I posted on Mastodon about the lack of feedback on Moodle Net. Martin replied asking for feedback. I’ve responded, but I thought that I would flesh out my thoughts a bit here.

I love Moodle and what you can do with it. I love that there isn’t a big money-making, data-sucking, privacy-invasive company running it.

A little background. I’m in the US. Specifically, I’m in K-12 education teaching and learning. Moodle is not super popular. There are certainly a few places, but Moodle is much bigger at the University level than K-12. There is much angst over Moodle. Quite simply, teachers find it “too hard”.

There are reasons that Google Classroom has taken over. It really doesn’t do much (thus, much less to learn for teachers). Google Classroom is essentially handing out worksheets and getting them back (another bonus, teachers understand the worksheet process).

When COVID hit, there was a rush for two things, video conferencing and an LMS. Zoom quickly captured the video conferencing mindshare. So much so, that even now it is pretty much the only game in town. Google Classroom captured the LMS market (note that it not an LMS but that doesn’t matter). It doesn’t even matter that it is not an LMS. The District that I was in at the time evaluated Canvas, Schoology, and Moodle (we had Moodle installed and were known internationally for our work in Moodle – due to Chris Kenniburg). The District chose to go with Schoology. It was “easier”.

MoodleNet

So this is one reason I was (still am) hopeful for MoodleNet. MoodleNet should be a great way to share resources, activities, etc. This means teachers wouldn’t have to create all their own material. This alone would make Moodle “easier”. Teachers could get started.

However, I do not find MoodleNet engaging. I’ve posted some things there, but I don’t get any feedback. There is currently no way to provide feedback. I can’t tell someone that I liked their materials or that I used it with changes. Hence. I reached out to Martin.

I don’t think that this needs to be overly complicated. I thought about ratings, 1-5 stars, adding how it was used, tags, and more. Really though, I think a simple comment box would be the way to go. Let users decide how to use it. Let users make comments. Provide a link back to the profile of the user, what date the comment was made, but otherwise, just free-form comments.

I am hopeful that that would provide a bit of social connections. It would provide the opportunity to provide feedback. It may encourage more people to submit resources.