Moodle vs. Social Media Platforms: Competing for Space and Time

Given the competition coming from various social media platforms, it is explored in this paper how students could be encouraged to use Moodle more proactively during their studies. Moodle is a course management system for online learning. It is designed to be a flexible template-based system, which provides a set of tools that support an inquiry- and discovery-based approach to online learning. It also aims to create an environment that encourages collaborative interaction among students. Moodle is also claimed to be very intuitive and easy to navigate. Evidence from Aalborg University and findings from a number of recent studies demonstrate that students access and use Moodle occasionally, on a need basis, and are reluctant to interact with each other in Moodle chat rooms and forums. This behavior could be explained by newness of Moodle as a system that it brings compared to already existing, known and widely used social platforms. It might be also due to the fact that students do not see the benefits in investing time and efforts in learning the new system. Another reason might be the mandatory nature of Moodle, i.e., it is imposed on students, rather than a free choice – and this might cause a negative reaction. Following these findings, a number of proposals are put forward on how to encourage students to use Moodle more proactively during their studies.