Development of a customised software module within the Moodle LMS for team-based PBL courses

Abstract

This paper reports on the development of a software Moodle block project within the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS) to enhance its capability to allocate students from many differently distinguished cohorts into team-based PBL classes at The University of Southern Queensland (USQ). Within the Faculty of Engineering and Surveying (FoES) at USQ, there is an ongoing need for USQ Moodle Development Team to support academic staff members to manage their courses efficiently and improve students’ learning experience, particularly in our FoES Problem-Based Learning (PBL) Strand where courses have large student numbers and are team-based. There is a need for the LMS to have the capability to construct student teams based on a combination of academic program, discipline major and gender, and to complement their learning experience via peer assessments. In addition, the assessment module within USQ Moodle LMS needs to be enhanced to accommodate team-based assessments and to facilitate its derivation of individual results using a combination of peer-assessed and instructor-assessed results. This paper focuses on the development of new Moodle modules to address the two main deficiencies within team-based courses. While this paper is somewhat software development centric, there were educational drivers such as profiling used in team allocation to achieve a desired mix in the teams, and the pedagogies behind peer-instructor assessment mix that were addressed.