A New Cloud Storage Support and Facebook Enabled Moodle Module

Abstract

With Moodle a web based interface supporting a wide range of activities including forums, contents, and assignments is provided to assist both the teachers and the students. However, limitations of the file-size acceptable for uploads, weakness in the assessment procedure, complicated task of replacing an existing file, and the lowest visiting rate of the traditional discussion module are some major deficiencies in the traditional Moodle module. Thus, we propose a new Moodle module integrating both the cloud storage services and Facebook with the traditional Moodle module to cover the mentioned shortcomings. The module provides a straightforward uploading-function to allow, with only few seconds, uploading several large-size files simultaneously without any restriction on the files-size. The new module also offers an assessment-function that supports the web browsing of the files being uploaded to assist teachers, without the need to download and save each assignment separately, in checking and grading the submitted assignments directly via any web browser. The proposed module also integrates the Moodle with Facebook to increase the visiting rate of the traditional discussion Moodle module, hence, increasing the students' motivation to ask questions and the interaction among the students. The performance and the usability of the new module was evaluated and promising results were obtained.