To moodle or not to moodle...that is the question

After studying this learning object you will be in a better position to decide whether or not moodle will

meet your needs

What exactly is moodle?

Moodle is a Learning Management System (LMS). It facilitates the creation of online courses and the

management of learning and teaching processes.

Who is moodle for?

Moodle is powerful and flexible enough to meet the needs of users from large universities to individual teachers or trainers

How much does moodle cost?

Moodle is absolutely free. However, users do have to pay for site hosting. It is also 'open source', which means the user has the right to change the program to better fit their needs.

What does moodle do?

Moodle facilitates site registration and also affords control of course enrolment - you can create cohorts, groups etc. in your courses

Moodle maintains course and student records - including portfolios if required.

Moodle will also work happily with many third-party tools and can be extended by

numerous user created modules.

Moodle provides teachers and administrators with downloadable reports about student

activity and results.

Moodle allows teachers and course creators to add forums, blogs and chats to courses.

Moodle lets teachers upload videos, audio files, images, PDFs and presentations to

their courses.

Moodle affords teacher control over what students are allowed to upload -

photographs, assignments, videos etc.

Moodle can also facilitate payments for courses through its payment module if

required.

To see what else moodle can do check out the moodle site.

How difficult is it to learn to use Moodle?

Moodle is a very comprehensive piece of software and so it does take a little time to

master. Whatever some may claim, no LMS is without a learning curve. However...

moodle has a very active user community who are always ready to help newcomers.

There are also numerous free tutorials and youTube 'how to' videos available.

In addition, some 'moodle partners' provide 'paid for' courses on using Moodle.

Moodle is designed to be used by teachers and students, who, for the most part, are 'non geeks', and so it is not really that

difficult to learn.

Probably the best advice for the new user is just to get on with it and play with your

moodle installation for a day or two.

Isn't Moodle ugly and boring?

Moodle is a highly functional piece of software and early versions concentrated

more on this functionality than on looks. As a result it got a reputation for looking less than

attractive.

The later versions of moodle are much easier for the user to 'beautify' from within

the program and while beauty is very definitely 'in the eye of the beholder' moodle

no longer deserves its 'ugly' reputation.

Is Moodle difficult to set up?

If you need to set moodle and its dependencies up manually, then it is not a job for the inexperienced. Luckily, this is

rarely necessary for individual teachers as many hosting companies provide a 'one click

set up' for moodle so you can be up and running in a few minutes. Institutions usually

have their IT people do the set up.

Moodle can be installed on any computer that can run PHP and can support SQL type databases. It can be viewed on Windows,

Mac, Linux, iOS and Android systems. This means it will work on mobile devices.

STOP PRESS!

Those wonderful moodle people are giving everyone a chance to try out moodle. Get

your free hosted site at

https://moodlecloud.com/en/

This is just a very light overview you should register on and spend some time exploring

the moodle site and its forums.

Useful links

Moodle siteMoodle 2 Tool Guide for TeachersQuiz ModuleYouTube Video

That's all folks!