Teachers Love Moodle

The open-source course management package known as Moodle has gained a large following among educators since it launched. In an annual survey, it was voted 11th in the list of Top Tools for Learning 2012 by the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies. Now available on Windows, Mac and Linux, the Moodle project claims 64 million users.

With Moodle, teachers can set up courses, create discussions, assign homework, and assign grades. They can also integrate with external content such as photos or videos, or with applications such as Google Docs. Moodle's features also include assignment submission, discussion forums, file downloading, instant messaging, an online calendar, news and announcements (college and course level), online quizzes, and a Wiki.

Moodle can scale to handle hundreds of thousands of students given enough server capacity and bandwidth, and a variation called Poodle installs software to a local machine so the app can be used offline. Poodle can even boot off a thumb drive.

Educators have gravitated to the platform, which can be used to manage fully online courses or as an adjunct to traditional face-to-face classroom instruction ("blended learning").

Moodle has been valuable for even everyday tasks like publishing phone directories and handbooks online. It saves tens of thousands of dollars a year in postage and paper.

In December, Moodle version 2.4 became available for download. According to Moodle, 2.4 includes, among other updates, new icons, improved performance, group assignments for students submitting work as part of a group (and being graded as a group), and directions for handling plug-in updates from the Web interface.

For more information on integrating Moodle, contact NPV.

Information Week