and participants who voluntarily participated in ALMS and Moodle LMS sessions were matched. The findings revealed that while Moodle and ALMS both receive relatively similar assessment ratings for online exams, Moodle scored better in terms of learning setting. When factors of the Learning Management Systems Evaluation Scale (LMSES) based on Transactional Distance Theory were compared, the dialogue and autonomy factors were significantly higher for Moodle LMS than for ALMS. When online exams in the LMS were compared, there was no significant difference between ALMS and Moodle LMS, and for both LMS, the reliability factor was a determinant indicator than the other factors. As a result, in assessing and using an LMS, choices should be based on how well the LMS characteristics address an institution’s demands.

The article dwells upon the problem of distance learning using the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS). Importantly, the article analyzes the use of LMS or virtual learning environments (VLE) at universities, designed to store learning materials, conduct automatic testing of students’ knowledge, support remote communication, generate information on progress and reports on working with distance learning courses. The most well-known paid systems (according to Google Trends service) include Blackboard Learning System, Edmodo, Glow, Ning, SharePoint LMS. At the same time, the most popular free LMS is Moodle, as evidenced by both the results of Google Trends statistics and the data obtained from the ListEdTech resource. The article determines the features of using this system in the professional training of pedagogy students. It describes the challenges (problems) faced by students when taking distance learning courses, the time frame of students’ work on this learning platform and students’ assessment of the quality of distance learning courses developed in the Moodle system. It shows that the use of this system saves time spent on training, freeing it up for personal life, self-education, hobbies and entertainment. Students with higher academic performance spend more time working in the Moodle system. Indeed, they intend to acquire knowledge, obtain a diploma of higher education and further pursue their professional careers. More than half of the respondents rate distance learning courses positively. In their opinion, such courses are creative, valuable, exciting, effective, clear, innovative, meeting expectations, unconventional, innovative, easy to learn and enjoyable.

Today, it is almost impossible to implement teaching processes without using information and communication technologies (ICT), especially in higher education. Education institutions often use learning management systems (LMS), such as Moodle, Edmodo, Canvas, Schoology, Blackboard Learn, and others. When accessing these systems with their personal account, each student’s activity is recorded in a log file. Moodle system allows not only information sav-ing. The plugins of this LMS provide a fast and accurate analysis of training sta-tistics. Within the study, the capabilities of several Moodle plugins providing the assessment of students' activity and success are reviewed. The research is aimed at discovering possibilities to improve the learning process and reduce the num-ber of underperforming students. The activity logs of 124 participants are ana-lyzed to identify the relations between the number of logs during the e-course and the final grades. In the study, a correlation analysis is performed to determine the impact of students' educational activity in the Moodle system on the final assess-ment. The results reveal that gender affiliation correlates with the overall perfor-mance but does not affect the selection of training materials. Furthermore, it is shown that students who got the highest grades performed at least 210 logs dur-ing the course. It is noted that the prevailing part of students prefers to complete the tasks before the deadline. The study concludes that LMSs can be used to pre-dict students' success and stimulate better results during the study. The findings are proposed to be used in higher education institutions for early detection of stu-dents experiencing difficulties in a course.

Many higher education institutions nowadays are equipped with Learning Management Systems (LMS) to provide rich online learning solutions and utilize its functions and capabilities to improve the learning practices. The current study aims to gain instructors' perspective of LMS, investigate the use of its functions, and identify the barriers that may influence LMS utilization at the Gulf University for Science and Technology (GUST). This research aims to examine current practices, opinions, and challenges that help academicians and system developers contribute to better learning practices and academic achievement. The study used a quantitative method that included a sample of 58 faculty members. Findings obtained from the questionnaire indicated that instructors were generally comfortable and had positive perceptions about LMS Moodle. The results revealed that LMS's administrative functions, such as files and announcements, are widely used compared to the advanced interactive learning activities. Moreover, LMS's use on mobile devices is infrequent, and more emphasis must be placed on using LMS friendly user interfaces that can enable all tools and functions to use LMS.

Increasingly educational providers are being challenged to use their data stores to improve teaching and learning outcomes for their students. A common source of such data is learning management systems which enable providers to manage a virtual platform or space where learning materials and activities can be provided for students to engage with. This study investigated whether data from the learning management system Moodle can be used to predict academic performance of students in a blended learning further education setting. This was achieved by constructing measures of student activity from Moodle logs of further education courses. These were used to predict alphabetic student grade and whether a student would pass or fail the course. A key focus was classifiers that could predict likelihood of failure from data available early in the term. The results showed that classifiers built on all course data predicted student grade moderately well (accuracy= 60.5%, kappa = 0.43) and whether a student would pass or fail very well (accuracy= 92.2%, kappa=0.79). However, classifiers built on the first six weeks of data did not predict failing students well. Classifiers trained on the first ten weeks of data improved significantly on a no-information rate (p<0.008) though more than half of failing students were still misclassified. The evidence indicates that measures of Moodle activity on further education courses could be useful as part of on an early-warning system at ten weeks.

The Learning Management System (LMS) continues to persuade instructors and students that the use of the Moodle platform is the correct choice to meet their educational needs. This study presents the personalization of the Moodle LMS based on students’ needs and interest in meeting the intended course objectives. The study employed a quantitative method administered by a questionnaire. The data were analyzed quantitatively and discussed to meet the study objective. The study findings indicated that 61.3% of the respondents have confidence in the use of personalised Moodle LMS to improve their understanding of their lessons. The study also revealed that almost all respondents (95%) agreed that the personalised Moodle LMS motivated students’ learning. Further, and unexpected, the study findings revealed that the Moodle learning environment and pedagogical underpinning were minor challenges to students; instead, the major challenges were infrastructure challenges such as internet access and tools. The study recommends that instructors and students should make the Moodle LMS an essential asset for improving teaching and learning in Higher Learning Institutions. The originality of the contribution of this study is the conclusion that personalized Moodle LMS should be maintained to attract and motivate students in learning activities.

The pedagogical expressiveness of designed courses using Learning Management Systems (LMS) is highly dependent on the teachers' expertise about the use of the LMS at their disposal. The LMS semantics has to be raised in order to enhance the pedagogical expressiveness of the produced models. This paper deals with the proposition of a specific LMS-centered approach for abstracting the LMS low-level arameterizations and turning them into higher-level pedagogical building blocks. We choose to present and illustrate our propositions about the Moodle LMS.

The pedagogical expressiveness of designed courses using Learning Management Systems (LMS) is highly dependent on the teachers’ expertise about how to use the LMS at their disposal. The GraphiT project aims to help teachers in focusing on the specification of pedagogically sound learning scenarios that can be technically executable for automatically setting-up the LMS. We propose to provide teachers with LMS-specific instructional design languages and editors. The LMS semantics has to be raised in order to enrich the pedagogical expressiveness of the produced models. This paper deals with the proposition of a specific LMS-centered approach for abstracting the LMS low-level parameterizations and turning them into higher-level pedagogical building blocks. We choose to present and illustrate our propositions about the Moodle LMS. We focus on the first abstraction level. It consists in identifying some pedagogical activities according to recurrent uses designers make by handling the Moodle activities.

<abstract><p>The objective of this paper was to examine the present state of geometric constructions in both international and national mathematics assessments. Additionally, it aimed to shed light on the noticeable lack of geometric construction items in these assessments and propose a solution to incorporate such items by utilizing a web-based mathematics assessment tool. After providing a brief summary of the unique benefits associated with geometric construction problems, the subsequent paper explored the development of a web-based mathematics assessment tool, the procedure for generating automatic evaluation GeoGebra applets for geometric construction problems, and their integration into Moodle learning management system (LMS). The purpose of this assessment tool was to enhance the evaluation of a substantially larger group of students within the realm of geometric constructions. The final section of the paper examined the difficulties encountered in the creation of the automatic evaluation applets and their incorporation into Moodle LMS. Through the development of such a web-based mathematics assessment tool, we enabled the evaluation of a significantly larger number of students, thus aiding not only national and international mathematics examinations but also assisting mathematics teachers in tracking students' scores and progress.</p></abstract>

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic brought about a major shift in the educational training of surgical trainees. As the Lockdown was implemented and the daily workforce reduced, an alternate method was employed to provide uninterrupted learning. Blended learning that includes virtual learning with face-to-face learning/teaching was utilized for the surgical trainees. MOODLE (Modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment), an open-source learning management system, was integrated as an Online Component of our Blended Learning Program. We aimed to evaluate the perception of postgraduate trainees of General Surgery regarding the benefits and limitations of Blended Learning, particularly its online component, i.e., Moodle LMS, for the betterment of surgical -education during the COVID-19 pandemic.Material and MethodsThirty-three postgraduate general surgery trainees were enrolled in a blended learning program, in which its online component, Moodle LMS, comprised four major topics on General Surgery. A questionnaire was provided to the trainees to obtain feedback on blended learning in general, and Moodle LMS was mainly themed on the Likert scale.ResultsThe approach of blended learning was positively received by the participants, the majority of whom were females (75%) and comprising of Year 1 residents (33.3%). Nearly half of the participants found Moodle LMS user-friendly, practical and a good platform for learning. However, nearly two thirds (60.6%) were uncertain if it ever helped in applying knowledge to interpret laboratory and radiological results for patient management. Even then, most of them found that the face-to-face component of blended learning helped them develop specific clinical and surgical skills (42.4%). Emphatically, 78.7% would recommend it for surgical training.ConclusionBlended learning was found to be beneficial in the training process of surgical postgraduates in the current COVID-19 pandemic situation. We recommend it for the training of doctors for optimized learning.

Usability is an important component of software applications in a domain such as e-learning. In this paper, the use of Moodle and Blackboard learning management softwares are studied from academic disciplinary domain perspectives. The primary users of focus are the academic staff at an African University. A quantitative research approach was used to conduct a survey study using 67 university lecturers who volunteered to participate in the study. The participants were drawn from the Faculties of Education, Engineering, Humanities, Social Science and Science. Of the 67 participants, 66 (99%) are aware of the availability of Blackboard and Moodle learning management softwares, and only 1 (1%) claim to be ignorant of the platforms. 43 of the participants make use of Blackboard, 11 make use of Moodle while 13 do not use either platforms for reasons of preferences to conventional traditional teaching and learning methods. Although the use of Blackboard and Moodle are convenient platforms for the creation and distribution of teaching materials, course assessment, communication and collaboration between users; such platforms are supposedly not suitable in teaching and management of studio based courses, and analytical courses in some disciplines due the users limited experience in the platforms. Furthermore, performing logistic regression analysis on the data set suggests that respondents who indicated strongly agree are 4.96 times more likely to use Blackboard (Odd Ratio = 4.96), and 1.00 times more likely to use Moodle (Odd Ratio=1,00) than those who strongly disagree.