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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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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 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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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
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December 08, 2018
Moodle LMS - online learning platform with a bit of a learning curve
- Easily create courses that contain multiple choice quiz questions.
- Easily assign certain courses to specific users.
- Share reports regarding course progress and scores by email.
- There is a major learning curve for building and administrating Moodle courses if you've never done it before.
- The interface looks a bit dated. You can theme Moodle to change the look of it, but it doesn't change the overall interface.
- Customization of functionality requires a programmer with Moodle expertise.
July 14, 2018
Learn and teach - wherever you are!
- Numerous features that are useful for both teachers as well as students, for example, tests, forums, documents. Even tests themselves offer a lot of opportunities, for example, you can ask an open question or you can ask a question with a specific answer expected and students can see the results right after they hit "Submit" - students don't have to wait to find out how they did and teachers don't have to spend precious time grading :)
- Its drag-n-drop lesson creation is amazing and so easy to use. For a perfectionist, who wants everything to look nice and pretty, it's a good feature :D
- Its mobile app is great because it allows using the system even when you don't have access to your computer.
- I enjoy Moodle and to be honest, I think the very few things I have stacked against Moodle are mostly related to how the system is configured for my university. Otherwise, it's a very useful tool and I love the opportunities Moodle presents for education.
May 21, 2018
Choose Moodle
- Moodle is able to keep track of student data per course.
- Moodle is able to integrate outside programs such as Panopto that you can use within your course.
- Moodle is user friendly for the most part. Everything is self explanatory and it doesn’t take a lot of researching to find actions, activities, how to setup your course, etc. When editing your course, it’s very easy to add activities/resources to your course and Moodle explains, in detail, what each activity/resource is and how it will function within your course.
- Sometimes Moodle has issues “communicating” with certain outside sources such as Lockdown Browser.
- When upgrading to the 3.4 version of Moodle, the campus is noticing that some activity plugins are not upgradable.
May 16, 2018
Moodle on a Small College Campus
- Provides a space for faculty to share course content and feedback to students.
- Has an intuitive design, so new users don't face a steep learning curve.
- Facilitates students engagement and collaboration outside of the classroom.
- Helps students stay organized for multiple courses.
- Moodle lags behind more sophisticated Learning Management Systems, such as Canvas and Sakai. Outside integrations are typically clunkier and less evolved than those for other LMS options.
- There is more unused white space in several of the most popular Moodle themes, such as SNAP and Boost than is necessary. This means there is a lot more scrolling and visual work demanded from the users than there should be.
- There isn't enough flexibility in course organization for several Moodle themes. The text editor is clunky, and the overall editing options are limited.
September 16, 2016
Former Moodle user
- It was extremely customizable.
- The layout, while not for everyone, was great for students - having everything clearly laid out.
- We were able to add photos to user profiles very easily - something that is not so easy on Blackboard.
- The options were overwhelming to users sometimes.
- Grading was difficult to understand.
- Discussion forums were a step behind those of other LMS providers.
September 13, 2016
Moodle vs everyone else - why it is time to embrace open-source
- Content management - Moodle has a strong database structure that allows for content to be stored locally and used in multiple instances without corruption of the data.
- Customizations - Moodle is highly customizable, with over 1000 plugins available, a very transparent API, and customizations available directly inside the platform, such as language, themes, and structure.
- Notifications and reminders - With the ability to customize who, when, and how notifications are sent and the ability to write custom notifications, students are always kept in the know.
- Static pages - One area in which Moodle is not very strong is acting as a website, meaning not a CMS, but instead presenting static pages, such as faculty information or help documents.
- eCommerce - Although there are many add-ons and plugins available, many of which are inexpensive, Moodle does not come out of the box as a full fledge eCommerce site.
- Integration - Moodle has over 1000 plugins and you can write using their API relatively easily, however, Moodle does not, out of the box, integrate with other systems, such as how Sharepoint LMS or Oracle does.
November 19, 2015
A review of Moodle
- Organize information
- Keep information secure
- Disseminate information to others
- Pages load slowly
- Tool for more interaction
- ePortfolio supported tool
October 02, 2015
Moodle: Cheap and Easy to Use
- It is Open Source, meaning the deployment is cheap, relative to other LMS systems considered.
- There is a TON of documentation out there and support from a huge community of users from universities, corporate and other not-for-profits
- There are later versions out (2.6) that solve problems and bugs of earlier versions and the interface changes are in favor of all users, (admin, facilitator and student)
- Users can create their own profiles, and courses can be protected with an Enrollment Key set by the course creator.
- It has a consistent interface that is fairly intuitive and easy to use.
- Forums have been greatly improved in the later version. I am in hopeful anticipation of upgrading from 1.9 to 2.6 soon, for that feature alone.
- Groups in 1.9 are clunky, but much improved, according to online users in later versions (2.2 and above).
- Restore and Backup are sometimes irregular to the point that you may want to save a basic copy of a course in addition to depending on backing up a course to restore as a new course moving forward.
- Not loving that we have to use a 3rd party for chat rooms (we use Flash Chat) and the chat history is stored in Moodle.
September 30, 2015
Moodle at McNeese
- 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.
September 25, 2015
Moodle Review
- It allows me to put my entire course calendar and syllabus onto a visual space that is accessible for all students. It enables linking to documents and multimedia.
- It provides a protected system to store grades online.
- It enables members of a group or course to communicate and share information in a protected environment.
- It occasionally glitches when editing to add documents.
- The grade book cannot be seen on one screen, you need to use two arrow buttons to scroll over and it is easy to lose track of the student's name/your place in that process.
- Not everyone grasps the idea of Moodle and how to access it.
September 25, 2015
Moodle, Tough to master but worth the effort
- Free and Open source, so it's free to try out and you can customize the look and feel of it, provided you have the technical expertise.
- Well-documented and community driven. Makes it easy to find solutions to problems.
- It's gotten better, but it takes a while to learn the innards of the system if you are brand new to it.
September 25, 2015
Great for startup initiative.
- It is easier to customize when compared to other LMS options.
- It is easier to integrate other products when compared to other LMS options.
- It works well with video.
- Moodle requires an advanced level of technical expertise to maintain.
- Advanced support usually relies on peers. Lack of formal support when deployed as a low cost solution.
- Benefit of low cost can be eclipsed by cost of maintenance in the long run.
September 25, 2015
Moodle is Free (but there is a price)
- Easy to upload Captivate learning modules.
- Reliable reports.
- Good security.
- Easy to upload user accounts.
- Locked into a general appearance. Templates are available, but they are all basically variations on a theme.
- Have to go through the back door to clean up European spellings, so you need to be comfortable editing database objects.
- Moodle is generally built for academia. To make it more a corporate tool, you have to massage the product quite heavily. It's important to know HTML to do this.
September 24, 2015
Moodle in Medical Education
- Features like drag and drop and moving items around - these features make the course setup pretty easy.
- Various types of activities and resources. We had faculty to use the Moodle "book" with video recording to meet the accommodation needs. "Page" could save space and help with content organization.
- Customized course import. This makes the course import very simple. You can select the content you want to carry over to a new course.
- Third party service. We work with a vendor to make Moodle communicate to different systems used in the institution.
- Cohort admin. Creating cohorts for classes and faculty/staff groups helps with the admin side of the LMS usage.
- "Log in as a user". This function reduces the burden of the trouble shooting process. Love it!
- Planned upgrade. Instead of upgrading every month and having surprises, Moodle is in our hands.
- Grade book. We encountered the problem of system locking student grades so the overall calculations were not accurate. Not sure if bulk edit has been implemented or not. We started to use another system to deliver grades to students.
- Mobile app. Great try but still needs improvement.
- Log file. We had hard time tracking course activities because the log file was not accurate.
September 21, 2015
Moodle, an LMS for the People
- Course organization - Moodle allows faculty members to organize their courses either by week or by topic so students can access their course materials in a logical chronological order. Additional blocks allow students to access content based on type, such as assignments, handouts, or quizzes.
- Ease of use - Moodle 2.9 supports drag and drop features for many of its modules, making organizing/reorganizing a course, or building a course from scratch much quicker. It also has a fairly consistent set of controls across several content types which act in a consistent manner, so you can expect actions in one context to behave in the same manner as they do in other contexts.
- Customization - Moodle allows a lot of customization with its plugin architecture, as well as custom themes, to help give Moodle the right look for your organization.
- Restrictions - Restrictions allow you to powerfully manage who has access to what content and at what time. This is particularly useful for controlling the flow in which course materials are accessed. Content might be available only if a student receives a passing grade on a previous assessment, might only be able to see something if they are in a certain group, or might not be able to view some content before or after a set date.
- Strong Community - Because Moodle is so widely used, it is fairly easy to find answers to most questions you may have.
- Lack of drag and drop in some places - While drag and drop support is offered throughout, there are a few places where it is notably absent. The primary one is in the gradebook, and another is in the question bank. They make sense there, but have not been implemented yet.
- Lack of support for some issues - Moodle's community is one of its greatest strengths as well as one of its greatest liabilities. While you can usually find an answer to questions you have on Moodle's community message boards, it is also possible that you have a more unconventional question that might not get answered at all. If you want to use Moodle for your organization, you will definitely need some tech savvy people to solve some of the trickier aspects of using Moodle. Likewise, support materials on the site don't cover all environmental variables and settings you might run across, so it requires some testing on your end to figure out what things do.
- Modifying functionality can be difficult - Moodle is open source, which means that it can be modified by you. This is great, but as mentioned previously, the support materials and developer documentation can be lacking. It is very easy to shoot yourself in the foot if you make the wrong changes, so you should always make your modifications on a test server and make backups before deploying to your production servers. I know that's good advice for any kind of software, but it can be critical in Moodle, particularly if you use it for storing student grades.
September 18, 2015
A Trusted LMS That Does (Almost) Everything
- In short, it's tried and true. Too many newer learning management systems look snazzy but many of their claimed features turn out to be "in development," i.e., vaporware. Moodle has been around and had time to learn what works and what doesn't, and make numerous improvements (and can be expected to continue to do so).
- The extensive, active, and robust Moodle community is a huge point in Moodle's favor. You can count on plugins being tested, and if you realize you want to do a particular thing, chances are good that someone else has already thought of it.
- Though we don't use it that often, the item analysis for quizzes is a terrific feature that isn't as readily available in many learning management systems.
- We're believers in open-source products whenever possible.
- There are so many features it can be easy to forget exactly where things are sometimes.
- Newer learning management systems may have more elegant out-of-the-box UI. Moodle has extensive design capabilities, but extensive customization can prove complicated.
- Like with any learning management system, there are always features you'd like to see, e.g., the ability to enroll cohorts in multiple courses at once.
September 16, 2015
Moodle for the Corporate Noodle
- 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.
September 15, 2015
Moodle in Education
- Customizable - I have had the chance to explore many LMS providers and no provider seems to come close to the ability to customize as Moodle does. Since it is open source, anyone can build code to find solutions to challenges and share them with others. I am not sure there is a larger community working on any other LMS-type system.
- Ease of use - the system is very easy to use for the end user. If organized properly, you can do just about anything that you might dream up.
- Cost effective - Moodle is open-source and free. The only cost you might have is the cost of someone managing the administrative side and possibly add-ons that you purchase to enhance the experience of the end user.
- Customer Service - If you would like customer service straight from Moodle, that is more challenging to receive. If you are ok with finding your own answers searching through Moodle forums and such, then this might be ok. It really helps to have an expert on staff that can manage the site and take care of the back-end logistics especially if you are a larger school/company. There will be questions and challenges that you would never imagine.
- Starts as bare bones product- There are numerous ways to customize but you have to be willing to put in the time and effort to do it. The most basic product is not as dynamic as what other LMS options might be. However, given that, the upside can be greater.
- Gradebook - One of the largest complaints we had from teachers was the way the Gradebook was set up. It is not user friendly and includes more technical pieces than it needs to share with an end user in most cases.
September 15, 2015
Moodle 2.8 Review
- 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.
September 15, 2015
Reflections on Moodle after returning to Blackboard
- Availability of third party open source modules to extend functionality. The stand-alone Moodle product is useful, but limited by the effort in setting up courses and content. The ability to integrate with Content Management systems (or possibly Document Management systems) is critical, and provides additional benefits to managing employee training and productivity.
- Use of rubrics. These are external, explicit grading criteria to improve communication between instructor and learner regarding expectations and ways to improve performance. A management plan for rubrics is necessary, and not readily done internally within the Moodle default installation.
- More complex learning schemes are supported, such as SCORM and other adaptive learning systems. However, for non-trivial course development, external tools for building this content is required.
- Rubric Management. This may have been addressed in a plugin module.
- Better tools for examining outcomes from exams and rubrics across a class, course, or organization. This may have been addressed in a plugin module.
- Improved content management within the default installation. While there are modules that support products such as Drupal, building into the default product would ease adoption.
August 19, 2015
Moodle - Free Learning Anytime and Anywhere
- Users have the ability to create a wide variety of question types. (Drag and Drop, Missing Words, Matching, Multiple Choice, etc.)
- Because users are able to password protect their courses, copyrighted textbooks and other materials can be placed online. (unlike an open web page)
- Moodle is easy to install and administer. Best of all, there are no real costs associated with Moodle other than IT time and space to host locally or in the cloud.
- Because it is open source you need to be comfortable in a forum environment for help. Support also comes in the form of online help files.
- Moodle releases several versions each year and makes it difficult at time to stay current. Not really a big issue however.
- Moodle does require some IT expertise for the initial install and configuration if you choose to host your own instance.
July 08, 2015
Moodle Review: It keeps on truckin'
- I have found Moodle to be an easy LMS to learn, especially the basics. It only takes about an hour to get a faculty member to the place they feel comfortable with Moodle and to be able to engage the learner. The multiplicity of extra tools can be taught according the need of a course.
- There is ease of administration for incorporating textbook publishers. Several publishers had detailed instructions for integrating course content within Moodle and protect the integrity of both products.
- Faculty can add additional content easily. The university owns the content and maintains a uniformity of each of its courses. However, if an instructor finds additional content to enhance the class, such as Youtube or an article online, it is quite easy for them to add the link into the session.
- Moodle is constantly changing for the better. Moodle itself is on version 2.7 and MoodleRooms is now releasing 2.6. One area that is a struggle for instructors is the grading of file attachments. Files must be downloaded, comments made, and then uploaded back into the file dropbox. Version 2.6 will make this better, if the student saves files in PDF.
- One of shortfalls that frustrates me the most is the gradebook. It is easy to do quick grading within the assignment but if you go to the gradebook it is set up as a giant spreadsheet. This format is fine except that you are constantly scrolling either up or down or sideways to get to where you want to go. If you forget the column for the assignment you have to scroll to the top and hopefully you will not forget the row of the student you were working with. It would make it a lot easier to lock the assignment names and the student names, similar to what can be done in Excel.
- A nice tool is that you can bring up an individuals grade sheet to show their marks on each assignment. However, it has no edit feature. I often award bonus points but not everyone will earn them. It would be much easier going to this individual grade sheet and make the adjustment.
March 18, 2015
Open Source Moodle Review
- Delivering e-learning modules
- Monitoring progress
- Administration
- Reporting
- Customization
- Time monitoring
February 25, 2015
Moodle Magic!
- Overall the administrative tools are easy to use, and with some experimentation it’s easy to get it to customize and setup your course. I’ve not taken a single course, or done any extensive reading and I’ve been able to use the tool. Like most, there are some points where I get stuck, but a quick search on the internet and I’ve got my answer.
- I love the restrict access feature. Most courses have a certificate of completion module available. With the restrict access tool we can control when users see the option of obtaining the certificate and if a grade condition is required. It’s easy to manage the settings and it can be applied to each activity or resource that’s been added to a course.
- The certificate module is excellent! It was easy to add to Moodle and easy to customize and add to each course. Previously we include certificates as part of each SCORM package. The problem with that was that if a user came back to download/print their certificate they had to launch the SCORM package/training and then navigate to it. With the certificate module, users can obtain it on the homepage of the course.
- When adding blocks to the site it’s sometimes difficult to tell what is viewable as an admin vs a teacher or student.
- The admin and navigation blocks are either on or off and can’t be customized unless you are willing to dig in and modify the code. It would be nice to be able to identify which links within each of those blocks is available to the student.
- While there are themes to choose from, I would like to see more, and it would be nice if each theme had more built-in options for customization. Additionally, while you can choose a separate theme for mobile, it would be nice if you could apply the same theme to mobile and desktop, but with different levels of customization. For example, for the desktop I’d like a fixed width, but on mobile I want something fluid. Again, unless you’re willing to dig in to the code, this can’t be accomplished.
- Moodle is great as a teaching tool for enhanced face to face, flipped, hybrid and online teaching formats. The discussion forum feature remains the foundation of Moodle's success, but newly developed course formats like Grid Layout and Collapsed topics make the student user experience much more enjoyable and productive.
- Badges in 2.5 and above enable administrators in our school to use the Moodle LMS as an in-house training site for faculty and staff. Moodle will help us create, monitor and maintain baseline standards for faculty and staff online course competency.
- Moodle allows administrators and faculty course designers, for example, multi-section course coordinators, to create collaboratively, maintain and deploy course throughout departments.
- Moodle provides flexible development of virtual learning communities that can be used for a wide variety of purposes including teaching, training, knowledge base, committee work and communicating resources and events to student cohorts (e.g. an upcoming faculty performance for all dance majors).
- Some of the course activities can be difficult to learn including the lesson and workshop activities. However, I would highly recommend taking the time to learn using Lessons as this makes self-directed learning a breeze if that is your desired intent for an online training course.
- The Attendance activity is a third party module that we use extensively at Columbia and it is difficult to set up and requires custom coding to have it accept U.S. date formatting. In addition, importing the Attendance activity from semester to semester is not advised as the sessions are not cleared from the previous semester leading to more work than should be necessary. While these issues make the implementation difficult, it works very well as an attendance taking tool once configured.
- The grade book has been a consistent trouble spot for many of our faculty. Moodle provides so many features, options and settings, that many users are overwhelmed, confused and intimidated by the interface and language. If no changes are applied, Moodle will default to a perfectly acceptable aggregation method called, "Simple Weighted Mean of Grades". However, once the user starts to change the aggregation method to Weighted or Sum of Grades, for example, other settings will need to be adjusted. For the experienced user, it is an effective and full-featured tool set, but an "easy" button would be welcomed by most users.