Collaboration within Moodle: Sharing Documents in
Real-time with Drag&Share
Félix Albertos Marco
1
, Víctor M. R. Penichet
2
and José A. Gallud
2
1
University of Castilla-La Mancha, Computer Science Research Institute, Albacete, Spain
2
University of Castilla-La Mancha, Computer Systems Department, Albacete, Spain
Abstract. Moodle provides with tools to perform collaborative tasks. On these
tasks, students are able to share documents and information. But the means
provided by Moodle are not enough to perform some collaborative tasks, such
as share documents in real-time. In this scenario users must to be aware of what
is going on the system effectively. We propose the use of Drag&Share within
Moodle, a collaborative activity that allow users to share synchronously
resources in real-time. Through this activity, teachers will be able to easily
provide a shared workspace to students. There, students can share all kind of
resources and be aware of what is going on the system, which are participating
and what are they doing. All these features using standard technologies, such as
HTML5.
1 Introduction
Educational spaces have evolved to an integrated environment with computer
technologies. In blended learning [4] students’ times are between physical interaction
with other students, teachers, and virtual environments. Resource sharing is a relevant
collaborative task on e-learning scenarios. Problems arise while performing this
collaborative activity. Students receive all the information they need from the
physical environment in face-to-face scenarios. But all these information is not
available on e-learning platforms. Users must be provided with the necessary
awareness in collaborative learning. Endsley [3] defines awareness as “knowing what
is going on”. This knowledge should answer to specific questions about users’
environment. Gutwin [5] has defined the awareness framework for collaborative
learning. Appropriate awareness techniques are needed to answers these questions [7].
In real-time collaborative tasks, answering the question “what are the others doing?”
is a crucial one for maintaining awareness [6]. To make easy the design and the
complexion of online collaborative tasks, such as resource sharing in real-time, arise
the need to offer solutions that allow teachers and students to use successfully new
possibilities and features offered by educational environments. These solutions should
provide users with the necessary mechanism to make them aware about what is going
on in the system. Our proposal is based in Moodle environments, and introduces
Drag&share [1] inside Moodle as an activity.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. First the related work is described. In
Albertos Marco F., R. Penichet V. and A. Gallud J..
Collaboration within Moodle: Sharing Documents in Real-time with Drag&Share.
DOI: 10.5220/0004101401370142
In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Interaction Design in Educational Environments (IDEE-2012), pages 137-142
ISBN: 978-989-8565-17-4
Copyright
c
 2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

the next section Drag and Share on Moodle is described. Next an evaluation is
included. Finally conclusions and future are presented.
2 Related Work
Sharing resources among students is widely used in collaborative activities. Students
are able to share pieces of information in physical environments such as when they
are in a classroom. They use all means available in his environment to share several
kinds of resources. Moodle is a software package for producing Internet-based
courses. As a virtual learning environment provide means allowing users to perform
learning tasks. Administrators and teachers can design courses and offer tools to
perform all kind of activities. These courses can be divided into sections to organize
the students’ work. On each section, teachers can use two kinds of actions: add a
resource or add an activity. Each section can contain as many activities and resources
as the teacher desires.
Moodle offers a number of ways to share content adding resources. A resource is
an item that a teacher can use to support learning. Resource types enable almost any
kind of web content to be inserted into the course. There are several kinds of
resources available on Moodle. For example, files consist on a picture, a PDF
document, a spreadsheet, a sound file, a video file or any other format. Folders help to
organize files and one folder may contain other folders. The label resource can be a
few displayed words or an image used to separate resources and activities in a topic
section, or a lengthy description or instructions.
An activity is a general name for a group of features in a Moodle course. Usually
an activity is something that a student will do that interacts with other students and or
the teacher. There are fourteen different types of activities in the standard Moodle.
For example, assignments enable teachers to grade and give comments on uploaded
files and assignments created on line and off line. Chat activity allows participants to
have a real-time synchronous discussion. Database enables participants to create,
maintain and search a bank of record entries. Forum activity allows participants to
have asynchronous discussions. In Moodle, a site may add other activities that have
been developed as contributed code and found in Moodle’s Modules and Plugins
1
database. Therefore, is it possible to create personalized activities in order to achieve
different goals.
2.1 Document Sharing and Collaborative Tasks
Sharing resources and performing collaborative tasks in Moodle can be done using
some of the features above described. To share information, teachers can use
resources to link to a wide range of documents. Students will be able to show and
download these documents to his local devices. But students cannot use the resources
available to share his documents with other students. As an alternative, they can share
resources through some activities such as using a database or uploading documents in
1
http://moodle.org/plugins, 3 2012
138

the forum. This will help students to share documents and to perform collaborative
tasks. Also they can use the chat activity to inform others about what are they doing in
the system.
To share documents, a database can be used. This activity provides means to
upload and store resources. Students could see documents uploaded by other students.
To communicate with others, students can use the chat activity. Through this activity,
they are able to express their ideas and to inform the group about his activities in the
collaborative task. There, students can notify when they upload documents to the
database activity. Analyzed activity involves to share pictures and to discuss with
other students about those pictures. Therefore, two windows are needed in order to be
aware about the pictures and the chat. The main activity window is in the background.
In the foreground, are used the database window and the chat window. But there are
problems related with these activities. In collaborative tasks students need to be aware
about what is going on, that is, what other students are doing within the objects
involved in the collaborative activity. In the described scenario, users must be paying
constant attention to the chat window and the database window. Also, users have to
follow several steps to upload images into the database and they have to repeat each
step in case they want to upload more than one image. This may cause user’s
frustration and demotivation.
3 Drag and Share on Moodle
One solution to share resources within Moodle synchronously and in real-time is to
integrate Drag&Share as an activity in Moodle. Therefore, teachers will be able to
include as many shared workspaces as they want, according to their needs. To achieve
this, we have developed a module called dragandshare. It is based in standard
technologies and does not need any special software to be installed in the client
system. It is very easy to include this activity in a course. Teachers only have to
follow the same steps needed to add other activities to their courses. Drag&Share for
Moodle is a module that allows students to share documents in real-time as an activity
in Moodle. They can also communicate with each other easily through the means
provided by the system. Students interact with the system dragging documents inside
the shared workspace from anywhere in his computer. They act as they were working
within his operative system, following the same principles. They can easily move
documents, show and organize them as they want. Also, they can delete documents.
All this actions can be done easily through the metaphors presented in the shared
workspace. As a result of the features presented by Drag&Share, collaboration takes
place in one window. On that window is shown the shared workspace. There, users
are represented, as well as the shared documents, the action metaphors and the
communication system. Users are represented through the multi-pointer system. Their
movements are shown to other students in real-time. So, they are aware about the
actions performed by other students. Documents are represented in the shared
workspace with a correspondent metaphor. If the document is a picture, a preview is
shown. Students may open documents and show their content dragging them to the
corresponding metaphor. But through the representation of the document in the shared
workspace, students are able to know the contents of the document before opening it.
139

Drag
&
simultan
e
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p
ictures
i
with oth
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a
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r
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immedia
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4 Eva
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Share allo
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asks time h
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ee steps, nu
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e
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k
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tivity and us
e
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stem Usabili
t
r
ios presente
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ithin Moodle
and student
B
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r. The collab
o
1) B realizes
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o
cuments as
t
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u
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rs. First,
t
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r
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d
step, the stu
d
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w
will see th
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e
r satisfaction
. Satisfaction
t
y Scale) test
d
. First, using
. The test co
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a
that A is in t
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re 1. This
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e pictures
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ent drops
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orkspace
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n
using the
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has been
[2].
Moodle’s
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sists in a
nts shared
w
as divided
h
e system.
p
icture. 4)
140

B uploa
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which pi
c
Stud
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r
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ollowing fea
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Fig. 2. Av
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Fig. 3.
A
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roductivity o
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orative task.
t
ime is show
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, and in the
F
r
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v
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are was used
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d A realizes
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(measured ti
m
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s
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e group of s
e
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ures. Ten st
u
h
ree were fe
m
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youngest u
s
e
rage time of e
a
A
verage time of
f the system
w
This time w
a
n
in the Figur
e
F
igure 3 for
t
v
e decreased
n
the other
.
i
t. 5) A and B
m
e is only rel
a
oodle and
w
s
truction abo
u
o
rm and the t
o
elected stude
n
u
dents comp
o
m
ales. The p
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er was 25 an
d
a
ch task on Mo
o
each task on
M
was analyze
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s divided int
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drastically
i
tasks. In o
v
share infor
m
a
ted with inte
r
w
ere familiar
u
t how to use
o
ols to be us
n
ts to perfor
m
o
sed the grou
p
articipants w
e
d
21 years ol
d
o
dle with defa
u
M
oodle with Dr
a
d
based on th
e
o
the five tas
k
s
t developed
oped in Moo
i
n tasks whe
r
v
erall time
ation and dis
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with the en
v
system. The
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e
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e
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the collabor
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p
. Seven stu
d
e
re nearly 23
, respectively
.
u
lt activities.
a
g&Share.
e
time spent t
o
k
described a
b
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n Moodle w
i
d
le using Dr
a
r
e 2 and 4.
h
ave decrea
s
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v
i
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onment.
y
received
e
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hey
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ents were
3
years on
.
t
o perform
a
bove. The
i
th default
a
g&Share.
Time has
s
ed when
141

Regarding student’s satisfaction, the SUS satisfaction questionnaire can be
between 0 and 100. A final value near 100 indicates a complete satisfaction. The final
value in Moodle with default activities was 46.75, which indicates that students were
not satisfied with the system. The final value in Moodle with Drag&Share was 89.5,
which confirms that users were very satisfied when using Drag&Share within
Moodle.
5 Conclusions and Future Work
This paper presents Drag&Share within Moodle, a shared workspace inside Moodle
that allow users to share resources synchronously in real-time. Through the evaluation
of our proposal it is shown that analyzed task were dramatically improved through a
time reduction in its completion.
As future work, to study related collaborative activities within Moodle is needed
to continue improving collaboration within Moodle. The utilization of new standard
technologies will improve the execution of real-time collaboration within Moodle.
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