Overview of Moodle A Free, Open Source Course Management System for Online Learning

What is Moodle? Software that helps teachers manage; –Students –Activities –Homework –Quizzes –Grades –Discussions –Resources via the internet.

Origins of Moodle Developed by Martin Dougiamas Administrator at Curtin University of Technology Based in Perth, Western Australia

Benefits of Moodle Open source –Allows users access to source code –Allows users to create user-generated software content Free software –can be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed with little or no restriction

Moodle Statistics Registered sites: 20,051 Courses: 80,0071 Users: 8,156,470 Teachers: 1,327,212 Posts: 9,054,974 Resources: 5,142,855

Overall Design Features Educator –Promotes a social constructionist pedagogy –Suitable for online classes as well as supplementing face-to- face learning –Most areas can be edited using a WYSIWYG editor System Administrator –Moodle runs on Unix, Linux, Mac OS X, Netware, and any system that supports PHP –Requires only one database –Emphasis on strong security throughout.

Features of Moodle Assignments Chats Choices Forums Glossaries Hot Potatoes Quizzes Lessons Quizzes Resources SCORMs Surveys Wikis Workshops

References 1.Moodle Home page, 2.Wikipedia entry for Moodle, 3.Humboldt State University Moodle Support: Online Manual, 4.Building Educational Web Sites with Moodle by techsoup.org, 5.UCLA Common Collaboration and Learning Environment Initiative, : the year of Moodle by Epic, 7.facultyroom.org, 8.Blackboard vs. Moodle by HSU,