[T.e.l.l. March Summary] Designing a Multi-device Moodle Course site: A Case Study

This post contributed by Amanda Coolidge.

The March T.E.L.L. session featured Paul Hibbitts of Hibbitts Design. He gave an engaging talk on “Designing a Moodle Multi-device course: Case Study” and shared a wealth of ideas and practical tips.

Paul explained that with version 2.5, Moodle has incorporated some exciting functionality. One piece includes the Bootstrap framework which is now integrated to the core of Moodle 2.5.
Key takeaways from Paul’s session included best practices for designing for a mobile friendly environment. He started by stating that it is important to create a strategy when looking at the overall design of your desired outcomes. For example, respond to the following questions to help create your strategy:

• Why- what sort of problem or opportunity are you trying to solve?
• Who are you designing the environment for?
• What are you creating?
• Where will your learners or the learning be?
• When is the user using this?
• How will the user use your tool/site/desired outcome?

It’s also important to redefine the term “mobile learning”. According to Paul, mobile learning is really about designing for the multi-device learner experience as it encompasses all of the following. It is:

• ubiquitous
• situational
• connected
• personal.

Paul continued to describe the goals or desired outcomes of what a good multi-device experience includes:

• visual consistency – things should look the same whatever your device;
• content parity- regardless of where students are accessing- they should have access to ALL of the content;
• task transferability;
• think ecosystem, not isolated devices (syncing or complementing of devices);
• optimizing physical interactions.

Ultimately we want our learners to experience these sites as being:

1. Engaging
2. Organized
3. Relevant
4. Appealing

Slides

[iframe src=”http://slides.com/paulhibbitts/designing-a-multi-device-moodle-course-site-a-case-study/embed” width=”80%”]

Recording

https://vimeo.com/94072128