Abstract:

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have influenced many aspects of modern life. By observing certain fields, such as medicine, business, banking etc., one can notice that the impact of ICT during the last decades has been enormous. In education, however, the influence of ICT has been much smaller comparing to other fields. Recently ICT tools have started been adopted and used in education. We have designed and implemented ceid-PAD, a Moodle-based, Course Management System (CMS) which forms a collaborative web-based educational environment intended for higher education institutes.
Course/Learning Management Systems (CMS/LMS) are web applications running on a server, accessible through web browsers. They offer tools for the design, implementation and management of on-line courses and a wide variety of features aiming to facilitate maintenance and exploitation of course material.
Moodle (Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) is a free, open source CMS that allows the creation of dynamic, flexible and attractive on-line courses. It was created by Martin Dugiamas, a computer scientist and educator, in order to boost the educational process. Moodle consists of separate parts of code called modules, which perform a specific function. New parts can be created and added separately on the platform. The growth of Moodle has been supported by the following facts: it is open source, it has a sound educational philosophy and that there is a huge community worldwide that supports it.
ceid-PAD has been developed using Moodle Version 1.9.16 and has been installed on a web server with PHP Version 5.3.3, Apache Version 2.2.15 and MySQL Version 5.1.61. ceid-PAD is available online at: http://solon.ceid.upatras.gr/katsikart/moodle/. ceid-PAD supports all tools provided by Moodle and can fully host web courses used either for distance learning or as a supplement to the traditional educational process. It provides three groups of tools, namely, “static course material tools” (i.e., web pages, links, files, IMS content packages), “interactive course tools” (containing tools for adding interactive material to a course, i.e., material that facilitates and encourages interaction between teacher and students or between students and an active web page) and “social course tools” (i.e., chats, fora and wikis that can facilitate and encourage student interaction). Compared to existing Moodle-based systems, ceid-PAD contains four additional new modules (Doodle, Evaluation, Chat, Bibliography), supports both English and Greek languages and offers a new “send SMS” service exploiting wireless network technologies through devices like mobile phones and PDAs for promoting ICT in the teaching and learning process. ceid-PAD forms an excellent show-case for the benefits induced by the use of ICT tools in education.

Keywords:

CMS, Moodle, ICT, education.