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Moodle has a wide range of use cases across different educational institutions and organizations. In higher education, it facilitates …
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What is Moodle?
Moodle is an open source learning management system with hundreds of millions of users around the globe and translated into over 100 languages, used by organizations to support their education and training needs.
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- Progress tracking & certifications (25)10.0100%
- Assignments (26)9.898%
- Learning administration (24)9.898%
- Course catalog or library (23)9.696%
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What is Moodle?
Moodle is an open source learning management system with hundreds of millions of users around the globe and translated into over 100 languages, used by organizations to support their education and training needs.
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- Setup fee optional
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What is Moodle?
Moodle is an open source learning management system that integrates with other platforms and can be customised for any teaching or training method. Moodle has solutions suitable for K-12, higher education, vocational training, corporates, as well as enterprise learning. The solution aims to improve teaching and student outcomes, as well as streamline training, onboarding, and compliance management, helping users to build more active and engaging online learning spaces.
Moodle users can get support from community forums, access Moodle's certified integrations, and explore over 1900 open source plugins. Or, for expert advice and end-to-end support and service, users can reach Moodle Certified Partners and Service Providers.
Moodle Features
Learning Management Features
- Supported: Course authoring
- Supported: Course catalog or library
- Supported: Player/Portal
- Supported: Learning content
- Supported: Mobile friendly
- Supported: Progress tracking & certifications
- Supported: Assignments
- Supported: Compliance management
- Supported: Learning administration
- Supported: Learning reporting & analytics
- Supported: eLearning
- Supported: Assessments
- Supported: Live online learning
- Supported: In-person learning
- Supported: Micro-learning
- Supported: Video learning
- Supported: eCommerce
- Supported: AICC-compliant
- Supported: SCORM-compliant
- Supported: Tin Can (xAPI) compliant
- Supported: Social learning
- Supported: Gamification
- Supported: GDPR Compliant Learning
- Supported: Single Sign On (SSO) Enabled Learning
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What's new in Moodle LMS 4.0?
What's new in Moodle Workplace 4.0?
Moodle Integrations
Moodle Competitors
Moodle Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, Linux, Mac |
| Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, Mobile Web |
| Supported Countries | Worldwide |
| Supported Languages | All languages |
Frequently Asked Questions
Moodle is an open source learning management system with hundreds of millions of users around the globe and translated into over 100 languages, used by organizations to support their education and training needs.
Reviewers rate Learning content and Progress tracking & certifications highest, with a score of 10.
The most common users of Moodle are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
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- Recommendations
Moodle has a wide range of use cases across different educational institutions and organizations. In higher education, it facilitates communication, provides learning materials, and assesses student learning. It serves as an essential training portal, offering online courses, quick reference guides, and knowledge base articles. This platform also caters to organizations' learning and development needs, accommodating different skill sets and objectives. Additionally, it supports early intervention providers by enabling self-enrollment, progress tracking, assessment recording, and grade viewing. For instructors in both online and face-to-face classes, Moodle acts as a Course Management System for posting and grading assignments, exams, and quizzes. Librarians can participate in professional development remotely through Moodle's various media options and scoring reporting features. It is also used for safety training coursework with the flexibility to integrate different media types. In K-12 schools, Moodle supplements courses such as Health Education and offers online courses during summer months. Private liberal arts colleges rely on this platform for student engagement, activity tracking, and grading. Furthermore, Francis Lewis High School has found that Moodle increases enrichment for students while streamlining the workload for educators.
Moodle is recognized for its continual development, simplicity, and vibrant community support. This makes it a suitable choice for those new to e-learning as well as school districts with limited resources. It's designed to enhance teaching and learning experiences through features like lecture note uploads, progress monitoring, grading tools, online quizzes/tests, and reporting capabilities. Beyond the education sector, Moodle supports internal communication within companies by providing chat functionality and information sharing between managers and employees at all levels. Moreover, it serves as a useful tool for task management and constant updates on assignments to improve workflow efficiency. Whether it is hosting online courses for K-12 schools or managing faculty development opportunities across campuses or facilitating information sharing within committees or group projects—Moodle accommodates a wide range of needs. It tracks training delivery for state employees, delivers student orientation, manages various rotations, organizes coursework for faculty members, and provides a centralized space for sharing course-related information, assignments, grading, and document repository.
Flexibility for customization: Users appreciate the open-source nature of Moodle, as it allows for easy extension and customization without additional costs. This flexibility is highly valued by many reviewers, as it enables them to tailor the platform to their specific needs and avoid clutter.
Active user community: The active user community of Moodle is praised for its continuous support and extension of the platform. Many reviewers commend the engagement process and transparent roadmap for development, which gives users a clear understanding of the platform's future direction. They also value being able to contribute directly by fixing bugs or enhancing functionality.
Strong support for learner interaction: Users find that Moodle's constructivist design supports various means of learner interaction. Many reviewers specifically mention the strong support for discussions within Moodle, facilitating effective communication and collaboration among learners.
Outdated and Confusing User Interface: Several users have expressed dissatisfaction with the user interface of Moodle, finding it to be dated and confusing. They feel that it is difficult to navigate and locate specific features within the platform.
Limited Reporting Tools: Many reviewers have noted that the reporting tools in Moodle are not sufficient for their needs. They often have to rely on third-party plugins to generate comprehensive reports, which can be inconvenient and time-consuming.
Complex Gradebook Functionality: The gradebook function in Moodle has been a source of frustration for many users. They find it complex and overwhelming, with numerous options and settings that can be difficult to understand. This complexity leads to an increase in support questions and makes it challenging for beginners or intermediate users to effectively utilize the gradebook.
Based on user reviews, here are the three most common recommendations for Moodle:
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Users highly recommend taking advantage of online resources and YouTube videos for assistance with setting up and managing Moodle. These external sources can provide valuable guidance and support throughout the process.
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Users recommend Moodle for those looking to do virtual education or distance learning. Moodle is recommended due to its many features and status as an open-source resource.
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Users recommend exploring the plugin library in Moodle to discover additional tools and ways to engage students. This feature offers a range of options for enhancing the learning experience and providing diverse learning opportunities.
Overall, these recommendations emphasize the importance of seeking external resources, exploring alternatives, and utilizing additional features to optimize the use of Moodle as a learning management system.
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Reviews
(1-5 of 5)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
June 16, 2022
Moodle Workplace - Perfect workplace learning tool
We use Moodle Workplace for our internal digital learning process by creating learning materials. This tool helps to promote professional growth and development in the organization. This allows employees to be constantly learning new company procedures on a daily basis.
- External integration.
- Easy customization.
- Progress tracking.
- Content sharing.
- Engagement tracking can be improved.
- Analytics.
94.54545454545455%
9.5
- ROI of about 50% in less than a year.
- No negative impact.
- Microlearning.
- Content sharing.
- Analytics.
- Gradebook.
Yes
The mobile user interface works really well.
September 16, 2015
Moodle for the Corporate Noodle
At AmericanCybersystems we use Moodle as our training portal. We load all of our online training courses, our quick reference guides, our knowledge base articles, and our instructor led courses into the Moodle platform. Our training department is very small with only three members: the VP of HR, the Director of Training (me), and an Instructional Designer/Trainer. However, we are creating training at a fast clip and need a learning management system (LMS) that can keep up with the amount of content we want to put out, track the learners, and display the information in a clear and useful way.
American Cybersystems is an international staffing and solutions company. This means we have an accounting department, a billing department, vendor managers, recruiters, salespeople, customer service associates, and a solutions group. Our training department is responsible for the learning and development of the entire organization. There are many different skill sets that have to be taught and therefore there are several different mediums our training department likes to use in order to maximize the training effectiveness. Moodle has several different supports for all the different learning objects we like to use.
American Cybersystems is an international staffing and solutions company. This means we have an accounting department, a billing department, vendor managers, recruiters, salespeople, customer service associates, and a solutions group. Our training department is responsible for the learning and development of the entire organization. There are many different skill sets that have to be taught and therefore there are several different mediums our training department likes to use in order to maximize the training effectiveness. Moodle has several different supports for all the different learning objects we like to use.
- Reporting: Moodle does a great job of keeping track of all the users in the system. There are several different layers of reporting in Moodle. One can track user login time, interactions with course objects, activity logs, eLearning course (SCORM) scores, views of discussion boards, badges and more. Tracking in a training program is a chief concern for many reasons: ROI, engagement, improving future trainings, and insights.
- SCORM packages: Loading a 1.2 SCORM package is easy and simple to do in Moodle. Also, the features for reports are really helpful if you have a course that needs to report variables. In many different LMSs it is nearly impossible to report variables (especially numeric ones) from a SCORM package. However, because Moodle reports "interactions" you can even create a survey and get the answers populated into Moodle for easy export to an Excel file. Not only is the reporting great, but all of the authoring tools that I have used are compatible with Moodle: Captivate, Articulate Storyline 1 & 2, and Lectora.
- User Upload and Creation: In Moodle it is a snap to upload a ton of users. I have encountered other LMS programs that make user creation a burden. This is not the case with Moodle. All one needs is a username, password, first name, and last name in order to create a new user. A large group of users can be uploaded and created through a simple csv file. This has come in very handy when trying to load an entire department into the system. I just ask the department head to send me the csv file and press a couple of buttons and viola! Also, I can batch upload users to a cohort, so if it is a new department that is getting loaded because there is a new course created for them, I don't have to try to find each of the new users I just created and enroll them one by one. Instead, I can enroll the new cohort with the 'enroll cohort' button in the course. This has saved me so much time, so many times!
- Support: Moodle is big and only getting bigger through the support and enthusiasm of the open source community. Anytime I have a question or an idea that I am not sure how to implement in Moodle I can always find an answer. There is the entire knowledge base of Moodle online, there are Moodle enthusiast sites, there are Moddle blogs, and there are instructional designers (corporate and higher education) who write, demonstrate, and talk about Moodle. There are also developers and tinkerers who create plugins, skins, and other applications to integrate specifically with Moodle. This means, if I have an idea and the function is not already in Moodle there is someone who has already created a solution and a plugin. There are even entire companies that are dedicated to making Moodle slick, like Moodlerooms.
- Hosting: Hosting Moodle yourself is difficult. I wouldn't want to mess with all the things involved with hosting and maintaining Moodle on my own server. Hosting Moodle requires a web server with PHP and a database. However, this weakness is also a strength. Although it would be cumbersome to manage Moodle on one's own the fact that it can be done and freely really sets Moodle apart from all other LMSs.
- Scheduling: The basic version of Moodle (no plugins) does not include a scheduling component. What I mean is there is not a way to schedule in person or webinar training sessions in the system and then track attendance. Unless of course it is all done manually and no one wants to do that. There is a face-to-face plugin that does just what I am talking about, but because of the way I have Moodle hosted plugins are not an option for me without going through a few hoops.
- Cloning a Course: For one of my trainings there is a course that uses the local branch Director as the instructor. Therefore, I have to create the same course over an over again for each branch across the company. While there are a few ways to duplicate a course, there is only one way to duplicate the course and include all the badges, a backup file. This means I have to backup a course, create a new course, upload the backup, then go in and turn on all of badges. I want a magic wand button that clones a course exactly as it is; is that too much to ask?
- Also, if I have to fix a typo in a SCORM package I have to reload that file to every single course that contains the file I fixed. My second wish is to have one place to load SCORM packages and then just point to them in the courses so there is only one place I have to go in order to upload a corrected file.
- Moodle has allowed the business to track all training initiatives. Since, November 2014 we have loaded 54 courses, 339 users, 889 resources, issued 719 badges, and created over 100 course modules.
- Our company just got a new applicant tracking system for the recruiters to use. In order to get all of the employees up to speed we created trainings that we loaded into Moodle. The participants and participation was tracked and we were able to find correlations between users engaged in training and their activity in the new applicant tracking system. This is a significant win for the training department, our learners, our company, and especially Moodle.
- Moodle also provides great customer service for our internal employees. They now have one place to go to find all their resources, all their training, and all the help they need for any training questions. Instead of scattering information on the intranet. Training is more official when it has its own domain.
- SumTotal LMS, Blackboard and Angel
Moodle is free, it is supported, and it's modular. All three of these qualities make it a better choice than the other LMSs I have used. sumtotal breaks all the time and I was on the phone with the support team at least once a week. There is also a lack of online support for the system from a community of sumtotal users. The only redeeming feature about sumtotal was its ability to track online webinar registrations and participation. Blackboard is good for higher education, but even using it as a student, I found the organization of the pages difficult to navigate. There are too many layers. Moodle may have 'the scroll of death' but that long page can be remedied with anchor links and other workarounds.
- Adding courses
- Adding users
- Adding activities
- Updating themes
- Cloning courses
- Hosting
Yes
Great! Mobile is easy to use, looks great, and functions properly. The only trick is that if one uploads an Articulate Storyline SCORM package and h/she wants the users to be able to view it in a mobile device then h/she should not check the 'use articulate viewer' box when publishing. Otherwise, the eLearning course will not be able to be viewed on a mobile device. I call this out because it took me a lot of digging to figure this out and it is counterintuitive.
September 15, 2015
Moodle 2.8 Review
Every course at the college receives a Moodle shell. Moodle is used extensively by 85%-90% of our faculty, and minimally by the rest. 100% of our student body uses Moodle for their courses. All new hires attend a workshop on using Moodle and the expectations of the college that everyone be at least a minimal user.
- The new grade book is well received by our faculty. The new version is easy to set up and the improvements of viewing the grade book i.e names moving across the grade columns is a welcome improvement.
- The attendance feature with the ability for teachers to comment on the reasons why a student is late, absent or sleeping is a bonus. The visibility of these things as part of the student grades view has reduced the number of "discussions" between teacher and student over attendance grades.
- Our online faculty love the ease of use of the forums.
- Our HR Dept uses Moodle for compliance training and makes use of the certificate module for proof of participation.
- Faculty teaching cross-listed courses are able to link the multiple courses into one course for the ease of posting content.
- The lesson module, while easier to use than previous versions, still causes our faculty to shy away from it.
- We left our previous LMS due to high costs and poor technical support. Moodle is less expensive, more reliable, more user-friendly, and our service provider is more responsive than our former LMS.
- We have experienced increased use of the LMS by our faculty since switching to Moodle and more interest in trying new features.
- We have a great support team at our service provider who are very responsive and thorough in their attention to our needs.
We find Moodle easier to use than Blackboard, less expensive, more versatile and we like the ability to select among numerous service providers for support and price.
2500
The users represent all phases of life across campus. Academics, IT, HR, Student Life, etc....
5
We have end-user support, network infrastructure support, SIS support and SIS-Moodle integration
- Academic courses
- HR Training
- Faculty Professional Development
- Student Organizations
- Prior to contracting with an outside vendor, we used the questionnaire module to run our end of semester course evaluations
- We have created a site for HR trainings
- We are exploring Moodle for placement tests in Math and English for incoming Freshmen
Yes
We replaced Blackboard due to its high annual cost and its poor tech support
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Product Reputation
- Vendor Reputation
- Third-party Reviews
The driving force was lack of support from Blackboard. We formed a faculty work team to specify must-have features and our IT department to specify product support needs.
No changes. Our process worked well for us
- Professional services company
OculusIT was the implementation partner
Yes
Our current version was backed up from our previous version, implemented in test, and then rolled into production
Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled
Our biggest lesson was to be sure to test rigorously and to have both power users and minimal users as part of the test team.
- We realized that we left out items in the scope of work and did not realize this until our service provider had performed the required tasks. We then had to issue a change order to amend the upgrade.
No
We had a professor delete a course and we could not find where it went. This happened 2 days before the opening of the semester. Our support team worked through the night to re-create the shell and populate it with students so that the course content could be reloaded before classes began...all at no additional charge.
- Loading files is easy. doc ppt xls pdf mp3 all load without problems
- Linking to external sites is quick and easy
- Embedding video clips is easy
- The lesson is difficult to construct
- The quiz creation is time consuming and importing course cartridges is not always straightforward
Yes, but I don't use it
December 18, 2014
Moodle from a Moodler: Open Source, Powerful, Awesome
The University of Minnesota adopted Moodle in 2008 with an implementation of Moodle 1.9, while concurrently running the Blackboard system, WebVista. In 2012, we completely decommissioned WebVista in favor of using Moodle as our primary course management system.
Moodle is used by our four coordinate campuses, including Crookston, Duluth, Morris, and Rochester/Twin Cities. Across all campuses, Moodle is used with approximately 65% of all courses, and approximately 70% of all enrolled students use Moodle for at least one course.
In addition to our academic use of Moodle, it is also used by departments across the University for employee training, housing and sharing resources easily within departments, and in some academic units for tracking promotion and tenure materials for their faculty.
Blackboard was an expensive course management system, and during the recession in 2008 the University was looking for ways to cut costs as much as possible. Moodle was a clear choice as a course management system because it is an open source software with an active development community, which allowed our developers to seek fixes and enhancements developed by other institutions, as well as providing our own back to the community.
Moodle is used by our four coordinate campuses, including Crookston, Duluth, Morris, and Rochester/Twin Cities. Across all campuses, Moodle is used with approximately 65% of all courses, and approximately 70% of all enrolled students use Moodle for at least one course.
In addition to our academic use of Moodle, it is also used by departments across the University for employee training, housing and sharing resources easily within departments, and in some academic units for tracking promotion and tenure materials for their faculty.
Blackboard was an expensive course management system, and during the recession in 2008 the University was looking for ways to cut costs as much as possible. Moodle was a clear choice as a course management system because it is an open source software with an active development community, which allowed our developers to seek fixes and enhancements developed by other institutions, as well as providing our own back to the community.
- Facilitates asynchronous interactions through tools such as Forums.
- Creates a platform for instructors to reach out individually to students on coursework through the Assignment tool.
- Allows for extensive and varied quiz questions, from standard multiple choice to complex calculated answers.
- Gives our students one centralized place to access all course materials, helping them keep on track with their courses throughout the semester.
- The Gradebook is an area that could use significant improvement. There are many different aggregation options, which makes the gradebook a very powerful tool, but it also makes it very inaccessible to beginner and intermediate users.
- Forums should allow for both anonymous responses, as well as private responses.
- The terminology can be improved for greater clarity. One example is "Common Module Settings". This is a setting which exists on all activities and resources. The function of these settings is to restrict by groupings and control visibility. "Common Module Settings" does not clearly indicate the actual functions in this section.
- As support staff, I don't see too much in terms of the Return on Investment. However, I can anecdotally say that students love interacting with their coursework online. I like to think increased online interaction and availability of course materials also leads to greater student success.
- It is extremely easy to build and administer quizzes in Moodle.
- Managing user enrollments is very easy in Moodle, especially with the recent implementation of searching and filters on the user list in Moodle 2.6.
- Moodle is extremely easy to integrate with LTIs from any third-party vendor.
- The gradebook can be complicated to set up and difficult to understand.
- It is difficult to facilitate user-reviews through Moodle. There is a tool avaialble (Workshop), but it seems unncessarily complicated.
Yes
Starting with Moodle 2.6, the mobile interface works extremely well. The best part is that the mobile interface is the same as the standard desktop/laptop interface, and the blocks and content respond to the size of the window in which Moodle is loaded.
We use Moodle as our Learning Management System to support online courses offered by our institution. We are the "adult learning" branch of the University System of New Hampshire, a publicly funded higher education institution. We offer fully accredited Bachelor's degrees and graduate degrees. Over 65% of our enrollments are in completely online courses (not hybrid or face to face). Moodle is used to provide communication between instructors and students, including provision of learning materials, support for substantive discussions in which learners explore the topics, and assessment of student learning.
- Moodle is open-source. This means we are able to easily extend Moodle without having to pay for additional functionality. An active user community continues to extend and support Moodle use. We are able to contribute directly by fixing bugs or enhancing functionality, and these changes can be submitted to the community for use by others. We can also make use of enhancements submitted by other users. The roadmap for development and the process of engaging in that process are open and transparent.
- Moodle is constructivist by design, supporting several means for learners to interact with one another as part of the learning process. Support for discussions is reasonably strong. The Workshop module, while complicated to configure, supports peer review of work using instructor-defined rubrics.
- Moodle supports standards such as IMS Common Cartridge, LTI (Learning Tool Interoperability), XML-RPC, etc., allowing content to be imported from other systems (or exported to them). This enhances our ability to incorporate Open Education Resources in our course offerings. This also aided in our migration from our previous LMS.
- Multiple hosting vendors are available to provide SaaS solutions, or an institution may choose to host Moodle themselves, depending on resources available at the institution.
- There is an incredibly wide variety of add-ons, most of which are hosted and/or indexed at the moodle.org site, which also provides rating tools, support forum areas, bug tracking, etc. In particular, Open University in the UK, using Moodle to support tens of thousands of completely online students, has contributed a number of solid enhancements to the platform.
- Moodle integrates with a variety of authentication systems, including most of those likely to be in use at a college or university. We have used both LDAP and CAS.
- Moodle HQ attention is divided amongst the needs of many different types constituents, e.g. institutions who use Moodle to support face to face or hybrid courses, rather than fully online programs like ours. While anyone can make an "add-on" for Moodle, it can be difficult to get changes in the core application approved by Moodle HQ, which can limit the kinds of add-ons that can be created.
- The number of experienced hosting providers in the U.S. is small, and one (Moodlerooms) is now owned by a commercial competitor (Blackboard).
- Because Moodle is open source software, there is no commercial entity providing technical support. There are so many configuration options that some expertise is needed to configure Moodle for the specific needs of an institution. Commercial hosting providers can help, but many institutions will find they need at least one full-time staff member to administer and configure Moodle, even beyond administering the server used to host Moodle.
- The interface of Moodle sometimes seems dated compared to newer applications, e.g. Canvas. Newer interface elements are being adopted into Moodle Core, but many are left to individual "Theme" developers, with varying degrees of support. Three columns are assumed, and the "Block" structure is confining (e.g. one cannot place a block in the central region of the course).
- Although Moodle is intended to be aligned with constructivist learning principles, it cannot "force" instructors to teach in a constructivist way (nor can any LMS).
- Reporting tools are scant. Third-party plugins are needed to provide adequate reports. We recommend Configurable Reports and the Ad-Hoc Database Queries tool. We would like to see tools like these become part of Moodle Core.
- Automation tools (e.g. import of student enrollments from a Student Information System) have been limited and not robust in the past. This is improving, both within add-on services provided by hosting services such as Remote Learner, and within Moodle Core. This situation still needs improvement.
- The Gradebook function is complex and generates many support questions.
- Switching from Blackboard to Moodle helped us reduce costs at our institution during a critical funding shortage.
- Although we have had to develop reports ourselves, our access to data and reporting within Moodle has allowed us to focus on measuring effective teaching and learning practices within our institution in a way that wasn't possible with Blackboard. We are in the process of developing specific learning analytics to further improve this aspect of our institution.
- As we progressed in using Moodle, we found we had to allocate significantly higher resources than originally estimated, including a full-time LMS administrator internally, and increased support services at our hosting provider.
- Canvas,Blackboard
We switched from Blackboard to Moodle based on two criteria: cost and control. We had been hosting Blackboard through a sister institution who had a schedule of upgrades and maintenance incompatible with our course schedule. We also needed to massively reduce costs during a severe funding cut to public institutions of higher education. Moodle helped us do that, even though our final costs were higher than initially expected.
Canvas was not ready for review at the time we selected Moodle. We routinely compare different LMS products as they surface in the marketplace. Canvas has a good interface, but at this time we don't feel the discussion/forum feature is strong enough to support fully online learning.
Canvas was not ready for review at the time we selected Moodle. We routinely compare different LMS products as they surface in the marketplace. Canvas has a good interface, but at this time we don't feel the discussion/forum feature is strong enough to support fully online learning.
3000
Moodle is used by instructors, students, and college staff administering educational programs. It is core to our mission as an institution of higher education providing fully online courses (as well as face to face and hybrid courses). Greater than 65% of our enrollments are in fully online courses, so Moodle is critical to those learners.
5
We have one full-time LMS administrator. Moodle is also supported by a team of 2-4 Instructional Designers, one learning resource designer, and our regular IT staff as part of their responsibilities (up to 8 employees, including part time). Technical administration of Moodle requires knowledge of web servers and protocols, especially PHP, SQL, and some familiarity with XML. Our linux server administration is handled by a hosting service.
- Adult students needing to complete a college degree while maintaining full-time employment and/or family responsibilities
- Enlisted students deployed abroad
- Adjunct faculty needing a tool to communicate with students without requiring extensive web development skills
- In addition to our college courses, we support the Education and Training Partnership, which provides training to prospective foster families in the state of New Hampshire
- We use Moodle to provide faculty professional development as well as student instruction
- We use xhtml to provide twitter feed blocks in Moodle sidebars about topics of interest to the course subject matter
- We are looking at increased use of SCORM (possibly via Articulate Storyline) to provide simulation-based learning for complex topics
- We are considering badges for both faculty professional development and recognition of complex, high-order student skills crossing multiple disciplines
- We are hoping to enhance learner peer review tools and promote independent learning within Moodle
Yes
We host with Remote Learner, a "Moodle Partner." My ratings of Moodle support do not include rankings of support provided by Remote Learner.
Yes
Bugs reported about add-ons have usually been fixed promptly by the third party add-on makers. Bugs in Moodle Core may be addressed if careful steps to reproduce are provided. On the plus side, patches to fix bugs are accepted by Moodle HQ after appropriate review, which improves responsiveness to bug reports.
While implementing the third-party MooProfile block, I had several almost real-time exchanges with the developer during which features we needed were implemented and one fix I submitted was incorporated almost immediately. This was an example of open source support at its finest. Staying active in the Moodle community definitely improves the support experience.
- The Topic/Week structure in Moodle helps organize course activities in the same way that an instructor's syllabus does, making it clear what tasks need to be performed each week (or other course unit)
- The "My Home" page provides an easy overview of all tasks one needs to complete, across multiple courses
- The Forum provides clear notification of and navigation to new, unread posts
- Instructor grading of forum activity by students seems like an afterthought, even though forum discussions are a critical component of constructivist and social-constructivist learning. The "Rating" system is the most integrated way to provide grades, but using it in that way is not obvious to new faculty (or to students).
- Several tools provide similar functionality, but enhancements do not work across tools, e.g. rubric tools developed for Assignments can't be used in the Workshop or in Quiz Essay Questions, and Quiz Scoring methods (e.g. short-answer matching) can't be used in the branching Lesson module
- User-configurable reporting is not built into Moodle. The Configurable Reports plugin addresses many of these needs.
- Blocks providing additional functionality, e.g. summaries of the 3 most recent posts, cannot be placed in the central region, only in sidebars.
- The Gradebook function is very complex, and generates numerous support requests from instructors and students. Configuring the correct calculation of grades can be difficult for all but the simplest of scenarios (simple average). Instructors frequently override grade calculations by accident and need help restoring the correct calculations.
Yes
Multiple interfaces are provided. The downloadable apps are incomplete. However, there is also a device detection feature, with the ability to set a different "theme" when a mobile device is detected, and this works well. Unfortunately, existing themes an institution might want to use do not necessarily have coordinating mobile counterparts. This is an area that could use improvement.
- Banner
- Chalk & Wire and other LTI-compliant tools
Our Banner integration was difficult, despite using an add-on package by Remote Learner (DataHub). Moodle does not integrate "out of the box" with Student Information Systems. Remote Learner's DataHub product allows import of comma separated value (.csv) text files, but is fussy about line ending characters, UTF encoding, etc. When we began our integration, the DataHub product (called "Integration Point" at that time) was poorly documented. Resolving various compatibility issues took nearly a year. Error logs are verbose and not organized by severity.
On the other hand, the integration with LTI tools, including Chalk & Wire, has been simple and relatively painless. Students are provided single-signon access to LTI-compliant tools and instructors also have visibility to student progress in those tools. Scores are reported back to Moodle from LTI tools (if provided by the LTI tool).
On the other hand, the integration with LTI tools, including Chalk & Wire, has been simple and relatively painless. Students are provided single-signon access to LTI-compliant tools and instructors also have visibility to student progress in those tools. Scores are reported back to Moodle from LTI tools (if provided by the LTI tool).
- Possibly calendar services, e.g. Google Calendar.
This would likely be handled by a third-party add-on (it may already be supported).
- File import/export
- Single Signon
- API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
- Javascript widgets
The primary integration technology used by an LMS like Moodle would be LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability), which goes beyond single signon to provide data exchange between Moodle and third-party learning tools such as ePortfolios, Turnitin (originality checking and grading), textbook publisher supplements, and Open Education Resources. Moodle supports this very well. The other key integration technology is SCORM, provided as a way to embed interactive elements with scoring capabilities into courses. Moodle supports this well.
In areas where clear standards exist, e.g. LDAP, LTI and SCORM, Moodle implements standards well and support is good. Unfortunately, this level of standardization does not apply to Student Information Systems, likely a key integration need. Carefully review the current state of the data import process and your SIS data export capabilities. You will probably need to manually code extensive database functions to extract and prepare user, course, and enrollment data for import by Moodle. This is a significant undertaking. Budget appropriately, and plan to engage external consultants if you don't have the resources in-house. If you want to bring data (e.g. grades) back from Moodle to your SIS, double the estimated effort.