Please just use Moodle, I’m begging

By Ashlyn Wuench

Throughout middle and high school, our administration used Canvas as the platform for assignments and communication. The “to-do” tasks were listed on the right sidebar, along with  upcoming assignments and recently graded work. The left sidebar held the dashboard and messaging. The center housed each course, where you could access details for every assignment and keep track of everything to do for each class. 

It was hard to let go of Canvas after high school, as I hadn’t expected to shift to another platform once I entered college. Similar to Canvas, however, is Moodle. I hadn’t heard of Moodle before St. Olaf, but I could be convinced the two are related — siblings from another developer, if you know what I’m saying. Cards represent different courses on the main dashboard, and a calendar of the month’s deadlines is available below the cards. A toggle can show previous, present, future, and removed from the main view courses, which can ease an overwhelming stream of every enrolled course. 

The majority of professors at St. Olaf use Moodle. There have been a few semesters when I had three courses on Moodle and one on Google Classroom. I don’t believe I can accurately describe the deep sigh when I received the email inviting me to a Google Classroom course. I prefer to open one application and be able to access all of my courses, but with the occasional Google Classroom course, it can be difficult to navigate where items must be uploaded.

Moodle is also highly streamlined with customizable tabs where weekly assignments and tasks can be uploaded. Moodle is simple to navigate once you get the hang of it. Google Classroom is uncustomizable in terms of making tabs for various weeks, and everything is displayed in the order it was uploaded. Items are jumbled together and can be easily lost within the stream. 

As St. Olaf is primarily a Moodle-using campus, it is much easier to just utilize the platform for every course. The customization and varying tabs, including campus mental health resources, are very helpful to have all in one location with a simple navigation style. To all professors, I’m begging you to please just use Moodle.

Google Classroom supremacy

By Sophia Tedesco

Now, to begin, take a moment, dear reader, to consider the struggles that every Ole faces at St. Olaf. Of course, you have the caf food, the noisy upstairs neighbor, and the potential homelessness at the end of each academic year — thanks, Residence Life. But when you think about academic struggles, there’s one glaringly obvious complaint that nearly every student has: Moodle. Some love it while others hate it, and this includes the professors. We have both professors who stay away from Moodle altogether and professors who try to use it but utterly fail, and to make things worse, every single Moodle page is formatted differently. What a mess — ha ha, see what I did there? So I will argue for the simple solution to this problem: Google Classroom. 

I have a few arguments in favor of this platform, so bear with me as I walk you through why Google Classroom is the ideal learning platform. 

Reason one: It’s free. Perhaps if we switched to Google Classroom, St. Olaf would refund our portion of our Moodle subscription, which would rock.

Reason two: It’s easy to use. Nearly every first-year comes into college having used Google Classroom at some point, so it is familiar to them. Moodle? Yeah, right. I personally had never even heard of it before coming here.

Reason three: Simplicity. It is really hard for professors — yes, even the ancient ones — to mess Google Classroom up. Like, truthfully, it is so incredibly straightforward.

Reason four: You can just turn everything in as a Google Doc. Now, I know this is possible on Moodle, but you have to go through what feels like 658 steps to do it. Google Classroom, connected to the Google Drive that everyone uses, doesn’t require converting your work to a PDF, docx — and I will forever have beef with the professors who request that one —  or any other weird format. Simple and easy. No more finishing the assignment at 11:58 and being late to the 11:59 deadline because you’re converting it to some god-forsaken format. Just an easy click and you turn it in on time — simple as that. 

Now, this is just a taste of the hundred other reasons why Google Classroom is the clearly superior learning platform, and if you’re not convinced, I suggest looking it up. Google Classroom supremacy.