Importance of the use of Moodle USAT virtual classroom

Mgtr. Fiorela Anai Fernandez Otoya

Importance of the use of Moodle USAT virtual classroom

Moodle is a virtual open-source platform designed to help professionals to create quality online courses and point to provide technological support as a mediating element in face to face lessons. It is one of the most widely used virtual platforms with a large user community. Currently, Moodle is used in more than 40,000 Web sites around the world, it is present in approximately 280 countries and it is translated into 120 languages.

Today we have a global digitized world where technology is used for everything; is in this context that Distance Education Unit of USAT provided a workshop called Implementing and Managing a Moodle Virtual Classroom last month, to pilot group of USAT teachers with the purpose of raising awareness on the use of this important tool as means for their face to face working sessions with students, allowing to appreciate the various competitive advantages offered by this virtual environment in the development of cognitive and metacognitive skills.

The use of Moodle USAT virtual classroom implies from knowing how to design teaching materials, a mentoring system, that is essential in a virtual learning environment whenever the student requires the accompaniment of the learning process and this can be achieved through of synchronous tools such as the forum and chat which are tools that facilitate interaction between the teacher and the student, it also allows greater interactivity; Online assessments allow students to check their learning about the contents and readings worked, etc.

Moodle USAT virtual classroom also has tools such as tasks, which are areas where the teacher assigned an activity either individual or group one, which should respond to the skills of the subject; It has documents tool where teacher provides information to students such as readings, case studies; PDFs, power point presentations, audio, videos, URLs, etc., too.

According to Harasim (1990) the use of computer tools applied to university level, are a new way of teaching very consistent with the requirements of independence, individualization and interactivity of learning development in these times. Now the interactivity including the ability for students to send and receive messages, ideas and questions from other students or teacher is emphasized, which also leads to a teaching method simultaneously remote and team, thus facilitating cooperation and collaboration. These features contribute to the development of learning.

This year, in September, the Virtual Education Unit, will be developing the certificate program: Design and management of E -Learning Courses (3rd version), in order that all teachers design and manage their courses with the support of ICT.