Created by a professional Moodle designer, this is recognized as being one of the best designed Moodle pages around. It’s bright, inviting, and just a great example of how your Moodle pages don’t have to have that traditional “Moodle look” with a yellow background (if you use Moodle 2 or higher). You can visit the Leeds City College Moodle here.

Another eye-catching design. I find the size of the icons invites you to explore those links first.

Most people modify currently existing Moodle themes when designed their own sites. A previous 572 student named Greg Pitzer took this Moodle 2 theme entitled “Fusion” and modified it to create the Moodle shown on the next slide. . .

A nice job, we thought! He added the calendar icons to serve as anchor links, and highlighted the files that were to be downloaded before each workshop session in a bright yellow post-it-style box. To check out the fusion theme and many others, visit here or here. Those links also contain other great Moodle add-ons.

The remaining screenshots in this PowerPoint file were taken from courses linked to this site, which you can check out here. All of the courses shown from here were made before Moodle 2 was released, but still have excellent features worth emulating. NOTE: In order to move past this page, you need to log in to Moodle.org.

This is the 2nd place winner in the primary school category. It’s a German language course for native English speakers. This course has some great games and videos embedded in it. Things like a vocabulary generator at the bottom of the page adds variation every time you log in. The course can be found here.

This IT course won first place in the “Application of Moodle Activities” category. The information in the sidebars on the right (photograph, Acronyms, ICT Glossary, and Technology Quotes) all change each time the user logs in or refreshes the page. Look at the course here.

Here the instructor has restricted access to an activity because webpage tracking functions have judged that the student (me) does not have the necessary skills and/or knowledge to participate in this activity. This makes the course more personalized. Unfortunately it also means that you cannot view or participate in nearly all of the activities that made this course an award winner.

This reflection journal is a nice feature. Notice that access is restricted to the user and the tutor.

This course on Climate Change won 1st place in the “Best Use of Media” category. It has lots of infographics, animations, interactive maps, photos, videos, and games. The designer of this course has included lots and lots of non-academic resources from the BBC, Oxfam, and other organizations. This makes the material feel more “authentic” because the students are being invited to read things prepared for general people, businessmen, scientists, and others. Browse this course here.

A Film Studies course that won 2nd place in Best application of Moodle Activities. Besides the activities, the navigation is also nicely done. Getting lost in a sea of links is common problem students experience in Moodle courses. That likely wouldn’t happen here. Finally, I usually find the pictures posted on Moodle pages extraneous, but this one is more eye-catching and helps to set the tone for the course. Visit this page at http://coolcourses.moodle.org/course/view.php?id=3

This course on “eLearning and Moodle Essentials” starts off each module with a summary of what has been covered, called “The Story so far. . .” . To explore the course, click here.

Still on the “eLearning and Moodle Essentials” course, see how it encourages more individualized learning by encouraging learners to pick the content that is most relevant to them.