Why Moodle?

There are two types of Moodles in the world. The first is of the dog variety – a hybrid of a Maltese and a toy poodle, with a coat that can be thick, fine, wavy or frizzy and has little to do with a learning management system (LMS).

The other Moodle is a LMS which stands for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. It is both a content management system and virtual learning environment. It is designed around pedagogical principles, namely a social constructionist philosophy using the collaborative abilities of online learning.

Moodle is an Australian product with a community which has grown around the project; both developers and users participate in Moodle’s active discussion forums, sharing tips, posting code snippets, helping new users, sharing resources and debating new ideas.

Here are some of the benefits of Moodle (the LMS :)).

• It is an Open Source Software, which means users are free to download it, use it, modify it and even distribute it under the terms of the GNU license.
• It allows educators to provide and share documents, assignments, discussion forums, quizzes and so on with learners in an easy-to-learn fashion, and in high quality H5P and SCORM courses.
• Moodle can be used on almost all servers that can use PHP. Users can download and use it on any computer with timely updates provided to keep the software compatible and secure.
• Moodle is developed with both pedagogy and technology in mind. One of the main advantages of Moodle over other systems is its strong grounding in social constructionist pedagogy and educational tools.
• The Moodle software is used extensively worldwide, making its credibility very high. Currently, there are over 230 million users registered in over 200 countries, and it is available in over a 100 languages.
• Moodle runs without modification on any system that supports PHP such as Unix, Linux and Windows. It uses MySQL, PostgreSQL and Oracle databases, and others are also supported.
• It has many useful features such as customisation of options and settings, online support documentation, strong support for security and administration.