The pivotal role of staff user experiences in Moodle and the potential impact on student learning

The rapid and extensive adoption of Moodle warrants an in-depth evaluation of its users´ experience as a key part of determining its suitability as a platform for teaching and learning. This qualitative user experience study considers both user groups of Moodle, staff and students within a large University Faculty of Art & Design and recognizes the relationship between the needs of the two user groups. Whilst both staff and students are successful at completing given tasks in Moodle in our specialist User Lab, many staff were found to display extreme dissatisfaction with the experience. As Moodle use is a one to many relationship, where relatively small numbers of staff operate Moodle for the benefit of scores of students, and as many of the problems observed relate to staff, this impacts on the whole learning experience and environment. Patchy use of Moodle by staff can lead to a student experience that may vary considerably depending on the member of staff teaching them and how well they have integrated the use of Moodle within their course delivery. Word clouds and System Usability Scores (SUS) provide powerful evidence of the gulf between the staff and student user experience.