Moodle is one of the most widely used learning management systems currently and has traditionally been studied through the Technology Acceptance Model. Existing literature is scattered and does not allow us to clearly conclude what characteristics this technological acceptance has as well as its main progress. The study aimed to provide an overview of the scientific literature on the application of TAM in the study of the acceptance and technological use of Moodle through a Systematic Mapping Study (SMS). Results from 24 selected studies indicate that the topic is of increasing interest and that the literature is characterized by studies that 1) use extended versions of TAM; 2) are based on university students from different programs; 3) take place in Europe or Asia; 4) are published in journals with different impact factors; and 5) have focused on testing mainly the original TAM hypotheses. Although a lot of hypotheses have been studied (271), only 16 have been accepted more times than rejected by 2 or more studies, with Perceived Ease of Use being the most commonly present construct in the hypotheses. Results imply that although TAM remains as a robust model for studying Moodle there are still important gaps to be addressed.

Learning computer programming is a challenging process. Among the current approaches for overcoming this challenge, visual programming languages (VPLs), like Scratch, have shown very promising results for beginners. Interestingly, some higher-education institutions have started to use VPLs to introduce basic programming concepts, mainly in CS1 courses. However, an important issue regarding Scratch?s usage in higher education environments is that students may feel unmotivated being confronted by programming exercises that do not fulfill their individual expectations. To try and overcome this barrier, we propose CARAMBA, a Scratch extension including an exercise recommender system. Based on features like \textit{taste} and \textit{complexity}, CARAMBA is able to personalize student learning with Scratch by suitably suggesting exercises for students. An in-depth evaluation was conducted about the effects of our proposal on both the learning of basic concepts of CS1 and the overall performance of students. We adopted an equivalent pretest-posttest design with 88 college students at an Ecuadorian university. Results confirm that recommending exercises in Scratch had a positive effect on students programming learning abilities in terms of success rates. In totality, the success rate achieved by our proposal was over 52%, which is 8% higher than the rate achieved during a previous experience using only Scratch (without recommendation) and 21% higher than the historical results of traditional teaching (without Scratch). Furthermore, we analyzed the degree of exploitation of CARAMBA by students to portray two facts: students actually used CARAMBA and there was a positive correlation between the utilization of CARAMBA and the scores obtained by the students.

Teaching computer programming is a real challenge in the State University of Milagro (UNEMI), located in one of the least-developed zones in Ecuador, a non-WEIRD country (WEIRD stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic). Despite the application of various learning strategies, the historical pass rate does not exceed 43%. To solve this problem, we have relied on visual programming languages, specifically Scratch. Scratch is an open source software to learn programming that has a strong assumption of the benefits of community work. A quasi-experiment conducted with 74 undergraduate students during the first semester of CS showed that: (1) Both groups (control and experimental) are homogeneous in terms of their demographic characteristics, previous academic performance and motivation (expectations) concerning the course; (2) Scratch is strongly accepted by students in the experimental group and concerning the learning process, both groups showed similar levels of satisfaction; (3) the experimental group showed a pass rate four times higher than the control group; (4) in general, student success is associated with having learned programming with Scratch. While limited, our results are an important step in our road to improve the learning of programming in a low social status area of Ecuador.

Moodle is an open-source learning management system that is widely used today, especially in higher education settings. Although its technological acceptance by undergraduate students has been extensively studied in the past, very little is known about its acceptance by university professors. In particular, as far as we know, the literature contains no previous experiences related to South American teachers. This paper aims to bridge this gap by quantifying and analyzing the drivers of Moodle’s technological acceptance among Ecuadorian academic staff. Considering the responses of 538 teachers and taking a modified UTAUT2 model as a theoretical basis, we found that Ecuadorian teachers have high levels of acceptance of Moodle, regardless of their age, gender, ethnicity, or discipline. However, this acceptance is significantly higher in teachers with high levels of education and with considerable previous experience with e-learning systems. The main determinants of this acceptance are attitude strength, effort expectancy, performance expectancy, and facilitating conditions. We found no moderating effects in relation to the age, gender, or previous experience of the participants (including second- and third-order interactions derived from these variables). We conclude that, albeit moderately (e.g., adjusted $R^2=0.588$), the model tested confirms the predictive power of the part of UTAUT2 that was inherited from UTAUT.