There are a number of people who speak quite convincingly in favor of using moodle although a real classroom is available.  For instance the project MoodleSchule praises moodle for its convenience in everyday school life, as

• it offers the students new ways of working in their own responsibility -a trait that will  definitely come in handy after school
• it gives the teachers new ways of checking and evaluating their student’s improvements, for instance via e-portfolios
• it enriches communication among the students themselves and between students and teachers

Maybe moodle is that popular because it does not just transfer normal class into an on-line environment, but it is based  on an actual didactical values. Moodle’s creator, Martin Dougiamas, built moodle on four columns (as can be seen on LMSNews.com):

“The classic constructivism (that is, knowledge is constructed and connected by the recipient himself), “constructionism” (which is the conviction that learning is more effective if the content is prepared very well – especially by the teacher, which means that the content is “pre”-constructed), the social constructivism (which means the collaborative and deliberated construction of knowledge reaches a constructive dimension itself) and being “connected” and “separated” (to keep it simple: a symbiosis of collaborative sympathetic part-taking in the learning-process with the separated, objective approach of coherences). Moodle encourages all teachers to keep these concepts in mind and reminds them, that it is not just about “what is taught?” but also “how is it taught?””

This  focus on mainly explorative, active and autonomous learning of course conforms to currently prevailing didactical findings and is very acredited, albeit not revolutionary (Vgl.: Meixner, Johanna: Konstruktivismus und die Vermittlung produktiven Wissens, Luchterhand, 1997.)
There are also great examples available of how to use moodle in literary courses ( you can find the links and access data in our own moodle platform). These examples on “Tortilla Curtain” (anyone remembers Zentralabitur 07?) and “How to kill a Mockingbird” are quite impressive, I think . They offer a wide variety of material and tasks that would be – in my opinion – both challenging and fun to students.

…But still I am not convinced! I have to admit that moodle really has great features and offers lots of opportunities.  What I fail to see, however, is the necessity to make use of these possibilities on-line when teachers should be perfectly able to create the same environment of  communication and self -dependency inside their actual classrooms. In addition to that are the above mentioned examples laid out for many tasks, over a longer period of time (in fact for the whole of the teaching unit), which begs the question when they are supposed to be executed – as homework assignments they are quite extensive, but it would certainly make no sense as well to have the students work on them in class, so that everyone would be interacting on-line instead of face-to-face.

Yet there must be ways to make use of the enormous potential for teaching  that moodle represents. So, where would a virtual classroom come in handy although we have an actual one?

One way to approach and make use of moodle platforms would be for instance in form of projects. This could work much in the same way as a web quest, with the advantage that there could be interaction between the groups via the forum. A moodle project could last maybe for a week, or preferably, accompany the whole teaching unit as a supplement to the classes. In this scenario the students would have each week a certain time at their disposal to work on their project and they would have the option to work additionally on it whenever they like at home.  Should the teacher be absent they could simply continue, assumed that a computer room is available.

Or moodle could be used as a sort of bookshelf – a constant supplement to the respective class – where all relevant material is made available and students could post questions. Although this usage may prevent absent students to constantly ask for extra copies, I feel it would also waste a lot of moodle’s potential.

Another possibility worth exploring could be to use a moodle platform among different learn groups and classes. Especially with regard to the centralized requirements of graduation it could be very useful for all classes of one school – or even co-operations of several schools – to have access to the same materials and tasks, and to be able to discuss these with other students. This way, students can get in touch with new ideas and approaches to the topic that is common to all. It would also enable the students to work on their own with a shared pool of information – so the quality of preparation for the a-levels, for instance, would not dependent on a single teacher.