Open source e-learning development 11: Moodle
In all the time that I’ve written about Moodle, I’ve never really written about Moodle, if you see what I mean. I’ll remedy that today, as I discuss the doyen of open-source e-learning LMSs.
Moodle is a PHP-based open source Course Management System (CMS) that 
businesses, educational institutions like universities, community colleges, K–12 schools, and even individual instructors use to add deliver courses via the Web and networks. As of November 2009, more than 30,000 organizations around the world use Moodle to deliver e-learning and to supplement instructor-led and classroom-based training. Moodle is freely available for download from Moodle.org.
In the most recent eLearning Guild Research 360° Report on Learning Management Systems (2008), the survey indicated that:
- 94.6% or respondents were convinced that an LMS is essential to their organization
- 95.5% or respondents believed a LMS allows people to access learning more easily
- 94.3% or respondents asserted that a LMS allowed them to distribute better learning throughout organizations
The report also supported Moodle.org’s own data that it is the most popular LMS, with about 30 million users distributed nearly 46,500 implementations and sites globally, Moodle is the most widely-used LMS in use today. This is unsurprising: Moodle has become the most used LMS by organizations of all sizes or that it was the most cost-effective LMS to install and customize. On-going costs of Moodle were also the lowest per user, not surprising given Moodle is Open Source and license free.
According to Moodle.org,
The design and development of Moodle is guided by a “social constructionist pedagogy.” [This approach] can help to focus on the experiences that would be best for learning from the learner’s point of view, rather than just publishing and assessing the information you think they need to know. It can also help you realize how each participant in a course can be a teacher as well as a learner. Your job as a ‘teacher’ can change from being ‘the source of knowledge’ to being an influencer and role model of class culture, connecting with students in a personal way that addresses their own learning needs, and moderating discussions and activities in a way that collectively leads students towards the learning goals of the class.
Moodle doesn’t FORCE this style of behavior, but this is what the designers believe that it is best at supporting. In future, as the technical infrastructure of Moodle stabilizes, further improvements in pedagogical support will be a major direction for Moodle development.
Moodle’s learning centered approach Moodle is contrary to the functionality- and tool-based feature sets of most commercially-available CMSs, LMSs, and LCMSs. This make the platform extremely easy to use for non-technical folk, and for those who are more concerned about applying other aspects of education and learning. According to Cole and Foster (2007), this is “revolutionary.”
While tool-centric CMSs give you a list of tools as the interface, Moodle builds the tools into an interface that makes the learning task central. You can organize your Moodle course by week, topic, or social arrangement. Additionally, while other CMSs support a content model that encourages instructors to upload a lot of static content, Moodle focuses on tools for discussion and sharing artifacts. The focus isn’t on delivering information; it’s on sharing ideas and engaging in the construction of knowledge. Moodle’s design philosophy makes this a uniquely teacher-friendly package that represents the first generation of educational tools that are truly useful.
(Using Moodle p.4)
Figure 1. A course on my Moodle site distributed by topic.
[Click to Enlarge]
One of the advantages of open source, is community that supports it: Moodle has a very large and active user base who continually implement, test, and develop new features and enhancements. You can access this community at Moodle.org and enroll via the Using Moodle course. The Moodle community has been central the platform’s success: with so many users, there is always someone who can answer a question or give advice. Moodle developers and users also work together to ensure quality, add new modules and features, and suggest new ideas for development. For example, at the moment, the developers are looking for ideas about how Moodle “could do better” implementing:
- Repositories and Portfolios
- Community Hubs
- Metadata and outcome statements
- Role-playing and scenario simulations
Moodle has many features expected from an e-learning platform, plus some original innovations (like its filtering system). Moodle is modular in construction and can be extended by creating plugins for specific new functionality. Moodle’s infrastructure supports many types of plugins, including:
- Activities (including word and math games)
- Resource types
- Question types
- Data field types (for the database activity)
- Graphical themes
- Authentication methods
- Enrollment methods
- Content Filters
- PDF Generation
Moodle runs without modification on Unix, Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, Mac OS X, NetWare and any other systems that support a web server like Apache, PHP, and a database backend like MySQL.
All of these features, as well as the three pillars of Moodle – open source, pedagogy, and user community, are what elevated Moodle to its position as the most effective CMS available, a position it will hold against all-comers for some time to come, in my view.
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References:
Cole, J., and Foster, H. (2007). Using Moodle (2nd Edition). O’Reilly Media, Inc. Sebastopol: CA.
Wexler, S., Grey, N., Adams Miller, D., Nguyen, F., van Barneveld, A. (2008). eLearning Guild Research 360° Report on Learning Management Systems. [Internet] Available from: http://www.elearningguild.com/research/archives/index.cfm?action=view&frompage=1&StartRow=1&MaxRows=40&selection=doc.30 (subscription required). Accessed 4th November 2009.
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November 09 2009 04:30 pm | e-learning
Figaro on 13 Nov 2009 at 1:29 pm #
One very important fact here:
http://educhalk.org/blog/a-critical-moodle-lms-security-vulnerability-all-versions/
A Toolkit to Develop E-Learning in an Open (XML) Environment | E-Learning Curve Blog on 01 Dec 2009 at 10:46 am #
[...] Moodle [...]