Moodle
Moodle is St. Olaf's course management system (sometimes called a Virtual Learning Environment). Moodle is a powerful, but easy to use web application. The St. Olaf Moodle server is located at http://moodle.stolaf.edu/
A Moodle course can include forums for discussion, live chat rooms, online class materials (called resources), a calendar of events, quizzes, a grade book, assignments, journals, and more. A single course could have all of these features or only a subset, depending on which tools are selected for use.
Classes in Moodle are automatically generated from the Registrar's data and students registered for a class are automatically registered for the corresponding Moodle online class. Faculty members are added as Professors in their Moodle classes automatically. Photos are also added to the list of participants in a class based on their college ID photos.
Access to a Moodle course is typically restricted to people with St. Olaf usernames and passwords, but can also be granted to anonymous guests, depending on settings set by the faculty member(s) teaching the course.
Moodle is an easy-to-learn, easy-to-use system and both faculty and students can be up and running with it in a matter of minutes. Moodle has excellent online documentation available as well as a Teacher's Manual.
Many faculty have questions about whether they should use Moodle or use a combinations of the other tools mentioned above. The answer depends on the person teaching and what kinds of features they need or want. If you need assistance in determining which route would be best, contact contact your IT Department Representative.