Open Source Survey Software

Author(s):  
J. Baker

One of the significant advances in software design afforded by the internet has been the open source movement, an effort to collaboratively create software and make it widely and freely available to the online community. Although the open source movement started with Unix-like computer operating systems, it has expanded to include a wide variety of software programs, including tools to publish and analyze online surveys. This article introduces the open source movement and then profiles three leading open source survey programs: php Easy Survey Package (phpESP), PHP Surveyor, and the Moodle course management system.

2009 ◽  
pp. 82-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason D. Baker

One of the significant advances in software design afforded by the Internet has been the open source movement, an effort to collaboratively create software and make it widely and freely available to the online community. Although the open source movement started with Unix-like computer operating systems, it has expanded to include a wide variety of software programs, including tools to publish and analyze online surveys. This chapter introduces the open source movement, and then profiles three leading open source survey programs: php Easy Survey Package (phpESP), PHP Surveyor, and the Moodle course management system.


2008 ◽  
Vol 101 (8) ◽  
pp. 582-585
Author(s):  
Lyn Phy

As mathematics teachers, we are fortunate to have a wide variety of textbooks available for almost any area of mathematics taught in the typical K–16 curriculum. This past year, however, I found myself delving into the topic of women in mathematics, a subject not covered in any suitable textbook. Rather than trying to use multiple books, I examined types of mathematical discourse that would enable my students to learn and communicate the course material despite the lack of a formal textbook. In this article, I will discuss my use of cooperative groups, the course management system Blackboard, and the Internet to foster communication and meaningful mathematical discourse.


Author(s):  
Zafer Unal ◽  
Aslihan Unal

In the current market space there are many commercially available Course Management Systems (CMS) from which to choose, such as BlackBoard and Desire2Learn. The open source community has also been active in creating alternative course management system choices that are free of licensing costs (Moodle, Sakai). Institutions now have the choice between these competing CMSs, and it is not enough to just pick a package based on its price or feature list. Institutions considering implementing a CMS must carefully evaluate it before putting it to use with a student population. A trial was undertaken to consider whether Moodle warranted a more formal consideration as an alternative to the institution’s current CMS (BlackBoard) at a southeastern university. This report documents a detailed comparison of BlackBoard and Moodle CMSs based on students’ experiences that used both systems during the same course and investigates if Moodle warrants consideration as an alternative to the institution’s current course management system.


2009 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robyn Schell ◽  
David Kaufman

The web has the potential to offer an environment that can support standardized medical education to students dispersed in time or place and, in the process, respond to reduced availability of patients for practice. This exploratory article describes how we evaluated critical thinking in an online collaborative Problem-based Learning (PBL) tutorial built on a platform integrating a well-known course management system and a voice-over the Internet communications tool. We discuss the process and results of evaluating the tutorials by adapting and applying an earlier framework used to measure the level of critical thinking taking place in collaborative online PBL tutorials. Our results indicate that this framework could be used as a method to compare levels of critical thinking between tutorial groups as well as tutorial variables such as case study formats and the types of technology used to support the sessions.


2011 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 369-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kumar Seluakumaran ◽  
Felicita Fedelis Jusof ◽  
Rosnah Ismail ◽  
Ruby Husain

Educators in medical schools around the world are presently experimenting with innovative ways of using web-based learning to supplement the existing teaching and learning process. We have recently used a popular open-source course management system (CMS) called the modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment (Moodle) to construct an online site (DPhysiol) to facilitate our face-to-face teaching of physiology to a group of first-year students in the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery program. The integration of the Moodle site into our teaching was assessed using online log activity, student examination marks, and feedback from students. The freely available Moodle platform was simple to use, helped to effectively deliver course materials, and has features that allowed cooperative learning. Students who used the CMS throughout their academic year and commented favorably regarding its use as a complement to the face-to-face classroom sessions. The group of students used the CMS obtained significantly higher scores in the final examination compared with the previous class that did not use the CMS. In addition, there was a significant correlation between student participation and performance in online quizzes and their final examination marks. However, students' overall online usage of the CMS did not correlate with their examination marks. We recommend Moodle as a useful tool for physiology educators who are interested in integrating web-based learning into their existing teaching curriculum.


2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica E. Bulger ◽  
Kevin C. Almeroth ◽  
Richard E. Mayer ◽  
Dorothy Chun ◽  
Allan Knight ◽  
...  

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