A Moodle-centric Model and Authoring Tool for cMOOC-Type

Courses

Aïcha Bakki and Lahcen Oubahssi

LIUM, EA 4023, Le Mans University, Avenue Messiaen, 72085 Le Mans CEDEX 9, France

Keywords: MOOC, Connectivism, Moodle, Authoring Tool, BPMN, Pedagogical Workflow, Operationalisation.

Abstract: The use of learning management systems gives rise to many difficulties for teachers and instructional

designers in terms of designing their courses. These difficulties are mainly related to the operationalisation of

pedagogical scenarios and the use of the corresponding tools, especially in a connectivist context. The work

presented in this paper focuses on learning design models for massive open online course (MOOC)

environments, and more specifically on assisting teachers in the design and implementation of pedagogical

scenarios for connectivist MOOCs (cMOOCs). The major contribution of this work is a visual authoring tool,

based on business workflows for the design and deployment of cMOOC-oriented scenarios on the Moodle

platform. The tool was also evaluated, primarily from the point of view of utility and usability. The findings

confirm that our tool can provide all the elements needed to formalise and operationalise such courses on the

Moodle platform.

1 INTRODUCTION

Learning theories have long been a subject of wide

discussion in the educational field. They provide

concepts that contribute to the extension of teaching

methods and learning practices. There are several

approaches that can be mentioned here, such as socio-

constructivism, behaviourism and constructivism.

These approaches reflect several developments in the

educational field, and are in line with common

practices in actual learning, including computer-

based learning environments. Many researchers have

explored the limits of these approaches, and

particularly of the behaviourist conception of

teaching and learning. Piaget was one of the first to

demonstrate the limits of this approach by

highlighting the importance of taking into account the

progressive adaptation of each learner’s learning

process in all pedagogical approaches (Weegar &

Pacis, 2012). Several authors have criticised the

theories of behaviourism, cognitivism and

constructivism, on the basis that although these are

the most common teaching theories, they cannot meet

the challenges of the contemporary world (Černý,

2020; Gonzalez, 2004).

The evolution of the internet and the advent of

social networking have created interconnections

between users that were previously impossible.

Technology is changing the ways in which we think

and behave, and the ways in which we solve problems

and handle information. These changes are obvious

and fundamental, and it is impossible to ignore them

(Černý, 2020). To take advantage of these changes,

Siemens introduced a new learning approach in 2005

called connectivism, which he described as “a

learning theory for the digital age” (Siemens, 2004).

In his opinion, this new learning approach addressed

the limitations of previous learning theories within a

world driven by Web 2.0 technologies. Siemens

(2004) firmly anchored his theory in other traditional

learning theories, while describing these as

inadequate in the face of the new and revolutionary

social networking technologies affecting research,

teaching, and learning. With the advent of

connectivism, the specific needs of the digital world,

and particularly of online platforms and their

influence on learning, are increasingly taken into

account. This progress has led to the emergence of

MOOCs, which have recently demonstrated tangible

success for various educational stakeholders.

According to the co-founders of the first connectivist

course, the structure of such courses is based on four

practices (Downes, 2008; Kop, 2011): aggregation,

remixing, repurposing, and feed forwarding. A fifth

Bakki, A. and Oubahssi, L.

A Moodle-centric Model and Authoring Tool for cMOOC-Type Courses.

DOI: 10.5220/0010439105450556

In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2021) - Volume 1, pages 545-556

ISBN: 978-989-758-502-9

545

category that involves evaluating activities was assed

to this categorisation (Bakki et al. 2019a).

Educational institutions increasingly rely on

MOOCs as a new form of pedagogical support and to

modernise their curricula. In addition to the

supporting role of MOOCs, a new pedagogy is

emerging that is enhancing or redynamising face-to-

face (F2F), distance and hybrid teaching. However,

the design of a connectivist course, known as a

cMOOC, though a learning management system

(LMS) presents several challenges that are related to

the assimilation of the design features of such courses

and to the operationalisation of scenarios by teachers.

This is particularly important in regard to the low

progress of these systems, as demonstrated in an

analysis conducted by Toven-Lindsey et al. (2015) of

a range of 76 MOOCs, which revealed that only 10%

of these courses could be categorised as cMOOCs. In

addition, pedagogical practices related to

connectivism are not explicitly embedded in the

pedagogical model of an LMS. Some platforms, such

as Moodle

or OpenEdx

, do not reduce this

complexity; nevertheless, the provision of adequate

support and facilities is difficult, despite the large and

active communities involved. In addition, since each

platform is based on a specific instructional design

paradigm and a specific pedagogy, practitioners are

often unfamiliar with this implicit type of

instructional design method (Abedmouleh, 2013; El

Mawas et al., 2016; Martinez-Ortiz et al., 2009).

This research work was carried out as part of the

Pastel research project. A key objective of this project

is the design of a process for incorporating new

technologies into pedagogy and teaching. This

process can be divided into the three main phases of

capitalisation, scenario design and operationalisation,

which are required to set up an editorial process. The

work presented in this paper focuses on the first two

phases of the editorial process and provides solutions

for designing and operationalising pedagogical

scenarios. In order to promote and facilitate the

implementation of cMOOCs by teachers and

instructors using the Moodle platform, we propose a

visual editor that includes concepts closely related to

the Moodle platform. We provide graphical notations

that are more user-friendly and which better address

the needs of the user than the XML syntax that is

usually provided. This paper focuses on learning

design models and addresses ways of constructing an

LMS-centric language that combines a pedagogical

model for a particular platform with a specific

pedagogical approach. The paper is structured as

https://moodle.com/

follows: in Section 2, we discuss some related work

associated with our research problem, and analyse the

relationships between LMSs, instructional design and

MOOCs. Section 3 describes our approach, defining

a Moodle-oriented pedagogical model for the context

of a cMOOC. This section also describes our

principal contributions, namely the authoring tool and

the operationalisation service. Section 4 presents an

evaluation of the proposed tool. Finally, Section 5

draws some conclusions and outlines some directions

for future work.

2 RELATED WORKS AND

RESEARCH AIMS

2.1 Instructional Design and LMSs

The emergence of technology is constantly expanding

the possibilities for online learning, and continues to

contribute greatly to the evolution of e-learning.

LMSs or learning support systems (LSSs) are defined

as online learning technologies for the creation,

management and delivery of online content.

In today’s ubiquitous digital environment, LMSs

play an important role in improving and facilitating

distance teaching and learning. An LMS can not only

enable the delivery of digital instruction and

resources, which can improve and increase the quality

of learning in a collaborative environment, but can

also allow teachers to focus on designing their

teaching activities. We note that the design of

pedagogical situations on learning devices such as

educational platforms or LMS systems is not a

straightforward task. A large number of teacher-

designers face certain constraints when using these

platforms to design pedagogical scenarios (Steel,

2009). They are not accustomed to the implicit

pedagogical design language used (Martinez-Ortiz et

al., 2009), and are not able to implement the scripts

required by the platforms (Mekpiroona et al., 2008).

The main challenges relate to the specification of

functionalities, based on their knowledge about the

LMS and their skills in terms of pedagogical

conception. This is especially important since

pedagogical designs on LMS platforms are not

sufficiently flexible, and impose a specific paradigm.

Despite the existence of standards (Martinez-Ortiz et

al., 2009; Mekpiroona et al., 2008), approaches (De

Vries et al., 2006), languages (Baggetun et al., 2004),

architectures (Alario-Hoyos et al., 2013), and tools

https://open.edx.org/

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(Zedan & Al-Ajlan, 2007) that aim to promote and

improve the use of platforms through the

specification of graphical instructional languages and

platform-centric authoring tools, these are generally

incompatible with the platforms. In addition, they do

not facilitate the operationalisation of the designs that

are produced. This means that several modifications

to the initial scenario are required. Resulting in a loss

of information and semantic during the

operationalisation of the scenarios described outside

of the platforms (Abedmouleh, 2013).

As part of their research work, El Mawas et al.

(2016) and Abedmouleh et al. (2013) have described

a process for identifying and formalising the

pedagogical practices embedded in distance learning

platforms, based on a metamodelling approach. The

advantage of this proposal is that the identified

language can be used as a basis for the development

of new pedagogical conceptions and authoring tools.

Solutions that rely on the definition of the platform’s

pedagogical model have a second purpose. They also

provide a communication bridge between authoring

tools and the platforms concerned. In addition,

adopting a platform-centric language can preserve the

semantics of the pedagogical scenarios, meaning that

these scenarios can be implemented with limited

information loss. As part of our work, and in order to

develop a connectivist-oriented scenario model

centred on the Moodle platform (as described in

Section 3.1), we relied on this process when

identifying and formalising the embedded

pedagogical aspects in the LMS. Our main objective

was to identify cMOOC-oriented pedagogical

concepts embedded in Moodle in order to provide

solutions for assisting and supporting teachers

interested in adopting Moodle as a platform for

delivering cMOOC-based courses. Further work is

detailed in Section 3 of this paper.

2.2 LMSs and MOOCs

Since their emergence, MOOCs have been adopted

by a significant number of educational institutions.

Shah (2019) states that in 2018, more than 900

universities worldwide announced or launched more

than 11,400 MOOCs, and 101 million students signed

up to study a wide range of topics such as technology,

economics, social sciences and literature (Bonk &

Zhu, 2018). The purpose of these courses is to

contribute to the generalisation of learning, both for

students and for individuals who want to undertake

lifelong learning. It is also to extend education to

www.edx.org, www.fun-mooc.fr

persons who, for social or geographical reasons,

presently lack access to training (Bakki et al. 2015).

These environments are distinguished by several

characteristics, such as massive numbers of learners,

openness to all, accessibility on a large scale, the

nature of the qualifications and content, the

evaluation modalities, etc. They are based on existing

LMSs such as OpenEdx

and Moodle

Studying in an open and networked environment

such as a MOOC is challenging, since control of

educational activities is handed over from educational

institutions to individuals, who are generally isolated

learners (Fournier et al., 2014). Tasks that were

previously carried out by a teacher, such as setting

pedagogical objectives and evaluating a student’s

progress, can now be assigned to learners. These tasks

may be overwhelming for learners who are

unaccustomed to learning environments that require

them to be self-directed and self-regulated (Kop,

2011). Several research studies have addressed

specific issues related to these characteristics from

different perspectives. Furthermore, a large number

of research studies on MOOCs have been essentially

learner-centred, and have addressed various issues

related to drop-out rates, engagement or motivation

using various approaches such as trace analysis, for

different purposes, such as adaptation,

personalisation, etc. (Abrache et al., 2016; Alario-

Hoyos et al., 2014; Bendou et al., 2017; Hmedna et

al., 2019; Lee et al., 2016; Pilli & Admiraal, 2016;

Ramírez-Donoso et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2018;

Zheng et al., 2016). However, few works have

addressed issues related to teachers. In this regard,

several research questions can be highlighted, for

example: what role does the teacher play in these

massive and open environments? What are the

teacher’s needs when implementing these

environments? What tools and methods have been

proposed to support the teacher's activities (design,

deployment, monitoring, analysis, etc.)? In our work,

we are particularly interested in the second of these

research areas. We focus mainly on the design of

pedagogical scenarios, and especially on the process

of scenario design for cMOOCs, and their

deployment on specific LMSs.

An analysis of the environments currently used to

implement MOOCs led to the identification of

Moodle and OpenEdx as the two LMSs that are most

widely used to support these types of learning

environments. Based on this analysis, we examined

and compared the functionalities of these two LMSs.

The objective was to identify the connectivist-

http://mooc-culturels.fondationorange.com/

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oriented functionalities embedded in these two LMSs.

As shown in Table 1, Moodle provides a more diverse

range of solutions for teachers who intend to adopt

connectivism as a pedagogical approach. In addition,

Moodle has been used for about 13 years in the

educational system. Moodle is also a free LMS

system that is predominantly used in universities. In

fact, according to statistics from Moodle, the number

of Moodle users is currently approximately

247,414,610. Conceived as an open source platform,

it has a community of developers and technological

contributors who have created plugins for a variety of

needs (Dougiamas & Taylor, 2003). A plugin is a

software component that adds or expands a specific

feature to complete a software application. It may also

enable the customisation of an interface or other

features depending on the user’s needs, such as

accessibility. For these reasons, we chose the Moodle

platform as our area of study and analysis.

3 A MOODLE-CENTRIC

AUTHORING TOOL IN A

CONNECTIVIST CONTEXT

3.1 Towards a Moodle-oriented

Pedagogical Model for the cMOOC

Context

In this paper, we are specifically interested in the

identification and formalisation of the implicit

cMOOC-centric instructional design language used

in LMSs. This language will form the basis for the

development of binding solutions that will simplify

instructional design on the Moodle platform. These

solutions must ensure that pedagogical scenarios that

are formalised in conformance with a proposed

language can be operationalised in the LMS, with a

reduced semantic loss. In order to identify the

pedagogical core of the Moodle platform, and more

specifically to identify connectivist-oriented

pedagogical concepts, we adopt a platform-centric

approach.

We do not intend to enhance the semantics of the

pedagogical model embedded into the Moodle

platform. According to Abedmouleh (2013), an LMS

is not pedagogically neutral but embeds an implicit

language that is used to describe the process of

designing learning activities. Thus, our proposition is

based aims to identify the connectivist language

embedded in the Moodle platform and then to

explicitly formalise this language in a computer-

readable format. This format can be used as a binding

format for various external tools with different design

aspects. Our approach involves carrying out a

functional analysis of the Moodle platform, in which

we rely on the work conducted by El Mawas et al.

(2016). We have previously conducted a study of the

current state of the art in terms of the pedagogical

scenario design aspects of cMOOCs, and have put

together a compendium of teachers’ needs related to

the design and deployment of such courses, resulting

in a set of criteria and elements that regulate scenario

design in a cMOOC course (Bakki et al. 2019a). This

exploratory work also allowed for the abstraction of a

pedagogical model from existing cMOOCs, and some

of these elements are presented in Table 1.

Table 1: Connectivism vs. OpenEDX - Moodle elements mapping.

Associated Bloom Taxonomy Concepts

Activities

Moodle

OpenEdx

Aggregation

Read, search, categorize, quote, read, etc.

Consultation

Cognition

Page, URL,

resource

Video, File,

HTML

Remixing

Select, identify, argue, criticize, justify,

recommend, adapt, discuss, illustrate,

summarize, interpret, etc.

Metacognition

Sharing

Communication

Chat, Forum,

LTI, Wiki,

Glossary,

Journal

Forum, HTML

page

Feed

Forwarding

Sharing

Page

HTML

Repurposing

Compose, construct, create, elaborate, plan,

reorganize, represent, schematize, write, etc.

Production

Collaboration

Workshop, LTI

xBlock

LTI

Evaluation

Examine, test, evaluate

Evaluation

Quiz, Workshop

Quiz

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Figure 1: Construction process of our Moodle-centric scenario model.

Figure 2: Moodle-centric pedagogical scenario model for cMOOC context.

The next step is therefore to combine this abstract

pedagogical model with the requirements identified

for the cMOOC scenario design language, and the

main characteristics of a connectivist course (Figure

1). We also conduct a functional analysis of the

Moodle platform, which allows us to identify the

pedagogical model of the platform based on the

results reported by El Mawas et al. (2016) (Figure 1).

These two models, namely the connectivist

pedagogical scenario model and the Moodle-centred

pedagogical model, lead to specifications for these

models from two different perspectives. A

comparison (confrontation) between these two

models is then carried out (Figure 1-3), which allows

us to formalise the final conceptual language. The

objective is to combine the platform’s pedagogical

architecture with the elements of the connectivist

pedagogical scenario, in order to build a

representative model. This phase essentially involves

comparing, factorising and structuring the elements

of both models. Some parts of the models may be

identical, complementary or at different levels of

abstraction. The methodology consists of verifying

the elements of the respective models based on

several points, including the definition of similar

elements, the non-existence of certain elements, or

the generality or specificity of the relationships

between particular elements. The general concept of

this comparison is as follows: (i) we first verify the

non-existence of one or several elements, if

applicable; (ii) we identify a specification or

generalisation relationship between the model’s

elements; (iii) otherwise, we verify the difference of

the definition of the element in each model. More

specifically, we verify whether elements are at

different levels of abstraction. When all elements

have been verified, we obtain the Moodle-centric

pedagogical scenario model illustrated in Figure 2.

3.2 A Moodle-oriented Authoring Tool

In this section, we will present our visual authoring

tool for pedagogical design, which allows to specify

learning situations and then implement the

pedagogical scenarios to the Moodle Platform using

the deployment service. The use of graphical notation

to provide a visual syntax for modelling languages

has been developed and put into practice in many

different domains, and graphical notations have also

been developed to reduce the cognitive load when

working with complex semantic models. They

provide a comprehensive notation that can be clearly

understood by a wide range of users. In this vein, we

use an extended BPMN graphical notation (OMG,

2011) for the design of our pedagogical scenarios.

BPMN notation has many advantages as a

pedagogical modelling language, and has been used

to design various pedagogical situations in several

contexts (including F2F, hybrid and collaborative

environments) (Da Costa, 2014; Stylianakis & Arapi,

2013). The use of the BPMN was motivated through

an exploratory study of existing modelling languages.

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549

We compared the BPMN language to other

pedagogical modeling languages according to two

prevalent classifications, presented by Botturi et al.

(2006) and Nodenot (2007). Regarding the page limit

of this paper, more details on the conducted study can

be found here (Bakki et al. 2019a). BPMN meets our

requirements from the technical and descriptive

aspects contained in Botturi et al.'s (2006)

classification and according to the pedagogical

scenario aspects (such as role representation,

sequencing, collaboration, etc.) presented in

Nodenot's (2007) classification.

However, in order to meet the requirements to

provide the teacher with support in terms of designing

cMOOC-oriented pedagogical scenarios, we cannot

use BPMN as it stands. The specifications for BPMN

not only involve the use of graphical notations for

process descriptions, but also definitions of abstract

metamodels for these domains. We therefore propose

an extension to the concepts underlying BPMN,

which takes into account the specificities of a

cMOOC scenario by defining an abstract model and

a particular graphical notation for this model. We then

embed this extended notation and model into our tool.

The notations include elements describing the roles of

participants, the learning sessions, the different

categories of activities, and the resources and

sequencing of activities (Figure 3A).

The objective is not to build a new platform, but

to start with an existing tool and extend it. We

therefore selected the BPMN.io tool

, an open source

web application that uses BPMN 2.0 notation (OMG,

2011). Developing an extension to BPMN notation is

not the purpose of the current paper (Bakki et al.

2019b). Instead, we mainly focus on the presentation

of the tool’s functionalities, the extension of the

visual notation and the development of a Moodle

operationalisation service. In the following section,

we will take an example in order to illustrate our

proposal. This example involves a week’s activities

as part of a MOOC, on the topic of digital identity, as

shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Example of a textual pedagogical scenario.

Lesson

Activities

Type

Discovering

the subject

Consulting a collection of resources

to discover the subject of the week

Aggregation

Conducting a web search on digital

identity.

Aggregation

Examining the key elements that

build a user's digital identity

Remixing

Exploring

and

discovering

the interests

and ideas of

learners

Writing a blog post on the topic

Remixing

Discovering the publications of others

Aggregation

Exchanges on the forum

Remixing

Explaining and discussing acquired

ideas with peers; interacting

proactively in the chat room

Remixing

Figure 3: The main interface of Visual Authoring Tool.

http://bpmn.io/

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3.2.1 From a Pedagogical Need to a BPMN

Pedagogical Scenario

We propose an authoring tool for teacher-designers

using the Moodle learning platform. This tool

provides a graphical interface for the design of

pedagogical scenarios by combining the elements of

a connectivist pedagogical scenario with a

pedagogical design language that is specific to the

Moodle platform. It is a web application that reifies

the pedagogical model presented in Section 3.1.

Once the teachers are connected, they can either

create a new scenario or modify an existing one. In

the following, we consider that teachers have chosen

to create a new scenario. After specifying the name of

the scenario and choosing the blank model, the

teacher is directed to the conception page. When

starting the scenario conception process, the teachers

first create a learning session. They access this via the

toolbox on the left of Figure 3A, in the learning

session block.

In order to support teachers, we ensured that the

modelling space was not empty when creating a new

scenario (Figure 3B), and an initial learning session is

therefore created by default. In a MOOC, one session

typically represents one week. The teachers are then

provided with an interface containing a pool, which

can be renamed or deleted. They can use the

Properties section (Figure 3C) to specify the duration

of this session (the start and end dates).

After creating their first session and specifying the

roles, the teachers can start creating different lessons.

We assume that a lesson encompasses a number of

activities. The teachers can continue modelling by

dragging the activities they want to include from the

toolbox into the model. In order to facilitate the

identification of activities, according to the four

principles of a connectivist course, we classify them

into four blocks with different colour codes.

Each activity has its own properties; for example,

for a consultation activity, the teachers specify

whether to use a resource, a page or a URL that

describes the activities to be carried out or presents a

description of the progress of this activity. If teachers

want to set a resource, they specify its type and the

link to access it. The example presented in Table 2

illustrates this process. Once the teacher has designed

all the activities, s/he will produce a workflow, as

shown in Figure 4 (1).

Once modelling is complete, the teachers can save

the scenario in different formats or deploy it on an

online platform using the Export to... button (Figure

3D). This action transforms the BPMN file into one

that can be imported by the Moodle platform.

3.2.2 From a Pedagogical Scenario to a

Moodle Learning Environment

In order to support the teacher, a service allowing for

the deployment of pedagogical scenarios was

developed. Operationalisation represents an

intermediate phase between learning and scenario

design, and the aim of this step is to ensure that the

scenario described by the teacher can be used and

manipulated in a LMS while preserving the

pedagogical semantics (Abedmouleh et al., 2011).

Our contribution uses hybrid approaches based on

processes and tools inspired by and/or applied in

model-driven engineering (Bonk & Zhu, 2018).

We implement an operationalisation service that

allows teachers to automatically deploy their

pedagogical scenarios on the Moodle platform, using

the transformation described in Section 3.2. To do so,

we provide a solution that allows the pedagogical

workflow to be transformed into a deployable

scenario. As illustrated in Figure 5, we propose a two-

phase approach.

(1) Transformation/Pretreatment. The aim at this

stage is to propose a confrontation (comparison)

between the pedagogical scenario and the elements of

Moodle, in order to resolve any ambiguities and to

match each concept in the scenario with a concept in

the chosen platform.

The general idea of the transformation algorithm

follows that described in Section 3.2. After the

BPMN pedagogical workflow has been generated, the

scenario is transformed into the format required by

Moodle, which in this case is the JSON format

(Figure 5). The teacher can also export the course in

MBZ format (Figure 5), via a process in which the

BPMN scenario is transformed into a set of XML

files. In practice, this transformation involves making

a backup of the Moodle course using the platform's

import functionality; our transformation engine then

modifies the backup archive with the information

contained in the BPMN file for the new scenario.

Finally, the teacher can import the modified

course manually into the Moodle platform. In our

example, after designing the lesson, the teacher can

deploy this scenario on the Moodle platform. Pressing

the Deploy button applies a pre-treatment phase that

runs in the backend and generates a JSON file

containing all the activities, by transforming the

BPMN file using the mechanism described below.

The JSON file for the example activities is shown in

Figure 4 (2).

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551

Figure 4: Illustrative example.

(2) Deployment. The operationalisation module acts

as a communication gateway between our tool and the

Moodle platform. For this purpose, we developed a

web service as a Moodle plugin. The JSON file

resulting from the preceding phase is sent via an

HTTP request; this is received and interpreted by the

developed plugin, which is automatically connected

to the platform, and is then automatically executed

using the Create course function.

Figure 5: Moodle operationalisation process.

The Rest API that we have developed connects to

the Moodle platform and deploys the different

activities after generating the JSON file. Note that the

transformation phase (i.e. the generation of the JSON

file) and the Rest API are executed in the backend.

Figure 4 (3) illustrates the Moodle course after

deployment in our example.

4 EXPERIMENTS AND

EVALUATION

4.1 Objective and Description

In this research, the contributions were evaluated and

tested as they were specified through simulations and

user tests. Although experiments in a real-world

situation in which the tool was integrated into a

cMOOC project would have been valuable, this was

not possible, as it is risky for MOOC designers to rely

on a research prototype.

However, a final evaluation was conducted in an

experiment with 12 participants, to evaluate the

usability of our authoring tool. We aimed to verify the

ability of the proposed extension to create and model

cMOOC scenarios, and to evaluate the Moodle

deployment service. This experiment was carried out

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during a workshop, with users who had prior

knowledge and experience with pedagogical scenario

design and who had previously designed pedagogical

situations and had used different instructional design

tools. In our research context, it is very difficult to

engage candidates. Due to space limitations, the

experimental protocol and the results obtained will be

summarised here. For our experiment, we follow a

similar experimental protocol as presented in (Bakki

et al. 2019b) with a separate group of participants.

4.2 Experimental Protocol and Data

Collection

4.2.1 Experimental Protocol

Our evaluation protocol consisted of three steps, as

follows. (1) Preparation: We provided participants

with a user’s guide that explained the philosophy and

described the functionalities of the tool, and an

experimental guide that described the different steps

to be performed during this evaluation and the

scenario to be deployed. (2) Conception and

deployment: The aim in this step was for the

participants to design a pedagogical scenario for a

cMOOC according to the instructions provided

during the preparation phase, and then to deploy this

scenario on the Moodle platform provided. (3)

Results: In this step, we asked participants to

complete a questionnaire at the end of the evaluation,

in order to validate the utility and usability of our tool

and to obtain more information on their experiences.

4.2.2 Data Collection

The methodology used to collect the data in this

experiment involved opinion data collected from the

participants via a questionnaire. At the end of the

experiment, participants were asked to complete an

online questionnaire containing 25 closed-ended

questions, which was evaluated using a six-point

Likert scale. The first part of the questionnaire

focused mainly on the expressivity of the notation and

the deployment service. The second part measured

the usability of the tool, and for this part we used the

System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnaire (Bangor

et al., 2009).

4.3 Experimental Results

The first part of the questionnaire was divided into

two sections. The first section aimed to determine

whether the tool allowed the participant to produce a

simple design for a connectivist course. This section

also assessed whether participants were satisfied with

the tool and whether the notation used in the tool was

easy to understand. The final aim was to evaluate the

potential of the tool in terms of designing a cMOOC

course. In the first section of the questionnaire, 10 of

the participants agreed that the layout of the toolbox

allowed them to identify the elements, and indicated

that the tool offered all the concepts required when

designing a cMOOC course. Only two of them did not

agree with this statement. All participants indicated

that they had succeeded in formalising all the

concepts of their scenarios. The second section of the

questionnaire assessed the usability and utility of the

deployment service. All of the participants completed

this phase.

In total, 11 of the 12 participants reported that the

operationalisation service was very useful, and 10

found the automated operationalisation service easy

to use. A review of the feedback from participants

revealed that their scenarios had been successfully

deployed: between 75% and 100% of the designed

concepts have been successfully deployed on the

platform. These results are generally consistent with

those of the scenario analysis. We noticed that some

users did not fully complete the metadata, which

explains the rates obtained. In the second part, the

SUS questionnaire was used to measure the usability

of our authoring tool. SUS is a popular and effective

tool for assessing the usability of various systems

(Bangor et al., 2009), and uses closed-ended

questions with a five-point Likert scale. Although

only 12 participants were involved in this experiment,

this was sufficient to detect any major problems with

usability (Virzi, 1992). Before calculating the SUS

score, we pre-processed the participants’ responses to

remove any errors.

In order to detect these errors, we used the grid

presented by McLellan et al. (2012), which considers

all responses provided with a score greater than three

for all negative statements as incorrect. Of the 12

responses received, three were withdrawn. Overall,

the average SUS score for all participants was 73.05,

with a SD of 13.09. This corresponds to the 68th

percentile, according to the standardisation presented

by Sauro and Lewis (2011).

In accordance with the empirical rule for

interpreting SUS scores (Bangor et al., 2009), scores

of less than 50 were considered unacceptable, scores

of between 50 and 70 were marginally acceptable,

and scores of above 70 were acceptable. Using this

acceptability scale, an average SUS score of 73.03

indicates that our tool is “acceptable”, and a “good”

result was obtained for the notation.

A Moodle-centric Model and Authoring Tool for cMOOC-Type Courses

553

Figure 6: SUS Score.

5 CONCLUSION

In this paper, we have proposed a solution to support

pedagogical scenario building for connectivist

MOOCs. The work presented in this paper is a

continuity of the work conducted in (Bakki et al.,

2019b). The latter is based on a pedagogical oriented

approach. However, in this work, we are interested in

a platform-oriented approach and more particularly in

the Moodle platform. Thus, our main contribution is

a visual authoring tool that allows for the design and

deployment of cMOOC-oriented scenarios, using the

BPMN model for graphical representation. We apply

a two-step process, from the design to the

operationalisation of pedagogical scenarios. The first

step consists of modelling the scenario using our

editor, which can be used by teachers without specific

technical knowledge. The second step involves the

automatic deployment of a scenario designed using a

Moodle web service API.

Our contributions were evaluated and tested as

they were developed, in order to verify them against

the real needs of the ultimate users. The final

evaluation was carried out with 12 participants, in

order to evaluate the usability and utility of our tool,

and was carried out via a questionnaire that was

supplied to the participants when the experiment was

complete. The findings confirmed that the tool

allowed users to easily design and deploy connectivist

pedagogical scenarios. In the context of a cMOOC, a

course is initially designed by the teacher, and

learners are then encouraged to adapt it based on their

learning objectives. As a perspective of our work, we

therefore consider that a methodology based on the

co-design of a scenario that is currently in use would

be a possible solution to this challenge, by giving

https://stats.moodle.org/

access to the learners to tool with special and

restricted roles and privileges. We will also explore

the possibilities to evaluate our tool with a larger

number of teachers and/or designers. We will also

explore the possibility of evaluating our tool with a

larger number of teachers and/or designers.

The contributions presented in this paper have a

twofold purpose: firstly, our aim is to assist teachers

in conceiving MOOCs, and secondly, we seek to

bridge the gap between the design and deployment

phases by providing technical solutions to teachers or

educational institutions working with the Moodle

platform. We would like to point out that the Moodle

platform module is recognised as one of the most

widely used platforms at the national and

international levels, with more than 243,000,000

users and 31,896,069 courses. According to statistics

from Moodle, their LMS is currently used by over

60% of higher education institutions all over the

world

A major strength of the Moodle platform is the

two very active Moodle communities that have been

formed over the years. The first concerns the

pedagogical community (teachers and pedagogical

engineers), whose exchanges are centred on the

pedagogical model embedded into the Moodle

platform. The second is a more tech-oriented

community (Moodle API developers), who focus on

providing technical solutions to Moodle users. Both

communities could contribute significantly to the

adoption of our solutions by educational institutions,

and especially universities, which have started to

deploy MOOCs over the last few years.

CSEDU 2021 - 13th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

554

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The current work is supported by the ANR project

PASTEL <ANR-16-CE38-0007>. The authors want

to thank all the persons who have contributed to this

project.

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