Moodle

Description Contact Download: Documentation · Software

Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a software package designed to help educators create quality online courses. Such e-learning systems are sometimes also called Learning Management Systems (LMS) or Virtual Learning Environments (VLE). One of the main advantages of Moodle over other systems is a strong grounding in social constructionist pedagogy.

The word Moodle was originally an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment, which is mostly useful to programmers and education theorists. It's also a verb that describes the process of lazily meandering through something, doing things as it occurs to you to do them, an enjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight and creativity. As such it applies both to the way Moodle was developed, and to the way a student or teacher might approach studying or teaching an online course. Anyone who uses Moodle is a Moodler.

Moodle is Open Source software, which means you are free to download it, use it, modify it and even distribute it (under the terms of the GNU General Public License). Moodle runs without modification on Unix, Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Netware and any other system that supports PHP, including most webhost providers. Data is stored in a single database: MySQL and PostgreSQL are best supported, but it can also be used with Oracle, Access, Interbase, ODBC and others.

Moodle is an active and evolving work in progress. Development was started by Martin Dougiamas who continues to lead the project. Since Version 1.0 in August 2002 there has been steady series of new releases adding new features, better scalability and improved performance.

As Moodle has spread and the community has grown, more input is being drawn from a wider variety of people in different teaching situations. For example, Moodle is now used not only in Universities, but in high schools, primary schools, non-profit organisations, private companies, by independent teachers and even homeschooling parents. A growing number of people from around the world are contributing to Moodle in different ways - for more details see the Credits page.

An important feature of the Moodle project is the moodle.org web site, which provides a central point for information, discussion and collaboration among Moodle users, who include system administrators, teachers, researchers, instructional designers and of course, developers. Like Moodle, this site is always evolving to suit the needs of the community, and like Moodle it will always be Free.

Features

Moodle is an active and evolving product. This page lists just some of the many features it contains:

Overall design

• Promotes a social constructionist pedagogy (collaboration, activities, critical reflection, etc)
• Suitable for 100% online classes as well as supplementing face-to-face learning
• Simple, lightweight, efficient, compatible, low-tech browser interface
• Easy to install on almost any platform that supports PHP. Requires only one database (and can share it).
• Full database abstraction supports all major brands of database (except for initial table definition)
• Course listing shows descriptions for every course on the server, including accessibility to guests.
• Courses can be categorised and searched - one Moodle site can support thousands of courses
• Emphasis on strong security throughout. Forms are all checked, data validated, cookies encrypted etc
• Most text entry areas (resources, forum postings, journal entries etc) can be edited using an embedded WYSIWYG HTML editor

Site management

• Site is managed by an admin user, defined during setup
• Plug-in "themes" allow the admin to customise the site colours, fonts, layout etc to suit local needs
• Plug-in activity modules can be added to existing Moodle installations
• Plug-in language packs allow full localisation to any language. These can be edited using a built-in web-based editor. Currently there are language packs for over 50 languages.
• The code is clearly-written PHP under a GPL license - easy to modify to suit your needs

User management

• Goals are to reduce admin involvement to a minimum, while retaining high security
• Supports a range of authentication mechanisms through plug-in authentication modules, allowing easy integration with existing systems.
• Standard email method: students can create their own login accounts. Email addresses are verified by confirmation.
• LDAP method: account logins can be checked against an LDAP server. Admin can specify which fields to use.
• IMAP, POP3, NNTP: account logins are checked against a mail or news server. SSL, certificates and TLS are supported.
• External database: any database containing at least two fields can be used as an external authentication source.
• Each person requires only one account for the whole server - each account can have different access
• An admin account controls the creation of courses and creates teachers by assigning users to courses
• A course creator account is only allowed to create courses and teach in them
• Teachers may have editing privileges removed so that they can't modify the course (eg for part-time tutors)
• Security - teachers can add an "enrolment key" to their courses to keep out non-students. They can give out this key face-to-face or via personal email etc
• Teachers can enrol students manually if desired
• Teachers can unenrol students manually if desired, otherwise they are automatically unenrolled after a certain period of inactivity (set by the admin)
• Students are encouraged to build an online profile including photos, description. Email addresses can be protected from display if required.
• Every user can specify their own timezone, and every date in Moodle is translated to that timezone (eg posting dates, assignment due dates etc)
• Every user can choose the language used for the Moodle interface (English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese etc)

Course management

• A full teacher has full control over all settings for a course, including restricting other teachers
• Choice of course formats such as by week, by topic or a discussion-focussed social format
• Flexible array of course activities - Forums, Journals, Quizzes, Resources, Choices, Surveys, Assignments, Chats, Workshops
• Recent changes to the course since the last login can be displayed on the course home page - helps give sense of community
• Most text entry areas (resources, forum postings, journal entries etc) can be edited using an embedded WYSIWYG HTML editor
• All grades for Forums, Journals, Quizzes and Assignments can be viewed on one page (and downloaded as a spreadsheet file)
• Full user logging and tracking - activity reports for each student are available with graphs and details about each module (last access, number of times read) as well as a detailed "story" of each students involvement including postings, journal entries etc on one page.
• Mail integration - copies of forum posts, teacher feedback etc can be mailed in HTML or plain text.
• Custom scales - teachers can define their own scales to be used for grading forums, assignments and journals
• Courses can be packaged as a single zip file using the Backup function. These can be restored on any Moodle server.

Learning activities in Moodle

• Assignment Module
• Chat Module
• Choice Module
• Forum Module
• Journal Module
• Quiz Module
• Resource Module
• Survey Module
• Workshop Module
• ...

You find more informations about all learning activities on http://moodle.org/doc.