World War 1 and 2

Moodle is an open source e-learning platform. It has a relatively large—and rapidly growing—user base.

Moodle is a course management system (CMS)—a software package designed to help educators create quality online courses. Such e-learning systems are sometimes also called Learning Management Systems (LMS), Virtual Learning Environments (VLE), education via computer-mediated communication (CMC) or Online Education.

Contents

1 Background

2 Deployment and Development

Background

Moodle was the creation of Martin Dougiamas, a former WebCT administrator at Curtin University, with postgraduate degrees in Computer Science and Education. Martin's later Ph.D. studies examined "The use of Open Source software to support a social constructionist epistemology of teaching and learning within Internet-based communities of reflective inquiry" and this research has strongly influenced some of the design of Moodle, providing pedagogical aspects missing from other commercial e-learning platforms.

Constructivism asserts that knowledge is constructed in the learner's mind, not transmitted in an unchanged form from books or teachers. The learner is able to learn based on his or her own experiences. A teacher operating from this point of view creates a student-centered environment that helps students build upon their existing skills and knowledge, rather than simply publishing and then assessing the information they think students need to know.

The social constructionist philosophy of Moodle builds further on constructivism by asserting that such learning occurs particularly well in a collaborative environment that everyone builds together (like a Wiki in fact!). Each participant in such a course can be a teacher as well as a learner. One's task 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 (sometimes negotiated) learning goals of the class.

Deployment and Development

Moodle has been evolving since 1999 (since 2001 with the current architecture). Current version is 1.4.4, which was released on 10th March, 2005. It has been translated into 60 different languages. Major improvements in accessibility and display flexibility are being developed in 1.5.

As of March 2005, more than 3100 sites from more than 115 countries have registered their Moodle installation. The real number of current active Moodle installations is unknown, but they must figure in the tens of thousands, since Moodle is downloaded over 500 times a day. As there are no license fees and growth limit, an institution can add as many Moodle servers as needed. The largest single site has reported over 6,000 courses and about 30,000 students.

The development of Moodle continues as an Open Source software project supported by a team of programmers and the user community all over the world. This means, that users are free to download, use, modify and even distribute it (under the terms of the GPL License from GNU).

Specification

Moodle runs without modification on Unix, Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, Mac OS X, NetWare and any other systems that support PHP, including most webhost providers. Data is stored in a single database: MySQL and PostgreSQL are best supported, but it can also be used with Oracle, IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, Borland InterBase, Informix, Visual Foxpro , SAP DB , SQLite, Sybase, Microsoft Access, ADO and generic ODBC database access, since it uses ADOdb.

Moodle features

1) About e-learning standards: there is already a SCORM module for Moodle (a contributed one). Moodle 1.2 can also import IMS QTI quizzes (and also WebCT and Blackboard ones). There is also a WebCT/IMS to Moodle conversion tool. You can also use external SCORM players and SCORM module creators (such as Reload).

2) It has many features that any e-learning platform has to have: good Forums, content managing (Resources), Quizzes with lots of different kind of questions and 9 more out-of-the-box activity modules (v1.2) (Assignment, Chat, Choice, Glossary, Journal, Label, Lesson, Survey and Workshop) and many other contributed ones (Appointment, Attendance, Dialogue, Exercise, Scheduler, Webwork, Calendar, SCORM, WebQuest, Document Management System, etc.). This is the case because Moodle is modular and can be easily extended creating activity modules.

3) It is easy to work with for teachers, students and admins. It is also easy to install and upgrade. It is even easy to develop new modules, since they are written in PHP, an easy script language.

4) It can be integrated with any corporate system via external database authentification. There is even a Postnuke plugin to integrate Moodle with it.

5) It is Open Source. That means very fast development and bug fixing, and no tricks (you can see everything). Of course, it also means that it is free and has no license costs, therefore you can install as many servers as you want at no aditional cost. Commercial platforms use closed technology and it is they who choose the prices. For example, WebCT grew tremendously with low prices then raised them after their customers had a large number of courses, making a move to another platform difficult. They made money with this policy, but now many WebCT admins are moving towards other e-learning platforms. There are many WebCT and BlackBoard ex-admins in Moodle forums that have moved their courses and users to Moodle.

6) It is topic oriented, instead of being function-oriented as most e-learning platforms are. This means that everything is organized around sections (topics), which have their own tools (such as forums, contents and quizzes). Most e-learning platforms are organized around tools: ALL the contents here, ALL the quizzes there, ALL the forums in another place... Moodle's approach is much more related to the modern concept of Learning Objects (though sections are not really that)

7) Its main strength: There is a very active community of about 7101 people from all over the World working together in order to improve Moodle (Using Moodle). There are also a Documentation project, a Language teaching community, a place to Exchange Moodle courses, etc.

8) Reliable. There are many research papers, articles and reviews on Moodle. There are also some Moodle autoinstall packages, such as Fantastico and the Moodle package for the Debian Linux Distribution.

9) If you want, you can get commercial services, such as immediate support from Moodle developers, professional Moodle hosting and customized development for anything related to Moodle at: http://moodle.com. Anyway, you can develop your own Online training system without having to pay a single dollar for it. You can install it even in a simple desktop PC running any Windows version.

Moodle is the most popular Open Source alternative to commercial e-learning platforms such as WebCT and BlackBoard.

External links

Categories: Open source content management systems | Learning