Comparing Writely and Moodle Online Assignment Submission and Assessment

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Comparing Writely and Moodle Online Assignment
Submission and Assessment
Khaleel Petrus and Michael Sankey
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Objectives

• Identify preferences in assignments submission
  and feedback with regard to
• Intuitiveness
• convenience of use
• responsiveness.
• Why they made their particular choices
• Report on any problems they encountered

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Why these two systems?

• Both are free tools
• Both are relatively easy to use
• Both are fairly recent and still developing
• Moodle was under trail use at USQ
• Moodle is a fast growing growing open source LMS
• Writely is a recent technology available on the
  web

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Writely system

• Upstartle August 2005
• Acquired by google March 2006

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Writely interface
Figure 1. Wrirely user interface (current)
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Moodle system

• Fast growing
• More than 30,000 registered sites
• Moodle.org/stats

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Moodle Assignment submission
Figure 2. Moodle user interface
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Methodology

• Mixed methods approach applied to ascertain
  student perceptions of the two assignment
  submission options
• Combined qualitative and quantitative method
  using a survey composed of
• Programmed response
• Qualitative feedback

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Online survey form
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Results - I
Figure 3 Intuitiveness (Question 1), left.
Preference (Question 4), right.
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Results - II
Figure 4 Convenience of Moodle (Question 2),
left Writely (Question 3), right
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Results - III
Figure 5 The Responsiveness of Moodle (Question
6), left Writely (Question 7), right.
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Conclusions

• Students prefer Moodle
• Problems with Writely
• Technical
• Formatting
• Lack of feedback
• Writely praised for
• Collaborative aspect
• Easy to update the submission

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Recommendations

• Continue using Moodle submission
• Enhance updating Moodle submission
• Expand the study to larger number of students
• Apply the study to different types of courses
• Apply the other forms of assignments besides the
  current essay type