Moodle, The Open Source Learning Management System

Moodle is a VLE (virtual learning environment) or course management system with a web based user interface. It has a large and rapidly growing user base of teachers who find it to be one of the most practical educational tools. Moodle is a course management system that allows educators to create online learning communities for their students. It has an open design with a large developer community creating plugins, themes and modules. Moodle is an open source course management system used by educators around the world. Created by Martin Dougiamas to support social constructivism, Moodle provides flexibility and autonomy for districts and teachers while supporting a wide variety of interactive social learning tools.

Moodle is a widely used open source eLearning course management system, available for download from: http://www.moodle.org. It offers a wide range of features which is enhanced by a whole host of plugins produced by the open source community. Moodle is quite distinct because it is a learning management system that is widely used in colleges and universities around the globe. Moodle is very ‘tailorable’ but it can have slightly higher configuration charges.

Moodle is also “open source”, which simply means that users have access to the source code of the software. You can look inside and see how it works, tinker with it, or use parts of the code for your own projects. Moodle is serious about this. It allows discussion boards, but also contains the capability of incorporating a wiki. Moodle is the biggest open source course management system in the world. It competes head-to-head with Blackboard on features and crushes the commercial competition on price.

Moodle is stable and well-supported, with extensive user and developer groups. The Moodle open source developer community is actively developing new modules and utilities, and the program, and regular improvements can be expected. Moodle is the most flexible LMS available and can seamlessly connect to almost any system, whether they’re customized or off-the-shelf. Our developers have the expertise to create a perfect environment where your systems can peacefully co-exist.

Teachers who use Moodle have access to an array of powerful tools such as assignments, forums, journals, quizzes, surveys, chat rooms, and workshops. Authored by a member of the Moodle community, this authoritative book also exposes little-known but powerful hacks for more technically savvy users. Teachers have also the option to download student grades in Excel format. Students can look up the assignments on a calendar by moving the cursor over a given day which will list all the assignments for that day. Teachers have access to full user logging and tracking, and assignments are date-stamped when uploaded to the server, making class management in cyberspace more user-friendly. Moodle is the definitive open source learning management system. Like most LMSes, it make extensive use of the Internet, with features such as discussion forums, chats, journals, automated testing and grading tools, and student tracking.