1. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMPUTER ENGINEERING
International Journal of & TECHNOLOGY (IJCET)
Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976-
6367(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6375(Online) Volume 4, Issue 1, January- February (2013), © IAEME
ISSN 0976 – 6367(Print)
ISSN 0976 – 6375(Online)
Volume 4, Issue 1, January- February (2013), pp. 71-79
IJCET
© IAEME: www.iaeme.com/ijcet.asp
Journal Impact Factor (2012): 3.9580 (Calculated by GISI) ©IAEME
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A STUDY ON USERS OF MOODLE THROUGH SARASIN MODEL
Maria Dominic1, Anthony Philomen Raj1, Sagayaraj Francis2, Saul Nicholas1
1 Department of MCA, Sacred Heart College, India
2 Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Pondicherry Engineering College, India
dominic@shctpt.edu, philomen@shctpt.edu, fsfrancis@pec.edu, saul@shctpt.edu
ABSTRACT
Education is a conscious attempt to promote learning in others [1]. E-learning
provides greater freedom from the time and space constraints and allows more interactivity in
teaching learning process. This benefits the learners more than the traditional learning [2].
Out of the various open sources or proprietary e-LMS we have customized and used
MOODLE in our campus*. To evaluate this idea we made a study on the usage of it with
respect to Sarasin Model and have recorded the findings in this paper.
Keywords: Learning Styles, e-learning, e-learning models, e-learning open sources,
MOODLE
LEARNING
Learning is acquiring new, which is existing within us, to bring out with the help of
teaching method [3]. Different learners have different styles of learning. A learning style is a
way by which the learner concentrates processes, digests and remembers. Understanding this
process will make teaching and learning become more efficient since the teacher’s will
become more aware of the learner’s characteristics. A synthesis of learning style theories
about the learner’s characteristics from various theorist views are provided in [4]. One such
theorist is Sarasin. In this paper we match Sarasin’s model [4] of learning auditory, visual
and tactile/kinesthetic with the characteristics of MOODLE and conclude which of the
features benefits/contributes more to the learning process in our campus. Sarasin classified
the learning styles to three types as shown in Figure 1.
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2. International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976-
6367(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6375(Online) Volume 4, Issue 1, January- February (2013), © IAEME
Visual
Visual learners learn through two channels namely, Linguistic and Spatial.
Figure 1 Sarasin Model Learning Styles
Linguistic
Visual-linguistic learners learn more from reading and writing. They learn through written
language and they remember the text even if they do not read more than once.
Spatial
Learners of visual-spatial type prefer to visualize their learning materials and hence they do
better with charts, presentations, videos and other visual aids. They generally have difficulty
with written language.
Auditory
Auditory learners often talk to themselves. They also may move their lips and read out loud.
They may have difficulty with reading and writing tasks. They often do better talking to a
colleague or a tape recorder and hearing what was heard.
Kinesthetic
Kinesthetic learners learn by doing themselves, experiencing and reflecting. The two
channels of this learning are kinesthetic (movement) and tactile (touch).
e-LEARNING
Many conceive of e-learning as distance learning mostly self studied and lacking
other dimensions of conventional teaching. It is a flawed misconception. The letter ‘e’ as
prefixed in e-mail, e-commerce, e-business stands for electronic. According to European
Union (EU) it is the inclusion of all ICT in all learning systems and environment (formal, non
formal) and according to American society for training and development (ASTD), e-learning
covers a wide set of applications and process such as web based learning, computer based
learning, virtual learning and digital collaboration. It includes delivery through internet /
Intranet / extranet, audio, video, text, CD ROM etc., [5]. Even though there is so much hype
around e-learning there are also limitations with regard to it. One such is limited audio-visual
contact and experience which can never be as powerful as real time [5]. E-learning is made
up of three components, namely enabling technology, learning content and learning design.
Figure 2 depicts the component parts of e-learning [5].
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3. International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976-
6367(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6375(Online) Volume 4, Issue 1, January- February (2013), © IAEME
Figure 2 Components of e-learning
Even though the teacher may be the subject expert and content developer but he has no
control over the learning activities because e-learning is a team work between various stake
holders such as subject expert, learning management system, web developer, graphic artists
and the learner.
e-LEARNING MODELS
There is a variety of learning models in practice. The learning models can be
classified according to the characteristics of learning. Table 1 lists the learning models and
their characteristics [4].
Table 1 Learning Models
Learning
Characteristics
Models
Tactile/
Sarasin Auditory Visual
Kinesthetic
Gregorc/ Abstract/ Random/
Concrete
Butler Sequential Concrete
Sims Behavioral/
Cognitive Perceptual
& Sims Affective
McCarthy Analytic Imaginative Dynamic
Harb,
Abstract/ Active/
Durrant, Concrete
Reflective Concrete
& Terry
e-LEARNING OPEN SOURCES
A search was made on the web for open source systems which can be used for e-
learning and it is providing in Table 2. These software are desktop based and can be installed
in the local machine.
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4. International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976-
6367(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6375(Online) Volume 4, Issue 1, January- February (2013), © IAEME
Table 2 Desktop based Software
S.N
Name URL
o
1 OpenOffice.org http://openoffice.org/
2 Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net
CamStudio.org
3 http://camstudio.org/
4 GIMP.org http://gimp.org/
Handbrake.fr
5 http://handbrake.fr/
Mozilla Firefox
6 www.mozillafirefox.us
SeaMonkey-Project.org
7 www.seamonkey-project.org
Notepad++
8 www.notepad-plus-plus.org/
Visual Understanding
9 http://vue.tufts.edu/
Environment (VUE)
The following Table 3 lists some of the e-learning software which works on client- server
technology. These software need to be installed in the server and accessed and used by many
clients (learners).
Table 3 Server based Software
S.No Name URL
1 MOODLE https://moodle.org/
2 ATutor http://atutor.ca/credits.php
WordPress.org
3 wordpress.org/
MediaWiki
4 www.mediawiki.org/
5 phpBB https://www.phpbb.com/
StatusNet
6 status.net/
Piwik
7 piwik.org/
OpenWebAnalytics
8 www.openwebanalytics.com/
9 Sakai www.sakaiproject.org/
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5. International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976-
6367(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6375(Online) Volume 4, Issue 1, January- February (2013), © IAEME
MOODLE
MOODLE[17] stands for "Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment."
MOODLE along with BlackBoard [18] is one of the popular e-learning software’s used around the
world. The main advantage of using MOODLE is that it is open source platform which can be
downloaded and customized to our requirement and ably supported by group of developers. This was
the main factor which made us to use this software in our college to popularize e-learning in our
campus. MOODLE has been used in our campus from 2007 onwards.
Figure 3 Customized MOODLE
Features in MOODLE
Even though MOODLE provides a wide array of plug-ins which are constantly developed and
uploaded for the user community, some of the commonly used features are as follows,
1. Online assignment(single and multiple file upload)
2. Chat
3. Quiz
4. Forum
5. Survey
6. Hot Pot
7. Wiki
8. Database
9. Glossary
10. Lesson
11. Bulletin board
12. Online evaluation
13. Report generation
14. Notification
15. Blogs
16. Question Bank
17. Legacy site files
18. Online users
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6. International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976-
6367(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6375(Online) Volume 4, Issue 1, January- February (2013), © IAEME
VIEWING MOODLE THROUGH SARASIN MODEL
Since 2007 onwards MOODLE has been used in our campus and been used by our
faculty members and students. So to evaluate its impact on our learning community in the
teaching learning process and to answer the following two research questions
i) What is the learning style preferred by our students?
ii) Does students learning style differ according to the gender?
A study was done by considering the parameters provided in Sarasin model on a sample size
of 160 students. A questionere collected data on the students preference on the features used
by them in MOODLE namely, audio, video, animations, lexicon, mind mapping, online
compilation to test their program and do projects, lecture materials like presentations, lecture
notes, e-books, other references, discussion forum, messaging/chatting with peers and tutors,
online quiz with automatic marking. The statistics of the data is given in Table 4. Then the
following methodology was followed to interpret the data
a. Initial data was collected.
b. Mean (X) and Standard Deviation (SD) was computed for rows.
c. Based on X and SD, the score has been classified into three levels, which is Less Usage /
Moderate Usage / High Usage. These three indicators show the level of usage of the
learning style.
Categorization of the respondents was done by Indexing Statistics method [4].
Less Usage = X – SD (1)
High Usage = X + SD (2)
Moderate Usage = X – SD to X + SD (3)
Table 4 provides the breakdown of the respondents with respect to gender and Table 5 and
Figure 4 provides the overall relationship between the students and MOODLE with respect to
the various learning styles mentioned in the model taken for study.
Table 4 Break down of the respondents
Gender Frequency Percent
Male 80 50.0
Female 80 50.0
Total 160 100.0
Table 5 Learning Style Vs Usage
Less Moderat High
Style
Usage e Usage Usage
Audio 29 108 23
Visual 30 90 40
Kinesthet
30 90 40
ic
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7. International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976-
6367(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6375(Online) Volume 4, Issue 1, January- February (2013), © IAEME
Figure 4 Learning Style Vs Usage
Table 6 Male respondents
Less Moderat High
Style
Usage e Usage Usage
Audio 77 3 0
Visual 62 18 0
Kinesthet
4 52 24
ic
Figure 5 Male repondents
Table 7 Female respondents
Less Moderate High
Style
Usage Usage Usage
Audio 80 0 0
Visual 55 24 0
Kinestheti
1 58 21
c
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8. International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976-
6367(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6375(Online) Volume 4, Issue 1, January- February (2013), © IAEME
Figure 6 Female repondents
CONCLUSION
From this study, teachers got an insight on the learner’s attitude and their expectations
which help them to fine tune their approach to make teaching learning process better in
future. Figure 5 provides the result for the first research question about the learning style
preferred by our students. The results of the study points out that, at present students learn
much from the visual and kinesthetic learning through MOODLE, auditory comes the third.
Regarding the results for the second research question, whether the learning style differs
according to gender, Figure 5, 6 indicates that it is same as the results for overall. That is the
results for both the gender matches, first comes kinesthetic followed by visual and audio with
slight variations which can be viewed in the tables provided. This provided us with a insight
and inspired us to go ahead with the experiment to develop an e-lms by means of the
available open source tools in web 2.0 to incorporate collaboration and socialization [19] into
the teaching learning process.
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9. International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976-
6367(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6375(Online) Volume 4, Issue 1, January- February (2013), © IAEME
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