is a
Free Software E-learning platform ''(also known as a Course Management System (CMS), or Learning Management Systems (LMS), or Virtual Learning Environment (
VLE ))''. It has a significant user base with 25,281 registered sites with 10,405,167 users in 1,023,914 courses (as of
May 13 ,
2007 )
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Moodle is designed to help educators create online courses with opportunities for rich interaction. Its open source license and modular design means that people can develop additional functionality. Development is undertaken by a globally diffused network of commercial and non-commercial users, spearheaded by the Moodle company based in
Perth, Western Australia .
Moodle has many features expected from an e-learning platform including:
- Forums
- Content managing (resources)
- Quizzes with different kinds of questions
- Blogs
- Wikis
- Database activities
- Surveys
- Chat
- Glossaries
- Peer assessment
- Multi-language support (over 60 languages are supported for the interface {Link without Title} )
Moodle is modular in construction and can readily be extended by creating plugins for specific new functionality. Moodle's infrastructure supports many types of :
- Activities
- Resource types
- Question types
- Data field types (for the database activity)
- Graphical themes
- Authentication methods
- Enrollment methods
- Content Filters
Many third-party Moodle plugins are freely available making use of this infrastructure
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PHP can be used to author and contribute new modules. Moodle's development has been assisted by the work of open source programmers
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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 were the only feasible options in Moodle 1.6. Version 1.7 released November 2006, and makes full use of database abstraction so that other databases can be used just as easily (
Oracle and
Microsoft SQL Server are two specific target
DBMSes ). The current version of Moodle, version 1.8, was released in March 2007 with improved roles management.
Moodle was the creation of
Martin Dougiamas , a former
WebCT administrator at
Curtin University , with graduate 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 many other e-learning platforms.
The stated philosophy of Moodle
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Constructivist and
Social Constructionist approach to education, emphasising that learners (and not just teachers) can contribute to the educational experience in many ways. Moodle's features reflect this in various design aspects, such as making it possible for students to comment on entries in a database (or even to contribute entries themselves), or to work collaboratively in a
Wiki .
Having said this, Moodle is flexible enough to allow for a full range of modes of teaching. It can be used for simple delivery of content (e.g. HTML pages) or assessment, and does not necessitate a constructivist teaching approach.
Constructivism is sometimes seen as at odds with accountability-focused ideas about education, such as the No Child Left Behind Act (
NCLB ) in the
United States . Accountability stresses tested outcomes, not teaching techniques, or
Pedagogy , but Moodle is also useful in an outcomes-oriented classroom environment because of its flexibility.
The word ''Moodle'' is actually an acronym for ''Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment'', although originally the M stood for "Martin", named after
Martin Dougiamas , the original developer.
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Moodle can also be considered a verb, which describes the improvisational process of doing things as it occurs to you to do them, an enjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight and creativity. As such it applies both to the way Moodle was developed, and to the way a student or teacher might approach studying or teaching an online course.
- Moodle has a significant user base with 18,204 registered sites with 7,270,260 users in 712,531 courses (as of November 15 , 2006 ). More than 70 languages are supported. You can also see Current Moodle Statistics online.
- There are 152 registered Moodle sites that are larger than 5,000 users. The site with the most users is moodle.org with 40 courses and 123,254 users. The site with the most courses is Online Campus with 8,282 courses and 54,955 users (as of August 2 , 2006 ).
There are many dimensions to interoperability for e-learning systems. Moodle's interoperability features include:
- , using LDAP , Shibboleth , or various other standard methods (e.g. IMAP )
- , using IMS Enterprise among other standard methods, or by direct interaction with an external database
- and quiz questions, allowing import/export in a number of formats: GIFT (moodle's own format), IMS QTI , XML and XHTML ''(NB although export works very well, import is currently not complete)''
- , using IMS Content Packaging , SCORM , AICC , LAMS
- Integration with other such as Postnuke (via third-party extensions)
- using RSS or Atom Newsfeed s - external newsfeeds can be displayed in a course, and forums, blogs, and other features can be made available to others as newsfeeds.
Moodle also has import features for use with other specific systems, such as importing quizzes or entire courses from Blackboard or WebCT.
Moodle has been evolving since 1999 (since 2001 with the current architecture). The current version is 1.8, which was released in April of 2007. It has been translated into 61 different
Language s. Major improvements in
Accessibility and display flexibility were developed in 1.5.
As of November 2005, nearly 7000 sites from 142 countries have registered their Moodle installations. The real number of current active Moodle installations is unknown, but Moodle is downloaded over 500 times a day. As there are no license fees or limits to growth, an institution can add as many Moodle servers as needed. The largest single site has reported over 6,000 courses and over 45,000 students, and the
Open University of the UK
is building a Moodle installation for their 200,000 users.
The development of Moodle continues as a free software project supported by a team of programmers and an international user community, drawing upon contributions posted to an online
Moodle Community that encourages debate and invites criticism.
There are some autoinstall packages to facilitate the installation including
Fantastico and the
Moodle package for
Debian GNU/Linux . Users are free to distribute and modify the software under the terms of the
GNU General Public License ).
