The Module Organizer And Teaching Suggestor is an effort to address the following problem:
While much attention has been paid in the last few years to developing knowledge databases for storage, retrieval, and sharing of content, there has been less effort focused on developing support systems for utilizing those content objects in theoretically varied contexts. Each knowledge content repository tends to include a lesson planner tool for organizing the material, but typically no tool is offered to present different instructional strategies based on contextually appropriate learning theories or instructional design models for the user to put into practice. A few exceptions exist and are included in this site.

Nationally, instructors, instructional designers, and instructional technologists gathered within the EDUCAUSE’s initiative NLII initial virtual community of practice project, the Teaching and Learning VCOP and identified the need for an instructional support tool or database of instructional strategies utilizing technologies as the single greatest need for not only faculty in all areas of higher education, but for personnel tasked with supporting them. The need extends not only to the use of content repositories, but to the appropriate use of learning technologies.

The need is for a tool grounded in excellent schemas to facilitate transformative teaching and learning practices that are organized in such a fashion as to permit multiple entry points for faculty, faculty-development specialists, instructional technology staff, and learning designers who want to inform their teaching and learning design practice with the science of learning.

The challenge is beyond how to structure such a tool or database or to accurately and easily permit access by multiple users with a wide range of needs. The challenge lies in the very nature of instructional design theory, which is divided into descriptive theories (how learning takes place) and iterative practical theories (how to teach using these theories). However, because even though the "practical" instructional design theories may offer fairly detailed suggestions on implementation of the methodology, the implementation is always a recursive process.

How, then, is this able to be introduced and captured in a technology? How is this able to be merged with other technologies? And, if the technology is able to be created to mime the iterative process using multiple content repositories, how is it able to adjust to both the user's individual needs and select from among the multitude of theories which don't agree on word usage for some of the same instructional strategies?

MOATS (Module Organizer and Teaching Suggestor) is a collaborative instrument and research project that attempts to address the above challenges. The University of Arizona has given resources in time, people, hardware, software, and development to see this project take shape while NLII has supported the research and development of the algorithms and theories.

The site is divided into four sections:

Teaching Tool is primarily resources gathered on

• Theory & Method
• Learning Activities
• Evaluation
• Technology

MOATS Interactive Tool for suggesting specific activities described in the problem statement above

A Lesson Planner that can be downloaded and used offline or saved and used online
And an Archive of Lesson Plans.