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Moodle

Moodle

Overview

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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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Moodle has a wide range of use cases across different educational institutions and organizations. In higher education, it facilitates …
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Best LMS Solution

9 out of 10
June 17, 2022
Incentivized
We bring in facilitators who deliver content that aim in educating people in different parts of the country. Moodle Workplace creates the …
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Learning with Moodle

8 out of 10
February 12, 2020
Incentivized
We utilize Moodle as a way to deliver professional development for staff and faculty. We are able to participate in PD with colleagues …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 11 features
  • Progress tracking & certifications (25)
    10.0
    100%
  • Assignments (26)
    9.8
    98%
  • Learning administration (24)
    9.8
    98%
  • Course catalog or library (23)
    9.5
    95%
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Pricing

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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.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://moodle.com/pricing

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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What is ProProfs LMS Software?

ProProfs LMS is a learning management system software that is designed to help instructors create and deliver online training courses. The LMS offers both businesses and educational institutions comprehensive training solutions by allowing them to create online courses, complemented by tests,…

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Product Demos

How to take Demo Assignment and appear in ESE-2020 by Moodle App from Mobile

YouTube

MEDIAL Plugin for Moodle - Demo Video

YouTube

Moodle Demo | Account Creation | Teacher View | Student View | Adding Resources | Joining Courses

YouTube

Moodle Webex Integration Demo

YouTube

French on an e-learning platform - Clip Class' Moodle

YouTube

Moodle Google Hangout Demo

YouTube
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Features

Learning Management

Features of LMS and LCMS systems, related to designing, administering, and consuming learning content in an educational, corporate, or on-the-job context.

9.4
Avg 8.2
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Product Details

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

Moodle Screenshots

Screenshot of Moodle offers activities and resources to create courses.Screenshot of The course dashboard shows the courses which an student is enrolled in.Screenshot of Inside a course view shows the course complete index of activities and resources.
The course view can be customised to be cleaner allowing the student to focus on learning.Screenshot of Moodle Workplace includes all features in Moodle LMS and other exclusive features like multi-tenancy, dynamic rules, and report builder.Screenshot of Programs help users stay up-to-date with compliance, and help with designing learning paths for a teams so that they can develop the right competencies. Certificates can also be issued to validate learning and compliance.Screenshot of Dynamic Rules help to avoid the tedious tasks and create and manage automated rules for several groups of users. Learning experiences based on location, department, position, roles and other criteria are available.

Moodle Videos

What's new in Moodle LMS 4.0?
What's new in Moodle Workplace 4.0?

Moodle Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, Mobile Web
Supported CountriesWorldwide
Supported LanguagesAll 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.

Totara LMS, Canvas, and Docebo Learning Platform are common alternatives for Moodle.

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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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(245)

Community Insights

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!

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:

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-4 of 4)
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Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are currently using Moodle in an atypical fashion at our institution. While Moodle is a full scale Learning Management System, we are not using it for the entire set of features it entails. We have another Learning Management System for managing our courses (both online coursework and face to face) but we use Moodle for integrating with our other systems to manage the assessment work associated with program reviews and accreditation. A single department manages Moodle, however the entire teaching faculty at our institution makes use of the product since assessment touches every program.
  • Under the Open Source model of Moodle, there are countless customization options available. We only make use of the modules associated with rubrics and outcomes and that demonstrates the ability to pick and choose what you want to use of the software.
  • Moodle is very easy to install on the server and is readily available on CPanel (as well hosting control panels) for even easier installation.
  • Being that Moodle offers an Open Source model of their software, it can be very cost effective for an institution with limited resources if they are able to invest the time in setting up the system. If there is a budget allowance for an initiative involving this type of software, then Moodle does a great job of working with you to implement.
  • The interface is not very intuitive. You must know what you are looking for in order to navigate effectively.
  • Although installation of Moodle is easy, it is a little more difficult to configure it with your other Learning tools. As an example, LDAP synchronization is a little difficult.
  • The interface is a little dated, even though new releases keep coming out (which is great!) none of them really add value to the appearance of the platform.
Moodle is a Learning Management System and is best suited for just that. We didn't like the assessment piece of our full scale Learning Management System (nor did we want to purchase the entire assessment module) so we chose to use Moodle for this, and it works well. Installing this application with the intention of only using a portion of its capabilities can be successful in environments where you have technical skills and a broad understanding of integration between your systems. For institutions that lack these, you're better suited to using a full scale of an LMS with assessment inside that same application.
Learning Management (11)
80.90909090909092%
8.1
Course authoring
80%
8.0
Course catalog or library
100%
10.0
Player/Portal
70%
7.0
Learning content
100%
10.0
Mobile friendly
50%
5.0
Progress tracking & certifications
80%
8.0
Assignments
80%
8.0
Compliance management
90%
9.0
Learning administration
90%
9.0
Learning reporting & analytics
80%
8.0
Social learning
70%
7.0
  • Installing Open Source Moodle has saved us money in contractual obligations and consulting fees for creating the customized solution we were looking for. The time and learning curve associated with using Open Source Moodle as compared with the SaaS, still outweighs paying for a service since we wanted so much customization.
  • One negative effect of using Moodle is the difficultly in faculty and staff buy in. While our institution was accustomed to the main Learning Management System we use, it was quite taxing trying to explain why we were using another system for the outcomes alignment and assessment.
  • Installing and using Moodle Open Source has encouraged the professional development of the staff responsible for implementation. They have had to use inquiry and perseverance in developing a setup that supports the needs of our institution best.
We didn't really entertain the idea of Canvas for long since the Open Source version didn't have nearly the reference and support material that Moodle did for guiding a successful setup. We did consider adding the assessment and outcomes module from our existing Learning Management System (Blackboard) to our package but the steep cost and inability to customize ended up steering right to Moodle.
150
Assessment coaches, teaching faculty, data analysts and Institutional Effectiveness staff use Moodle. We use Moodle to facilitate the assessment efforts at our institution, from academic assessment to service area and institutional assessment.
5
We have a development and support team of a product manager, two programmers, an instructional designer and a trouble shooter to support Moodle for assessment at our institution.
  • Academic Assessment
  • Institutional Assessment
  • Data Driven Decision Making
  • In House custom programming
  • Instead of using it just as an LMS, we have built an assessment platform out of our usage
  • We integrate other tools such as survey tools to connect artifacts with the assessments
  • We export results to Tableau for analyzing
  • Expand our delpoyment of Moodle as an Assessment platform
  • Integrate our artifact submission process to streamline the workflow
  • Automate the opening and closing archiving of assessment periods
Moodle is flexible, well documented and comes ready to go with MANY plugins, and features to make good use of the product. It is cutting edge in comparison to other platforms and has a large community of users to collaborate and troubleshoot with.
September 30, 2015

Moodle at McNeese

Helen Ware | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Moodle is being used across our university by all of our instructors. They are geared toward putting their syllabus up in each of their courses. We have approximately 2500 courses that run in the summer and in the fall. We also use it exclusively for our web courses for our adult learning programs. We do have the business problem of the budget that it addressed. It is an open-source management system which is basically free for our university to use. We were paying nearly $60,000 for the prior learning management system.
  • Moodle provides a vast variety of using technology in ways that the instructor or student with little experience with technology is able to use it. All of our instructors received beginning training in how to use Moodle before we switched over to it, so that they felt comfortable with the switch. They could come to the training more than one time if they chose to.
  • I give all of our instructors more advanced training when they choose to teach the fully online courses, and they also receive training in additional software. They also receive a webcam and they can also receive a document camera if they are a math or an accounting instructor.
  • They have also received Camtasia and Snagit which work well with Moodle. They may basically use any software and are able to upload their own videos, videos from the Internet, any sort of PowerPoints that they create with their own voice or video, extra technology, notes, etc. for the students.
  • The instructors use a variety of modules within Moodle. We have available for their use BigBlueButton, which is a webinar. It provides guests appearances and provides office hours for our instructors who have strictly web based courses. They also have Turnitin, which is the plagiarism tool, Turning Tech that is the linked in tool that provides a quiz taking that links to Moodle and to the gradebook. We also use Tegrity that delivers the instructors and the students with an additional tool that permits them to do a video, or a PowerPoint or allow the instructor to link to anything on the computer and to upload it into Moodle. We also have the Attendance module, which allows the instructors who take attendance in the classroom to give the students "points" for attendance. We are adding the Ebsco reading list for the library this summer, which lets individual instructors to add certain reading lists from the library for their individual classrooms.
  • Right now, our Moodle is not working with our Banner product in being able to bring our grades in from Banner directly into Moodle. This isn't a problem with Moodle, it is a problem with the integration with the product.
  • There are issues with the gradebook being difficult for the instructor to use because there are so many different ways to use it, however Moodle is working on a new gradebook component.
  • We make extensive use of MNet and there are many ways to use it, but again Moodle is in the process of improving it.
If they are able to self-host the Moodle product, I do recommend it. If they do not self-host it, I would not recommend having it hosted by someone else, because then it is no longer an open source.
  • Moodle has had a positive impact on our business objectives because we went from using another service that cost us $60,000 per year to Moodle, which is open source, which we self-host and it is basically free.
  • We are able to upgrade from 2.0 which we started on, to each of the upgrades relatively quickly. We have recently upgraded to 2.7 and we test it out on our Moodletest site first and then we upgrade to our actual site.
  • We definitely have increased our instructor efficiency. The only issues that we had this semester were with the quiz settings, and we taught several lessons in this to clear up the miscommunication among the instructors. I also have a "Moodle for Instructors" course that I put all of these instructions and many more for the faculty members such as how to make the courses visible for their students, how to transfer a block of students from one course to another, if they wish to combine two courses, how to import materials from last semester's course into a new semester's course. They may refer to these at any time. It saves me tons of email time!
We had used Blackboard since 1999, and had officially signed up for it in 2001. We started having less than great service with Blackboard because they had grown so large. However, more than that, they were just too expensive for our individual budget. With all of the budget cuts that were occurring in Louisiana in higher education, several other schools had already moved over to Moodle. We had already tried out Moodle and found that because they were open source and several of the features we could "fix" on our own with just writing in a code whenever we needed. It was really a great idea! All of the schools in our ULS system moved over to Moodle and we found that this worked well. It was especially great when our Moodle server administrator figured out that we could use MNet to configure all four of the schools together that were in our Nursing Consortium. The users would no longer have to be given new user ids for each of the schools! They could use their individual school ids and still be able to login to each of the individual schools. It was truly a miracle that we were all using Moodle.
We now have been under the use of Moodle for two full years now. Our faculty have really grown to love the use of Moodle. We are now under the use of Moodle 2.7.1+ and we upgrade at the end of every semester to the next version. We are self-hosted and we love using Moodle. Our administration always asks me to set up a new "group" to have each new area set up in for curriculum, or various administrative areas. It is wonderful how many people actually use it now.
I support Moodle every day for the faculty and occasionally for the student who has an out of the ordinary something that happens to them. The other person runs our server all of the time, and keeps up with all of our upgrades. He and I talk every day. He occasionally helps me out with the faculty as well. Most of our faculty ask very few questions at this point.

Of the other two people, one guy will help out occasionally if we need a code written in to help us out with something needed in Moodle. We also have the other person who puts in our courses into Moodle at the beginning of each semester.
  • The use of Moodle for courses in everyday courses and the syllabus for each course
  • The use of Moodle for the administration
  • The use of Moodle for the student groups
  • The administrative group that has used it to come up with ways to use it for the other administrators to come up with ideas for the QEP
  • Our curriculum committee has scanned in all of our documents into the administrative group for the committee to review
  • The review committee is thinking of having the faculty put in their ideas for the future of the President of the university's 5 year plan
We definitely are renewing Moodle. We love it! I am the system administrator and most of our faculty have become accustomed to it. Our server administrator also loves it and I asked him a couple questions about the items that he found "wrong" with the system. We definitely would not change over from this system as long as we are able to self-host this system. I do not think that anything could be better. We have had very few problems and with any new modules that come out that are open source, we will eventually add them into the system to replace some of the ones that are not open source. Even though we have a small staff, we have accomplished a great deal with a relatively small staff and our instructors and our students appreciate it.
Yes
We replaced Blackboard. It was costly to our university, which was under budget cuts at the time. The entire higher education system had major budget cuts and Blackboard was costing us nearly $60,000 dollars and we just could not afford it. We needed something that we could self-host. We did look at some other products and decided to go with Moodle.
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
  • Vendor Reputation
  • Existing Relationship with the Vendor
  • Analyst Reports
  • Third-party Reviews
Price, which was basically free, except for the cost of the server. We had to invest in the additional cost of a server, so therefore we did so. The product features, which Moodle offers several features, that we are able to add as they come out. We were able to wait until 2.0, which was very beneficial. Knowing the vendor reputation, this was also beneficial. We had actually met the owner of Moodle at a Moodle Moot before in Austin, Texas. He is a very personable guy. He had started the Moodle company and he makes as many of the Moodle Moots as possible. We have now met with him in the New Orleans one as well. Martin is really a down-to-earth person! I think that having met him has made a very good impression on a great many people. We had done a presentation on MNet which stands for the type of Networking that we use for our Nursing consortium. He was impressed that we are using this (which is part of Moodle). He actually took a picture of our final presentation which showed a few items that still need to be "fixed" with the MNet pics!
I really don't think that we would change anything in the way that we have handled it. We had wanted to change over to Moodle a couple of years before we did, but it really has worked out well. If we had changed before we did, we would have had to change over to 1.9 which may have been more difficult and our faculty would have been more difficult to make the change. I think that it just all worked out well when we made the change. I took almost a year long in training our faculty, and we gradually made the change over from Blackboard to Moodle over two semesters. It really just worked out well. It has been two years, and I really feel as though our faculty ask us very few questions, now.
  • Implemented in-house
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled
We regarded change management and the implementation with first of all teaching our instructors how to use Moodle. I walked all of our instructors through lessons in how to use Moodle in and year and a half before we started using Moodle. Each of our instructors could come into the "lessons" more than one time, if needed. At the time, we had over 300 full-time instructors and I also taught a few of our grad assistants, which only took about 30 minutes compared to the two hours that it took for the instructors. They were much younger and quicker at learning; which is why I had them scheduled separately. It worked well. Also, our System Administrator for the server sees that we update the server every semester to the newest version of Moodle. We are currently on 2.8+. Our instructors now have very few questions concerning Moodle. However, when they do we take care of it by answering their questions immediately. If it is something that is an issue, we research it, we do the latest updates, and it usually resolves the issue.
Moodle is the easiest software to find out issues that occur. Although we have very few problems, it is simple for our Server Administrator to find out any that I cannot figure out that are the simple issues that our new instructors may have. He is able to search within the server where I cannot and is able to search within the server logs that I cannot see. Most of these problems are resolved within 24 hours or less.
Yes, Moodle is always available. We are self-hosted and Moodle is always up and available. The only time that it is not available is when we are upgrading it each semester. It is then down for just a few planned hours. That is in-between semesters and we let the faculty and students know. We do it on a Friday evening and it is back up within a few hours.
Moodle is an excellent LMS in relationship to any other one that I have seen or used. The pages load quickly and the reports complete in a reasonable time frame. Moodle has taken on Respondus, StudyMate, BigBlueButton, Turning Tech, Turnitin2, Certificates, Attendance, Tegrity, Questionnaire, Virtual Programming Lab, and Badges. All of these programs work right in with Moodle and do not cause any issues. Instructors may also use Camtasia and Snagit software as well as using webcams, downloading videos from the Internet, adding into books, or any of the many other areas within Moodle. Our instructors use the grade books without many problems and really don't ask questions much anymore. We upgrade Moodle every semester and are currently on 2.9+. Our instructors have basically learned to use most of the resources and activities.
September 15, 2015

Moodle 2.8 Review

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
The questions to ask when adopting Moodle lie more with the service provider than with Moodle itself. Questions around cloud based storage, ownership of content, data security (including student data) should be asked when vetting a hosting company. Our use of Moodle does not utilize all of the existing functionality, so Moodle is usually adequate to meet all of our LMS needs.
  • 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
Our faculty and students are both happy and comfortable with Moodle
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.
Find a partner who will work with you during the implementation process. Be sure to provide ample training for veteran users on the changes and for newbies on the overall product.
We have never had an issue go unresolved and we have never had to escalate any problem. The Tech Service team does all of that on their end.
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
We have had not major issues with the functionality of Moodle and have been able to integrate other products with our version
Elizabeth Dalton | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
The key concerns are whether you will host completely online courses or support face to face and hybrid courses, and whether you will host your LMS internally or will need external hosting.

Moodle can be used to host courses completely online, but if this is mission critical to your institution (i.e. the purpose of your institution is to provide education and you will do this primarily online), be sure you have enough internal resources to support this application. This is not a turn-key solution. Substantial configuration is required.

If you have the resources to host your own LMS and administer it, Moodle is an excellent choice. You will be able to customize it to meet your needs, for a very modest cost (as the software itself is free).

If you are a smaller institution without 24x7 IT support, you may need to consider external hosting, and this will come at a cost. You may be restricted in how much you will be able to customize Moodle, and you will still need someone within your organization who will be familiar with administering and supporting the features of Moodle.

If you need minimal LMS support for face to face courses at low cost, Moodle is an outstanding choice.
  • 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.
Even though Moodle is open and we could extract our course content through IMS Common Cartridge or SQL exports for import to another system, changing LMS software is difficult for faculty and not a disruption we would willingly impose at this time. We would need to see a truly compelling advantage in another system to consider switching. Moodle meets our needs fairly well at present, and we are not convinced that any other system would offer significant advantages. Total cost of ownership is still lower with Moodle than with most other systems we have reviewed.

We continue to look for LMS tools that provide even better support for learner peer review and more flexible online assignments. We use many external tools to enhance Moodle, including Blackboard Collaborate, Kaltura, Chalk & Wire, Articulate Storyline, and Turnitin. On the one hand, this gives us a "best of breed" solution that doesn't limit us to a single vendor. On the other hand, managing all these licenses can be cumbersome and expensive.
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.
Moodle is open source, and must be evaluated in that context, but one also has to provide a fair comparison to competing products with commercial backing. Support varies depending on the component of Moodle. Bug reports in Moodle Core that affect security or stability are dealt with promptly. Functionality requests or features not working smoothly may or may not be addressed, depending on whether the functionality desired matches the "vision" of Moodle HQ. The user community provides excellent support for initial installation and configuration, but more complex questions may go unanswered, unless they are noticed by someone who happens to know the answer. The support forum feature at the Moodle site (the same feature used within Moodle itself) does not provide granular subscription to topic discussions, apparently by design, and Moodle HQ seems resistant to changing this feature.
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.
Simple uses of Moodle, e.g. to post documents to support a face to face course and perhaps provide a discussion forum for intermittent use, are very easy. Using Moodle as a platform for entirely online courses at a college level requires considerable configuration and selection of customized add-ons to provide missing functionality. Once the system is set up, instruction to faculty and students may be required as every system has specific features and interface elements that are likely to be unusual or even unique. The open-source nature of Moodle does not encourage consistency of the interface. Disagreements in the open source community sometimes hinder improvements to core features, e.g. long-awaited enhancements to the Forum tools.
  • 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).
  • 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.
Moodle now provides core functionality to process file imports for users, courses, and enrollments, but still has significant limitations in how these files are processed. This functionality was added late, considering the frequency with which these features were requested, and is still incomplete. However, integration with important educational tools is excellent.
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.
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