This is a quick announcement to let you know that I’ve just started a new plugin project for Moodle. It’s a filter module that analyses text on Moodle pages and rates their readability according to the six most popular readability formulas:
- Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease
- Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level
- Gunning-Fog Index
- Coleman-Liau Index
- SMOG Index
- Automated Readability Index
When installed and activated, it will automatically analyse texts using one of the chosen readability formulas and print a small, discreet box at the top right of the analysed text, displaying the results. Moodle’s text filters apply to all text areas and so learning content and user generated texts will have their readability level/index displayed, for example in Pages, Books, Forums, Wikis, Glossaries, Assignments, Databases, Lessons, and Labels.
I’m interested in hearing any comments and suggestions you might have for possible uses, advantages, and/or limitations of this plugin. I’d also like to keep the discussion as widely accessible as possible to all members of the Moodle community. To that end, rather than post comments here (comments are now disabled on this blog) please participate the Moodle.org discussion thread for this plugin: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=243715. It’s free and easy to join, it’s well moderated, and you’ll be in contact with thousands of other Moodlers.
The beta version of the plugin (still under development) is here. At the moment, I don’t recommend it for production sites as it hasn’t been extensively tested.
Readability of this article
- Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease 47.6 / 100
- Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level 11
- Gunning-Fog Score 12.2
- Coleman-Liau Index 13.8
- SMOG Index 9.7
- Automated Readability Index 11.1
- Average Grade Level 11.6