Moodle Platform as a Key to the Effectiveness of Sustainable

Development of Higher Education

K. A. Melnikova

and L. A. Tyukina

Yaroslavl State Technical University, Yaroslavl, Russia

Keywords: Moodle, Grammar Trainer, Blended Learning, Sustainable Learning.

Abstract: In the modern world, it is very important to constantly develop the skills of a specialist. From this point of

view, the sustainable development of educational technologies is a fundamental factor in the educational

process. The objective of the research is to assess the impact of online courses using Moodle platform on the

effectiveness of learning a foreign language. The research participants were 1st and 2nd year students of

Yaroslavl State Technical University (YSTU), Yaroslavl, Russia. The research period was 2019/2020 and

2020/2021 academic years. The importance of this research is determined by the use of different approaches

to grammar learning from the traditional ones. The course is designed in such a way that a student, having

understood the grammatical model (formula), trains practical skills. The research results, namely: the students'

scores, course completion time, the number of test passes on each topic were collected and analyzed using

quantitative and qualitative analysis methods. Students' reviews of the course show not only their interest in

this type of educational activity, but also an increase in educational indicators, and, as a result, an increase in

cognitive knowledge by 9 %.

1 INTRODUCTION

The sustainable use of digital technologies in teaching

a foreign language in universities is due to the steady

need to train competitive staff (Saltzberg, and

Polyson, 1995).

The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has

accelerated the transition of universities to mixed and

online education. Although earlier models of mixed

teaching in universities were actively discussed by

scientists of the world community, Russian

universities did not strive to turn to such a teaching

mode (Collis, 2003).

The so-called Grem model is the most widely used

in YSTU. The advantages of this model are: an

unlimited number of educational materials of

different complexity levels, process cost-

effectiveness, 24/7 availability of educational

materials, social interaction between the teacher and

the student, automation of checking test results

process, no need to perform tasks at a strictly defined

time, which is the key to the student's personal

freedom in choosing the time/ place/ method of

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1998-7963

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5676-2325

learning a foreign language (Garrison and Kanuka,

2004). Moreover, the digital educational environment

allows students to choose the most appropriate

materials and courses for their educational goals and

independently assess their progress.

The Moodle platform is a software tool that

provides a unified framework within which students

can access a wide range of online resources. It also

allows teachers and students to interact at any time.

Various assessment tools, such as self-assessment

tests, provide instant feedback to students and give

both parties of the process an understanding of the

knowledge and skills acquired during the course.

The use of Moodle platform in the general

(traditional) course of education has been repeatedly

described by both Russian (Tyukina, Babayan and

Lazović, 2020) and foreign scientists. Moreover, the

vast majority of authors noted an improvement in

academic performance and an increase in motivation

for students to learn a foreign language (Vician and

Charlesworth, 2003).

According to the "Law on Education in the

Russian Federation", e-learning means "the

492

Melnikova, K. and Tyukina, L.

Moodle Platform as a Key to the Effectiveness of Sustainable Development of Higher Education.

DOI: 10.5220/0010670800003223

In Proceedings of the 1st International Scientiﬁc Forum on Sustainable Development of Socio-economic Systems (WFSDS 2021), pages 492-497

ISBN: 978-989-758-597-5

organization of educational activities with the use of

information contained in databases and providing its

processing of information technologies, technical

means, as well as information and

telecommunications networks that ensure the

transmission of this information over communication

lines, the interaction of students and teachers."

Distance learning technologies are understood as

educational technologies implemented mainly with

the use of information and telecommunications

networks in the indirect interaction of students and

teachers. Organizations engaged in educational

activities have the right to apply these types of

teaching in the implementation of educational

programs in accordance with the procedure

established by the federal executive authority (Vician

and Charlesworth, 2003).

Effective learning of a foreign language with the

help of Moodle began in the 2018/2019 academic

year at YSTU. At first, these were just control lexico-

grammatical tests. Now the trainer effectively

functions in the system of the mixed mode of training,

allowing students to eliminate gaps in knowledge of

grammar.

In the first semester of the first year of all the

specialties at YSTU, the number of learning hours for

practical classes is 34-36 hours per semester. The

number of students in the group is 12-15 people. A

large number of students in a group and a small

number of training hours make it difficult for students

to effectively perceive information, and significantly

reduce the educational process effectiveness.

Moreover, the heterogeneity of knowledge, skills and

abilities of students coming from different

educational institutions leads to the same

heterogeneous motivation to learn a foreign language

and is a significant problem for a teacher (Universitet

sht. Pensel'vanii, 2004).

In the Russian system of compulsory full

secondary education (grades 1-11), a foreign

language begins to be studied in schools from the 5th

grade. Thus, at the time of entering the higher

education system, students have been learning a

foreign language for 8 years. In some schools, a

foreign language is a mandatory subject for learning

from the 2nd grade. And such students learn the

language for 10 years. But the analysis of students'

knowledge at the entrance, intermediate and final

lexical and grammatical tests over the past 7 years

(2012-2020) shows that, although students learn a

foreign language for more than one year, their

knowledge is poor and unsystematic, and the results

of the entrance tests for about 60-70% of students are

depressingly low.

Since learning a foreign language is a complex

and complicated process, we decided to introduce an

additional online course "English Trainer. Level 1” in

order to fill in the gaps in grammar knowledge,

increase the motivation of students to learn a foreign

language and provide them with the opportunity to

successfully pass the intermediate and final tests. The

online course "Grammar Trainer. Basic level"

considered hereto is designed for 72 academic hours

and consists of 5 modules containing 14 grammar

sections: noun, adjective, etc. Each topic contains

some lecture material and a final test. A final test is

provided at the end of the section. Each test on the

topic consists of 140 multiple-choice questions. The

questions in the test fall out randomly. Thus, the

probability of repeating the questions in the final test

is very small. In the 2019/2020 academic year, the

course was first introduced and tested in the

educational process. In the 2020/2021 academic year,

the course was recommended by the University's

management as mandatory for English-language

students of the 1st year of all areas of learning. Since

during the 2020/2021 academic year, YSTU took a

mixed version of training, the online course was used

along with the traditional teaching methods, in order

to:

 systematize students' knowledge;

 increase the effectiveness of the educational

process;

 increase the motivation of students to learn.

Although our main goal was to improve student

achievement in terms of passing the test successfully,

the research also revealed additional, accompanying

educational goals. Additional educational objectives

are:

 developing educational skills in a mixed

training mode;

 self-selection of the most appropriate training

mode;

 developing time management skills;

 development of self-assessment skills.

To achieve these goals, we have chosen a mixed

educational approach, where e-learning is integrated

into teaching, learning, evaluation, and feedback in

real time. When creating a course on Moodle

platform, we used the experience of foreign scientists

(Universitet sht. Pensel'vanii, 2004).

By integrating the experience of foreign

colleagues in an innovative way, we developed a

course in the virtual educational environment of

Moodle, which not only provided the necessary

content of the theoretical rules of English grammar

for successfully passing the intermediate certification

Moodle Platform as a Key to the Effectiveness of Sustainable Development of Higher Education

493

test, but also allowed students to work out their skills

to absolute automatism.

Starting from the 2018/2019 academic year, the

online course of training was structured into 5

modules, developed, prepared and uploaded to the

YSTU Moodle platform. First-year students of the

Institute of Chemistry and Chemical Technology and

the Institute of Digital Systems practiced these

modules for two academic years (2019/2020 and

2020/2021) as preparation for the intermediate test in

English. The full course of education includes two

intermediate tests in a foreign language and a final

test. The score for the final test is presented in the

certificate of bachelor's degree.

This article discusses the design, content of the

online course and the results of these two years to

assess the impact of online courses on the

effectiveness of learning a foreign language using the

Moodle platform in terms of improving the

performance of the intermediate test and the degree

of student satisfaction with the mixed learning

approach.

Assessment of students' use of the online course

"English Grammar Trainer. Level 1” was performed

using a specially designed questionnaire, which

included the following questions:

1 Will students use Moodle online resources, and

if so, how?

2. Do students with the access to online materials

have better overall academic performance and

intermediate assessment test results?

3. How do students perceive the impact of the

online course "English Grammar Trainer. Level 1" on

the results of the intermediate assessment test in the

discipline "Foreign Language" and understanding of

grammatical material?

4. What is the students' opinion about the online

course "English Grammar Trainer. Level 1”?

A mixed learning model was used to obtain

answers to these questions. The results were

extrapolated from Moodle platform and analyzed in

comparison with the results obtained when the

platform was not used. In addition, the results of the

final tests were analyzed. The main characteristics of

the students who participated in the research are

shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Main characteristics of the research participants.

Academic year Number of

students

M. F. %, Institute of Chemistry

and Chemical Technology

%, Institute of

Digital

stems

2018-2019 171 54.3 49.7 79.5 20.5

2019-2020 185 44.3 55.7 65.9 34.1

2020-2021 196 38.3 61.7 68.4 31.6

2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The research results are based on data extracted from

Moodle platform. The statistical analysis of the

intermediate assessment test conducted for students

and the analysis of the results of the survey of

students' subjective perception of educational

activities using the Moodle platform were carried out.

In particular, we analyzed:

 the model of students' use of the Moodle

platform and each module's section;

 improving the results of the intermediate

assessment test for students who used the e-

learning course;

 percentage of students who have passed the test

in two years 2019/2020; 2020/2021.

As for the model of using the Moodle platform by

students, we also compared the number of requests to

the online course depending on gender and direction

of education. We analyzed the training analytics

extracted from the Moodle platform after the students

completed the course, and organized it in the form of

tables representing the number of requests to various

resources and activities to get information about the

interaction of students with each of them. In terms of

improving the results of the intermediate assessment

test for students, we compared the results of the

intermediate exam obtained by students in 2020/2021

who had access to the training course on the Moodle

platform with the results obtained from students in

2018/2019 who did not have access to the electronic

training course. To do this, we compared the results

of two academic years, presenting them to the

ANOVA statistical analysis (Table 2) The results of

ANOVA statistical analysis show that the results of

students who use an online course in their training

(2020/2021) are higher than the results of students

who do not use an online course in their training

(2018/2019).

WFSDS 2021 - INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC FORUM ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC SYSTEMS

494

Table 2: Number of students, total score (0-1), average score, deviation value.

Academic year

Number of students

SUM of normalized score

MEAN of

normalized score

Variance,

2018-2019 171 55.4120 0.6641 0.0412

2020-2021 196 56.8652 0.6827 0.0501

3 RESEARCH RESULTS

Do students use the online resources of the Moodle

platform, and if so, how did they use them?

In general, during the fully implemented year of

education using Moodle platform, i.e. 2020/2021,

students used the platform in preparation for the

intermediate test, but they began to use the platform

more actively before the final test (according to the

Moodle log, there is an increase in the number of

requests from students using the platform after the

intermediate test date by 230%). 61.7% of students

successfully completed the intermediate test (121 out

of 196), all of them actively used the platform and

made up 97% (163 out of 196). The fact that 97% of

active students successfully passed the intermediate

test can mean either that learning with the help of the

platform is really more effective, or that they were the

most motivated and conscientious and would still

have passed the intermediate test for positive grades,

even without the help of online resources. In

particular, before the intermediate testing, 121

students used the Moodle platform system and gained

access to its resources (hereinafter referred to as

"active students"), while after the intermediate testing

and before the final testing, the number of such

students increased to 163. Compared to 2019/2020,

the number of active students on the platform has

increased (+35.3%). The percentage of active women

in 2019/2020 was 55.7%; and in 2020/2021 – 61.7%

and was slightly higher than that of men (2019/2020,

44,3%; 2020/2021, 38,3%). The share of Institute of

Chemistry and Chemical Technology participants

was 65.9% in 2019/2020 and 68.4% in 2020/2021

academic years. While the share of Institute of Digital

Systems students in the same time frame was 34.1%

and 31.6 %, respectively.

3.1 Moodle Platform Usage Models

Here we analyzed the data of the online course for

2019/2020. The total usage indicator can be obtained

according to the Moodle content access log data, it

shows the level of students' interaction with each

module of the course (Table 2), despite the fact that

the student can access the information and tests of the

modules countless times. Based on data from the

Moodle online platform, students did not use forums

at all, preferring the traditional face-to-face

explanation in class.

Table 3: The number of accesses to the modules of the

English Grammar Trainer Level 1 course on Moodle

platform.

Resource References

Module 1 732

(

Total

)

Nouns 315

Personal Pronouns 417

Module 1 Ouiz 306

Module 2 1314 (Total)

Articles 340

Other

ronouns 426

Numerals 476

Adjectives 501

Module 2 Quiz 387

Module 3 1582

(

Total

)

Auxiliar

Verbs 401

Sim

le Tense 523

Modal Verbs 365

Irregular Verbs 296

Module 3 Quiz 523

Module 4 1192

(

Total

)

Word orde

235

Sim

le Pre

ositions 368

There is/are 287

Questions 302

Module 4 Quiz 477

Module 5 561

(

Total

)

Final Test 561

Forum News 0

Forum for interaction 0

After analyzing the statistical data of the platform,

it can be seen that students repeatedly referred to the

course materials, as well as repeatedly performed

tests of modules. The relatively small number of

requests to the Final Test of Module 5 is explained by

Moodle Platform as a Key to the Effectiveness of Sustainable Development of Higher Education

495

the limited number of attempts to pass it (no more

than 3), which is set by the course settings.

An unlimited number of test attempts gave

students the opportunity to improve their test scores,

and, at the same time, increase their self-assessment.

In addition, the ability to evaluate their knowledge

before passing the final test allows to increase the

motivation of students to learn (Lau Gonzalez,

Jauregui, Perez, Farinas and Le, 2014).

Do students who have access to online materials

have better overall academic performance and

intermediate assessment test results?

Figure 1: Comparison of the ranges of scores obtained by

students in the 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 academic years.

Applying the methodology of qualitative and

quantitative data analysis, we can talk about a

significant difference with a tendency to significantly

improve indicators in favor of a mixed learning

model. To demonstrate this difference, we have

formed four ranges of scores obtained by students,

where from 1 to 10 - unsatisfactory; from 11 to 17 -

satisfactory; from 18 to 23 - good and from 24 to 30 -

excellent. Comparing the indicators of 2019/2020 and

2020/2021 in Figure 1, it is possible to note with

confidence that the use of an online course on the M

platform had almost no impact on the academic

performance of students with low and high scores,

while students with good scores significantly

improved their quality indicators. Therefore,

expanding the possibilities of classical learning

through online resources (mixed method) is not

enough to increase the quality indicators of both

students with very low and very high indicators. But

there is a positive tendency among students with good

indicators.

4 CONCLUSIONS

It is difficult for first-year students to adapt to the new

higher education system. This is due to a complete

change in the learning environment, and due to the

lack of students' training in terms of learning a foreign

language. Since students' knowledge is

heterogeneous, the task of the teacher becomes the

need to help such students improve the efficiency of

their learning process. Therefore, any resource

available to students and which can be used at any

free time and in an unlimited number of times

becomes an opportunity to train and motivate the

training of such students. The use of online courses

provides students with this opportunity. However,

based on the data obtained from the research, it can

be said that students like learning in an online

environment, but they are not ready to fully learn

online and, therefore, prefer to consult with the

teacher in real time. It can also be noted that the online

course on the Moodle platform was not fully used by

students. Students with low scores did not improve

their quality scores, while students with good scores

advanced to a higher level. Based on this, it can be

concluded that more motivated students can

significantly improve their knowledge and test

results, and, accordingly, the course score, using

online learning tools such as the course on Moodle.

Thus, we can note that the Moodle platform is a

useful resource, as it provides students with unlimited

educational content in terms of time and number of

requests; allows students to increase their self-

assessment and adapt more successfully to a new

learning environment; allows the teacher to evaluate

students' knowledge and get data on the difficulties

that students face during the course. Based on this, it

is possible to say with confidence that the use of

online courses on the platform is an integral and

important part of the continuous and sustainable

educational process.

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