Moodle: Students’ perspectives on forums, glossaries and quizzes

Abstract

A socio-cultural approach has been taken in investigating student perspectives of CALL instruction for EFL, specifically the use of three Moodle applications: forums, glossaries, and quizzes. This action research study employed open-ended survey questions and focus groups to examine student perceptions of the Moodle applications with regard to the provision of affordances (van Lier, 2004), noticing (Schmidt, 1995) and comprehensible output (Swain, 1985, 1995). Results indicate that students were largely appreciative of the forum exercises for the learning affordances and for the enabling of meaningful interaction. Quizzes were also popular for the affordances provided. Glossary activities were found to be lacking due to inadequate cognitive processing of vocabulary, insufficient repetition, other preferred methods of study, and ambiguous feeling with regard to the use of hyperlinks. Student participants also made a number of suggestions as to how the Moodle applications can be used more effectively.