LMS

Learning Management System: LMS

A learning management system (LMS) is an application for facilitating (online) teaching & learning. Common tools offered by most of the LMSs include:

Material sharing (via file upload and download)
Assignment collecting and grading
Quiz (automatic and manual grading)
Forum (for sharing opinions)
Personal messaging
Hyperlinks (to external websites)
Student tracking (activity reports)
Summative evaluation (final grading)

With a fully-integrated LMS, students are able to track their progress as the instruction goes on, make plans in order to achieve their individual targets, and view their learning outcomes (grades) at the end of the final activity.

LMSs are ideal for distance learning, blended learning, or flipped classroom teaching.

Moodle

Moodle is a Learning Platform or course management system (CMS) – a free Open Source software package designed to help educators create effective online courses (moodle.org). Moodle is used for blended learning, distance education, flipped classroom and other e-learning projects in schools, universities, workplaces and other sectors.

Starting with Moodle

Common problems for Moodle starters are (1) hosting service and (2) installation, as it is a server-side application.

Moodle Cloud

Moodle Cloud offers a free Moodle hosting service with 200MB data storage and 50 users max. This is good for Moodle starters to try and learn how to use this LMS, as it does the hosting and installation for you. A cloud system also provides reliable and robust world-wide connection with automatic update.

Bitnami Moodle Stack

Want to have an offline Moodle site on your personal computer?

Bitnami Moodle Stack provides a self-extracted Moodle installation for your Windows PC, Mac, or Linux. You can download a single installation file on to your computer and run it. Your local Moodle site will be ready to use in a couple of minutes. The good thing is that you get a full-functional Moodle site with no storage/users limitation for free, as long as your computer resources (processor, memory, and storage) are capable for. The down side is that it cannot be accessed over the internet without some modification. Therefore it is good for Moodle starters to test and try using it locally. You can backup and restore your courses on the internet site when they are ready.

temp-moodle.pdf

Make your local Moodle site accessible from a local network

This guide (written in Thai language) demonstrates how to make your local Moodle site (i.e. created using Bitnami Moodle Stack) accessible from a local network (LAN or Wifi). It can be useful in some situations:

When the internet is unavailable or becomes offline, you can provide students with temporary access to your local site if you have a backup on it.
You can create a temporary test (exam) site which can be only accessed locally.

Useful resources for Moodle

Full manual (English)
User community
Quiz management
Embedded answer (Cloze)

Google Classroom

Classroom is a free service for schools, non-profits, and anyone with a personal Google account. Classroom makes it easy for learners and instructors to connect—inside and outside of schools. Classroom saves time and paper, and makes it easy to create classes, distribute assignments, communicate, and stay organized.

Key Features

No installation required - Having a Google account and start using it right away.
Highly compatible with Google services - including Google Drive (for files), Google Forms (for quiz and questionnaire), Gmail (for e-mail), YouTube (for video), and so on. Use one account for everything.
Everything is on the cloud - Google is known as they have the best cloud system so your courses are secured and accessible.
Most recent on the top - Unlike Moodle where the first content comes first, Google Classroom displays the most recent content on the top and pushes old contents downward.

Limitations

Quiz types - Recently quizzing in Google Classroom is done through Google Forms. Question types are limited to multiple-choice, short answer, and essay. Moodle, on the other hand, provides more flexible quizzing.
Course backup & restore - Google Classroom courses cannot be reused for now. All contents and activities must be reposted every time. Using Moodle, courses can be backup and restored across platforms.
Gsuite and individual users - Some schools deployed Google Gsuite which provides more advantages in using Google products such as an organizational e-mail service and extra storage size. However, in Google Classroom Gsuite and individual users cannot be mixed. This can be a problem if you want to include a student who doesn't have a school account.

Useful resources for Google Classroom

Full manual (English)
User community

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