A while back I was approached by Packt Publishing  to review Moodle 1.9 E-Learning Course Development: A complete guide to successful learning using Moodle 1.9, by William H. Rice IV. I was approached to review this book due to my semi-regular blogging about Moodle as well as my extensive experience using it as a teacher of English as a Second Language.

Moodle 1.9 E-learning Course Development is a book that achieves its goal of being a complete guide to successful learning with Moodle. This book will definitely be useful for newbies as well as experienced users such as myself. Rice takes the reader through a tour of Moodle in the first chapter that serves as an excellent summary of its capabilities as well as a roadmap for the rest of the book.  A friend who is a newbie to Moodle visited my house and read the first third of the book and expressed how helpful it was just reading it. He was very impressed and bought the book.

I would highly recommend any teacher or site administrator new to Moodle to read this book.To get the maximum benefit out of this book it would be best for the reader to have access to a Moodle installation, preferably as an administrator. However, if you only have teacher access this book will still be highly useful. For those curious about what Moodle has to offer but without access to a Moodle site this book will provide you with the insight you are looking for to decide if Moodle will meet your needs.

Rice’s writing is clear, concise and easy to follow. Technical terms and jargon are generally explained in the text on first appearance. Rice regularly offers advice to readers on how to best proceed and this is no doubt welcome to the novice user of Moodle, or online learning in general; However, there are a few instances where he suggests the most common approach to using a particular feature of Moodle. I found that it was the opposite of my experience and the dozens teachers I have talked with who use Moodle. I am not suggesting that the way I use Moodle is best, but rather that perhaps it would be best if Rice were to leave the decision to the reader rather than leading them along the path he takes. At the very minimum he should preface these assumptions by stating that they are his personal preferences when using Moodle.

Moodle 1.9 E-Learning Course Development is broken down into 10 chapters with the chapter 1 providing an overview of Moodle and a roadmap of the coming chapters. One point where I disagree with Rice on is page 6: “Moodle is designed to be intuitive to use, and it’s online help is well written.” I actually find Moodle to have a slightly steep learning curve and so have many of the teachers that I have introduced it to. However, once over the hump teachers will find it’s a tool that they won’t be able to live without.

Additionally, on pages 31 and 43 Rice indicates that the moodledata directory should not be accessible to the general public over the web, but doesn’t explain why. He offers two methods to achieve this, but doesn’t properly document the second, .htaccess, method. Though he does document the memory limit fix on page 51 and the file upload size/timeout fixes on pages 88/99.

explanations are clear and easy to understandChapter 2 is all about installing and configuring Moodle, and just like Rice says, you should read this even if you aren’t an administrator. The first header in this section is Go Ahead, Experiment . This is something that I regularly tell new users to do with Moodle as well. Much of this chapter explains the implications of the various choices one makes when setting up and configuring Moodle. I found the explanations to be clear and helpful. One thing that I was surprised by was that Rice mentions fantistico and one-click installs as a fast, inexpensive way to get a Moodle site up and running , but fails to mention the documented problems users have with fantistico regarding upgrading and customizing. This is not a Moodle issue, but rather a fantastico issue – I would definitely recommend against the use of fantastico for any CMS installation.

Chapter 3 is about configuring your site and this chapter will probably be of use to Moodle users of all experience levels. Rice’s goal for this chapter is to save your time by showing you the various effects that your configuration choices will have on your site. I feel that he has definitely achieved his goal with this chapter.

Chapter 4 is about creating categories and courses. Here the reader will find a hack that will enable you to have a single course in multiple categories. Rice then walks the reader through the process of setting up a course and explains the various options in a clear and easy to understand manner. Importing course materials and resetting courses are also explained. The most useful thing I learned in this chapter was what a “mentee” is. This is a potentially very useful feature for teachers and I highly recommend you look into it.

Chapter 5 is about adding Static Course Material. This chapter is quite basic and will be of most use to the true novice.

I wasn’t sure where to begin, but after a 20-page explanation with appropriate screen shots I feel more confident about giving this module a try.Chapter 6, Adding Interactive Course Material, will be of great interest and use to the majority of teachers, both experienced and novice. Each of the interactive options, assignment, choice, journal, lesson, quiz, SCORM/AICC, & Survey, are explained in detail. I hadn’t previously used the lesson module as I wasn’t sure where to begin, but after a 20-page explanation with appropriate screen shots I feel more confident about giving this module a try. Rice also gives advice on how to secure quizzes to prevent cheating, on page 218, with the caveat that there is no way to make a web-based quiz 100% cheat proof.

Looking at the survey module we find that it does not allow custom surveys, but rather only provides four different surveys that the instructor can use, if appropriate to their context. The only recommendation to create one’s own survey is to “repurpose a quiz”. Better advice would be to use one of the optional modules, feedback or questionnaire, for download that do this very well.

Chapter 7, Adding Social Course Material, could also be titled Interactive Course Material 2. Here the reader will find detailed explanations on the Chat, Glossary, Wiki, & Workshop modules. I was particularly impressed by the workshop as it looks to be very useful, interesting and powerful.

Welcoming your students, Chapter 8, will help the administrator and teacher customize the look and feel of the site from the front page to login to adding blocks to themes. With themes, Rice gives teachers some very useful code, on page 298, for customizing the header and footer allowing you to use a custom logo or other information.

Chapters 9 and 10 are essential reading for both administrators and teachers. Logs, reports, ratings, and the grade book are explained in chapter 9. The final chapter discusses add-on modules, back-up & restore, and most importantly - roles. Roles are a little confusing, but Rice makes everything clear and easy to understand.

As I mentioned near the beginning of this review, one thing that I did not like in the book was that Rice made assumptions about the most common uses for various aspects or features of Moodle. Many of these were not my experience or that of teachers I’ve talked to. In my opinion these claims should have been presented as opinions or advice rather than as factual statements.

I would highly recommend any teacher or site administrator new to Moodle to read this book. It will make clear many things that are initially confusing or overwhelming for the uninitiated. Experienced users will also find much of the book useful and will definitely learn something new. Go on buy Moodle 1.9 E-Learning Course Development: A complete guide to successful learning using Moodle 1.9 and reap the benefits.