Forum Content-based instruction using Moodle: Creating a website to mirror and enhance a print textbook

Kanazawa Gakuin University rick@kanazawa-gu.ac.jp This paper will describe how Moodle was used to create an online version of a print textbook for a content-based course. After a brief overview of content-based instruction (CBI), it will introduce one way of designing a Moodle course homepage to make a reasonable rendition of a textbook while discussing the functionality of Moodle and how it enhances the effectiveness of CBI. The paper will also describe more advanced customizations of Moodle that were made to adapt the layout and functionality of the course to the needs of Japanese learners. Lastly, it will conclude by making a case for the use of a print textbook-website combo as an effective means of introducing CALL teaching technology gradually into a traditional institutional setting. An appendix is also provided with practical suggestions on how to render common CBI textbook activities into corresponding Moodle activities.

This paper will describe how Moodle was used to create an online version of a print textbook for a content-based course. After a brief overview of content-based instruction (CBI), it will introduce one way of designing a Moodle course homepage to make a reasonable rendition of a textbook while discussing the functionality of Moodle and how it enhances the effectiveness of CBI. The paper will also describe more advanced customizations of Moodle that were made to adapt the layout and functionality of the course to the needs of Japanese learners. Lastly, it will conclude by making a case for the use of a print textbook-website combo as an effective means of introducing CALL teaching technology gradually into a traditional institutional setting. An appendix is also provided with practical suggestions on how to render common CBI textbook activities into corresponding Moodle activities. introduction Two trends in the field of foreign language teaching have proceeded apace over the past several decades: 1) the move towards more content-driven curricula and 2) the increased use of information technology to enhance the learning experience in a multitude of ways. These two trends have a natural symbiosis since information technology not only enables the easy and versatile assimilation and dissemination of content within a course but also makes possible entirely new and custom ways for learners to interact with that content and with other learners -ways that increase motivation as well as create opportunities for incidental language learning, authentic communication, the negotiation of meaning, and the construction of new knowledge.

content-based instruction
In an early article Leaver and Stryker (1989) define a CBI curriculum as "one that 1) is based on a subject-matter core, 2) uses authentic language and texts, and 3) is appropriate to the needs of specific groups of students." In a later textbook they go on to say (Leaver and Stryker, 1997, p. 6): The fundamental organization of the curriculum is derived from the subject matter, rather than from forms, functions, situations, or skills. Communicative competence is acquired during the process of learning about specific topics… During the 1980s and 90s a variety of approaches to CBI were developed by educators working in different areas of foreign language instruction. Stoller and Grabe (1997) listed as many as eight distinct movements to put CBI into practice in the study of foreign languages within different institutional contexts. Some examples of these include English for Academic Purposes in universities (with its helpful distinction of sheltered, adjunct, and theme-based courses), K-12 Immersion (especially in Canada, where French school immersion programs were real pioneers in this most extreme form of CBI), and Whole Language Learning in elementary schools (with its focus on the comprehension of overall meaning rather than understanding language components as well as its emphasis on integrating literacy into other academic subjects). The seminal concept for CBI is the notion of "comprehensible input," as formulated by Krashen (1981). He asserted that "acquisition requires meaningful interaction in the target language -natural communication -in which speakers are concerned not with the form of their utterances but with the messages they are conveying and understanding." Since then, the emphasis on meaningful interaction has been moderated in light of studies by Swain (1985) and others that show the importance of "comprehensible output" acquired through the explicit instruction of language forms. Nonetheless, many of the concerns of CBI curriculum development and course design can be easily summed up in some sort of metaphor of proportionality, such as "balance" or "integration," words that one encounters often in the literature of CBI. When designing a CBI course there is the obvious necessity of finding the proper proportion between comprehensible input and output, form and content; but, there are other factors to be weighed as well, such as: 1) to what extent should students have a say in deciding the content to be used (teacher-centered vs. learner-centered learning), 2) to what extent should students be assessed on their knowledge of the content (content-driven vs. language-driven curriculum), 3) to what extent should the content be up-to-date (static vs. dynamic content), 4) to what extent should the content be simplified, if at all (authentic content vs. "sheltered" content), and 5) how "hot" should the content be to motivate interest without provoking argument or squelching discussion (controversial vs. non-controversial topics). The proper balance that a teacher finds for these and other such issues will depend largely on being able to determine such things as the students' needs, abilities, values and desires; the expectations of the institution where the course is being offered; the allotted course time; the cultural context of the class; and finally the teacher's own willingness, time, and interest in interacting with students on particular themes or topics.
The use of computers in foreign language education, as in all areas of life, has increased at a phenomenal rate throughout the previous decades and has been characterized both by rapid innovation and trial-and-error implementation as educators and administrators have struggled, often without a complete understanding of the technology at hand, to deploy these new and powerful tools in their local educational environments in an effective way. Additionally, a certain amount of "balkanization" has resulted from the use by institutions (and by the individual users working within those institutions) of one particular Learning Management System (LMS) for the entire organization. While some critical voices are starting to be heard decrying the inherent centralization that institutional LMSs entail and calling for more personalized and open networks in line with the social-networking trend, LMSs are still the mainstay of colleges and universities. A report by the independent management consulting company Delta Initiative (2009) found that more than ninety percent of colleges and universities in the United States have a standardized, institutional LMS implementation. While the implementation of LMS technology in Japanese universities lags behind that of the US, a study conducted by the Open University of Japan showed that in 2010 over 40% of universities in the country were using some type of LMS system, up almost 5% from the previous year. At present there are around one-hundred different providers of LMS software, with Moodle leading the pack both in Japan and in the world at large. The OUJ study also found that, of the 1066 universities using an LMS system in Japan, 466 of them were using Moodle. The coming decade will see new innovations and perhaps even a move away from the large institutional LMSs that have dominated the highereducation market. Future trends, however, can be hard to predict, and for the time being Moodle seems a reliable platform for developing and conducting content-based courses of the sort described in this paper.

Objective & rationale
The goal of this project is a simple one: create a Moodle website to mirror a print CBI textbook in order to 1) facilitate blended learning, 2) compensate for the shortcomings of print media, and 3) leverage the power of the Moodle technology to enhance the effectiveness of the textbook's methodology. 1 Having a website/print textbook combo enables a course designer to affect a gradual integration of technology into a traditional course structure -an approach with several advantages: 1) the helpful familiarity of having a print textbook is less intimidating to tech-shy students and teachers using such a system for the first time, 2) the print textbook can be used in class and the website outside of class (blended learning), thus allowing teachers/students to continue to use traditional classrooms and thus avoid competition for limited computer rooms and resources, and 3) a print textbook also serves as a useful backup in case of server or power failure and, perhaps more significantly, in case of a "failure" of computer skills on the part of the students and/or teachers. These advantages are even more significant in institutions or countries where infrastructure, computer resources and IT skills are limited, and where making the "digital leap" would be even more difficult.

textbook description
A typical unit in a theme-based CBI textbook generally consists of a reading passage on a particular topic, enveloped by pre and post exercises or activities of different kinds. It may also include activities designed to extend the students' understanding of the topic beyond what is explicitly stated in the reading passage as well as activities intended to get students to produce something, typically a piece of writing, a presentation, etc. The unit may also include explicit instruction and practice activities on reading skills (skimming, scanning, etc.), general study skills (note taking, highlighting, etc.), as well as "research" activities that guide students in conducting simple searches for information, usually on the Internet, related to the topic of the unit. In addition, such textbooks typically include a glossary of key vocabulary items to be learned as well as suggestions for further study.
The content of the reading passage can be authored originally or borrowed from an existing textbook with the publisher's permission. 2 The appendix of this paper contains an outline of a typical unit with examples of the kinds of questions and assignments that can frequently appear in CBI textbooks along with suggestions on how to render them on the website course page using Moodle activities.

Website description
The website should resemble the look of the textbook as much as possible. Having a visually identical version of the print textbook on the Moodle website, although not absolutely necessary, is nonetheless quite useful in establishing a link in the students' minds between the two. 3 Figure 1 shows the front page of the Moodle website with the title and subtitle in the title box at the top. Below that, in the first content box, the title of the first unit has been inserted along with sufficient material from the textbook (photo, quotation, and initial paragraph) to establish a visual link with the print version.
The opening paragraph is immediately followed by three links: Read More (link to a separate webpage containing the full text of the unit), 4 Translate (link to a Moodle Wiki for collaborative translation by students and for students), 5 and Discuss (link to a Moodle Forum for discussing the content of the text). This link string is located just after the text intro in order to encourage students to engage directly and collaboratively with the text and, perhaps more significantly, to engage in meaningful communication with each other and with the teacher about the content. These three linked activities lay outside of the workflow of graded activities from the textbook listed lower on the front page because they are considered to be an inherent part of reading the text in collaboration with other readers.
The above is a demonstration of how the power of Moodle can be leveraged to enhance the methodology of a textbook. Reading a book is no longer the solitary experience that it once was -readers can not only communicate more easily with each other and the teacher about what they are reading, they leave a lasting record of their correspondence and contributions, which future students can benefit from. More importantly, group reading of this kind offers ample opportunities to use the target language in a meaningful and authentic way. As the course website grows, additional resources or activities can be added to the link string, such as Listen (link to audio reading of textbook), Watch Lecture (link to a video of teacher's lecture), and Glossary (link to key terms from the textbook).
The workflow of graded activities on the course page under the labels Before You Read, After You Read, Learn More, Write About It, and Explore on Your Own are graded and consist of different Moodle activities chosen based on how well they mirror the activities in the print textbook. It is important that students be able to make a quick correspondence between the activities in both media so that they can quickly find and input whatever answers they may have written in their textbook into the website. The Moodle activities included on the website in Figure 1 are of the following types: Forum, Quiz, HotPot Quiz, QuizPort, Feedback, Database, and Assignment. 6 Course designers are by no means limited to using only these activities; however, when choosing the types of activities to use, it is helpful to distinguish between activities whose grading can be fully automated (mainly quizzes of different kinds) and those that require the teacher to rate individual student contributions (forums, databases, and assignments). Large classes will probably require more automation so as not to overburden the teacher while small classes can benefit from the greater interaction and individual attention that forums, etc. allow.
Forums are a central feature of Moodle and the engine of its educational philosophy, which is social constructivism (Moodle, 2011). Ideally, a forum should be completely open, free and student-driven, as is the forum in the link string mentioned earlier; however, Moodle Forums can also be restricted in certain ways that allow it to be used more didactically. For instance, the forum can be set up as a Q&A forum, which restricts each student from viewing other students' posts until he or she has posted. This is useful when the textbook contains questions that require open-ended answers of the sort "What do you think about such and such?" If, for instance, the textbook has a list of four such questions, then a separate discussion can be made in the forum for each question, with the grading structured so that the response to each question is worth a possible 25 points for a total of 100 points for all four discussions (questions) in the forum. 7 After making the initial posting, each student is then free to read and comment on classmates' posts, while the teacher, in addition to rating posts and correcting language mistakes, can participate in the flow of the discussion and act as a facilitator in the true constructivist tradition. Moodle Quiz can be used to cover the standard fare of educational questions, i.e. multiplechoice, true or false, matching, cloze, and short answer. The greatest advantage of a quiz is convenience: once it is made, it requires little maintenance or attention on the part of the teacher. The grade for each quiz will be calculated and fed into the gradebook automatically. A HotPot Quiz can be used to duplicate the same sort of questions, with the additional ability to create crossword puzzles. These quizzes are created on third-party software 8 and then interfaced with Moodle through the HotPot module.
Moodle QuizPort, developed by Bateson (2011), is an activity that is really a series of activities. QuizPort assembles a series of HotPot quizzes into a single activity and allows the course designer to set pre and post conditions for each quiz in the series, such as the minimum grade needed in order to advance to the next quiz. This has two advantages relevant to this discussion: 1) it reduces page clutter by enabling a series of related activities (say, vocabulary building exercises) to be condensed into a single activity and 2) it increases the degree of automation that may be necessary for larger classes.
Moodle Feedback is a tool for conducting opinion surveys. It can be used to cover any textbook activity that asks the students their opinion on an issue or which has the students ask others their opinion. It then displays the results graphically for everyone to see. One disadvantage of the feedback activity is that it does not push grades to the Moodle gradebook.
Moodle Database is a useful tool for covering any activity that asks students to go out into the world (or on the Internet) to get something or do something, and then report back to the class. Every step of this process is simplified and enhanced in a Moodle Database by the ability to create customized templates that control how students enter data and then how the data is displayed. For instance, in an activity where students must go watch a movie and then prepare a report about that movie that includes certain specific information, such as the title of the movie, the name of the director, the year it was released, the tagline, the cover description, a link to the trailer, etc., then the teacher simply creates a data entry form that streamlines the entry process by providing useful explanations as well as direct links to pages where the requested information can be found. After the student has found and entered this basic information either by filling in text boxes, choosing radio buttons or by some other means, then they can add their own thoughts (a review, summary, recommendation, etc.). Once submitted, the contribution from each student is displayed according to a predetermined template in an organized and consistent, and thus more readable and useable, manner. However, a database contribution is not merely a webpage with a tidy display -it is integrated into Moodle so that submissions are time-stamped, submitters' names are linked to their profiles, and ratings are automatically fed into the gradebook. Although there is a slight learning curve to creating the templates, once mastered, Moodle Database is a powerful and versatile tool for organizing contributions from students' independent research activities.

Figure 3. A single contribution to a Moodle Database of a student report on a movie
Finally, Moodle Assignment is a simple means of collecting writing assignments from students. Unlike Database contributions, however, assignment submissions are for the teacher's eyes only and not for peer review or comment.

Moodle customizations
The basic unit design described above can be replicated to create an online textbook containing up to 52 units (the maximum number of content boxes allowed in a Moodle course). Of course, most textbooks would not be so long; nonetheless, even with shorter textbooks, the problem of navigating between units becomes an issue. If students navigate by viewing the front page with all content boxes (all units) expanded, as they often do, then the front page can become too long and cumbersome to navigate easily. Although the standard Moodle installation includes a block called Section Links for navigation in such cases, it lacks the look and feel of a book-style table of contents. Cunningham (2011) developed a block called BBB Navigation that displays clickable unit titles and grade totals in an easyto-read table. It also functions behind the scenes to prevent students from viewing the front page with all content boxes expanded, thereby forcing them to navigate through the table of contents. It is thought that having the unit grade totals displayed up front, rather than buried in the gradebook, will provide a more direct stimulus to which students will respond by working harder to raise their grade. This behaviorist motivational strategy can be deployed more fully by having the scores of individual activities displayed on the front page as well. Cunningham (2011) also developed a customization using javascript inserted into the title block (the same place as the stylesheet) that extracts individual scores from the gradebook and displays them next to the activities themselves with failing scores in red, average scores in orange, and excellent scores in green.
The Moodle system has been conceptualized on the basis of social constructivist theory and designed as a place for learners to share knowledge freely and openly, particularly in the forums; however, practically speaking, this philosophy of learning has worked less well in cultures lacking a strong tradition of public discussion. Broadaway & Bateson (2010) discuss methods of adapting the forums to be more suitable to the Japanese communication style in which speakers may often make a conscious choice either to conceal their true thoughts and feelings when speaking (tatemae) or to speak openly and honestly (honne). The forums were customized to permit the teacher to designate the forum as public (display real names), semi-anonymous (display screen names), or anonymous (display no names). A survey of opinions in this study showed that Japanese students have a clear preference for either anonymous or semi-anonymous forums. Additionally, the Moodle theme for the course was modified so that the pull-down menu for choosing the user's desired language is displayed on every page of the website and not just the initial login page. Moodle menus and other information unrelated to the learning content are displayed in the L1 language, which reduces the chances of students being visually overwhelmed by the L2 language. conclusion As has been shown, Moodle can be used to create a simple but effective online version of a textbook. Both media have their advantages and the combination of the two is considered a powerful means of strengthening a content-based course.
While using Moodle as a compliment to a textbook in this fashion has many advantages in terms of convenience, motivation, and management, the heart and soul of a good CBI course is still the content itself. Without content that is intrinsically interesting and accessible it is doubtful that any course will meet with much success, even with the help of Moodle. Increasingly content developers are moving away from the written word and creating more media-rich content, i.e. animation, in an effort to compete for the attention of students. This kind of competition is probably inevitable considering the media-rich world in which most of us now live. Nonetheless, the academic world still has a special regard for the written word, and the book remains a symbol of education and learning around the world. Even as eBooks become more widely used, as they surely will, the availability of eReaders will not spread equitably around the world. The print textbook will remain a mainstay of education in many parts of the world for a long time to come. Moodle, and the method described in this paper, can play a useful role in modernizing education in these places in a way that does not require a complete reliance on technology. notes 1. This course was built using Moodle 1.9. 2. Publishers vary in their attitudes about allowing their content to be used in LMSs. In all cases, it is important to establish a trusting relationship with the publisher whose content you intend to use. Generally speaking, a basic condition for receiving permission is that every student enrolled in the course has purchased a textbook and that the website be secure and password-protected. Furthermore, it is suggested that the website not include the content of reading passages in their entirety, thereby forcing students to acquire the textbook. 3. Using the built-in HTML editor that comes with a standard Moodle installation, one can make a fairly decent rendition of a print textbook that is perfectly useable; however, a little customization of the HTML can go a long way in improving the appearance of such things as inline photos, spacing, and even the stylized letter at the beginning of the unit. Additionally, the use of a stylesheet (CSS), inserted into the very top of the title block, can help assure consistency of appearance between all of the textbook units on the website. 4. Or, in the case of a borrowed textbook, the separate webpage may simply provide information about where to purchase the book. 5. Translation work can, of course, be assigned by the teacher or it can be left as a way for students to contribute voluntarily to the group's effort to understand the text. 6. With the exception of HotPot and QuizPort, these activities are all included in the standard Moodle installation. 7. The grading structure can be adjusted to increase the "depth" of discussion. For instance, halving the number of possible points for each response would force the students to make twice as many posts to acquire the full 100 points. In other words, rather than simply responding to the question, they would have to ask follow-up questions or make additional comments in order to get full credit.  Read a graphic display of information and answer given questions about that information.

Quiz: multiple choice
Open-ended Observe media (newspapers, TV news, magazines, books, etc.) and report back information.
Database Forum: Q&A Multiple Choice Visit a given website and search for answers to given questions.

Memorization
Open-ended Memorize given proverbs, sayings, or famous quotes related to the topic, and then find and contribute additional ones.

Reflection
Survey Take a self-questionnaire about your own opinions on a topic related to the reading.

Feedback
Open-ended Compare given poll results and answer questions. Forum: open Open-ended Reflect on your own values and beliefs on issues related to the topic by answering "what if" questions.

Category Textbook Description Moodle Activity
Writing Pre-writing Contribute one writing topic for everyone to consider, and then discuss.
Forum: each person posts one discussion Pre-writing Fill in blanks of model paragraph. Quiz: cloze Pre-writing Put the scrambled words, sentences or paragraphs in the correct order.

HotPot: JMix
Pre-writing Complete the essay outline by choosing the correct item.

Quiz: cloze
Composition Choose a topic from a list of given topics or contributed topics and then write a composition about it.
Assignment: upload a single file

Collaborative translation
Choose one paragraph from the reading and translate it into your own language and then share it with classmates for collaborative revision and editing Wiki Speaking Presentation Choose reading or audio-visual material (book, graded reader, magazine article, movie, song, etc.) from a given list of materials relevant to the topic, and then give a presentation about it in class.

Database
Recitation Choose one famous speech from a given list of speeches related to the topic, memorize it and then recite it aloud in class.

Assignment: offline activity
Debate Choose a controversial issue from a given list of issues and conduct a debate.
Assignment: offline activity