Cambridge Christian School identifies itself as a “college preparatory” school. This is achieved through strong academics, college and career guidance, and by providing students with experiences that prepare them for the rigors of higher education. By providing students with a vision of their collegiate future through experiences on par with those they will receive in college, our students are well prepared for the transition from secondary education to higher education. An important part of preparing students for higher education is by preparing them to use the tools of higher education. One such tool is called “Moodle.”
While the name “Moodle,” hardly instills confidence in the serious nature of a Learning Management System (LMS), the folly of its name is replaced with more deserved attention as one realizes that Moodle LMS is used by over 60% of all higher education in the world. The name Moodle is actually an acronym that stands for “Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment.” Simply said, Moodle is a learning management system or open-source platform for managing academic courses. It is a LMS that is used to create private websites with online courses for educators to achieve academic learning goals.
By introducing Cambridge students to Moodle, our students have the advantage of becoming familiar with the navigation and use of this dynamic platform and they are able to transfer these skills to other LMS as well. They get the experience of using an LMS for academic instruction and have the opportunity to explore the features commonly used by LMS in higher education. Some of the features of Moodle that encourage engagement and student success include: delivery of course materials and supplementary resources in the form of articles, videos, pictures, and a wide variety of other medias; digital assignment submission of student work; forums and blogs for diverse communications with faculty and amongst their peers; discussion groups and journals for collaboration and teamwork; personalized course calendars for keeping track of due dates, important notices, and other course information; and real-time feedback on grades, assignments, and student performance in the course.
Moodle LMS can be used with traditional, face-to-face courses, or with online courses, in which interaction with faculty is limited to online activities. According to a survey by the Babson Survey Research Group, about 33% of college students are taking at least one course online and according to another source, more than one-quarter of all higher education students will take at least one online course. The increasing trend in online course offerings is expected to significantly increase as colleges and universities seek to reduce some of their overhead costs of operation.
It is for all of these reasons and more, that Cambridge provides students the opportunity to use Moodle LMS starting as early as middle school. By the time a student has completed their high school career at Cambridge, they will be superior independent learners, collaborators, and learning management system users, who are fully prepared for the assimilation of knowledge, regardless of how the content is presented to them. They will truly be “prepared for college and prepared for life!”
