Abstract:

Moodle is one of the most successful learning management systems in the world. With currently 69,375 registered sites in 224 different countries since the first release in 2002, the GPL licensed system claims to be the number one free of charge LMS to distribute, share and assess knowledge. The Academic and Research Department Engineering Hydrology at RWTH Aachen University in Germany uses Moodle since more than ten years to support local teaching at university and international online training in many different projects.

Knowledge sharing, assessing knowledge with formative online tests as well as offering additional content, group work and conducting the final exams is well supported by Moodle into our daily blended learning classes. In terms of providing knowledge, there are nearly no limits, in which container you wrap it to support your students learning skills: You can use text, audio, video, animation and even games or create learning paths including prerequisites to access content only after finishing other work, to only list a few of the rich possibilities.

When it comes to knowledge assessment, you are stuck in currently sixteen given question types which you can assemble to a quiz. On the other hand, Moodle supports the SCORM standard 1.2 and 2004, to include SCORM-modules into the online classroom. With this support, you are able to produce new interactive learning materials with one of the many external tools (The Moodle website currently lists 44 tools!) and you are not restricted to the internal content production capabilities of Moodle. While this work very well, it is limited to learning resources and independent, standalone tests. It is not possible to combine the Moodle questions with SCORM-modules to form a quiz which you can later grade in one piece.

As this offers many new features, like integrating a SCORM-based software simulation into a final exam together with Moodle drag-and-drop, multiple choice or essay questions, we developed a new type of Moodle questions (qtype) to integrate SCORM-module into a Moodle quiz.

From now on, you are able to choose your preferred authoring tool like Adobe Presenter or Techsmith Camtasia to produce questions including videos, demonstrations and a flexible structure inside it as one single question which is then compiled with other questions to one quiz. Each SCORM-question behaves like a normal Moodle question and is graded together in the final quiz grading, based on the authoring tool settings.

Keywords:

SCORM, Moodle, e-learning, Online-Exams, Tests.