Meeting Moodle

Moodle is a large, Web-based software package that enables instructors, trainers, and educators to create Internet-based courses. Moodle is an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. Moodle provides a robust system and an organized, easy-to-use interface for learning over the Internet. One of the greatest advantages in sticking with Moodle is that developers have kept the look and feel consistent over the years, and they promise to continue to keep it consistent so that each upgrade doesn't feel like it's a piece of new software.

Moodle enables educators and trainers to create online courses. Moodle's home page (Moodle also calls it the course front page) displays, in its basic form a link to a list of participants (including the teacher and students), a calendar with a course schedule and list of assignments, resources, activities, updates, and news. This book explains all of Moodle features, including online quizzes, forums, glossaries of terms, wikis, access to documents, and links to other Web resources, and more.

Moodle is referred to as a course management system (CMS), learning management system (LMS), virtual learning environment (VLE), or more recently a learning content management system (LCMS). Near the end of this chapter, I explain the differences among these terms and why I refer to Moodle as an LCMS.

So why would your organization use Moodle, or why should you learn to use Moodle? I can give you a number of reasons. Moodle is

• Widely used, domestically and globally: As of January 2011, more than 39 million registered users are using Moodle. This list shows you a few other stats (the numbers are from http://moodle.org/stats):
  • • Registered courses: 4,303,011
  • • Users: 40, 590, 582,899,203
  • • Teachers: 1,190,743
  • • Enrollments: 18,794,573
  • • Largest site: 59,920 courses with 225,546 users
  • • Site with most registered users: Open University 714,310 (Moodle.org has 1,030,779)
  • • Countries using Moodle: 213
  • • Languages: 83
• The largest community of users around the globe for a distance learning software: Moodle has an incredibly large and active community spanning the globe. It has been vital to the success of Moodle, and I can guarantee that if you post a question to the help forums, someone will be awake, somewhere around the globe, and you will have a reply. It's like a 24/7 tech support group. See http://moodle.org/forums.
• Based on a sound educational philosophy: Moodle is based on sound pedagogical principals and educational philosophy, making it one of the few LCMS that's learning-centered instead of tool- and gadget-centered.
• Free: There's no initial cost to purchase the software and no license fees! Moodle is open source software, meaning it's free and governed by GNU Public License (www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html). You may think that nothing is free. Moodle is in that you don't have to pay for the software or the upgrades or license, installation, and training (what the marketing and sales team try to get you to commit to when you purchase large software packages).

  But in some respects, you are partially correct in thinking that everything has a cost attached. If you add development time to build your course, time to learn the software, and Web-hosting costs, Moodle is not free.