EXAMPLES OF USING THE MOODLE VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT FOR TEACHING TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

The use of different web-based courses is a familiar part of the current education provision of technical university students. Interactive web-based education has been used at the Tampere University of Technology (TUT), and specifically in teaching environmental health issues in the energy area. This paper looks to present some of our different courses that have used the Moodle learning environment to teach students in the area of environmental health (EH). Firstly the Moodle learning environment has been used to distribute material to students. On the homepages of the course is a short description of the course, related news, and material surrounding the traditional lectures involved. Additionally, there is a list of the course participants. In this case the EH course was run so that the teachers firstly gave lectures and then uploaded the related material to Moodle. As a second usage dimension, we have created an internet-based course that hosts almost all of its own related materials. The course has a start up lesson in the classroom but all subsequent materials are delivered via the internet. Finally, we have employed the system so that students study lecture materials from Moodle (e.g., from pdf-files, videos or html-pages), but their practical experiences are in the classroom. Some courses also have an area (function in Moodle), where students can put their tasks and distribute it to other students. The university has a IT helpdesk, which gives support to teachers. When the same or similar course materials are used in subsequent years, it is important that a teacher can easily copy materials from an old course to a new one. The Moodle administrator (at TUT) does this, though course teachers are typically able to edit course content. In our final paper we will present details from our web-based courses which have been adapted to Moodle, what experiences we have gained from the use of Moodle and how we will develop our Moodle courses in the future.