What is Moodle?

Moodle was founded and developed by Martin Dougiamas in 2002, and is defined as a Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. "Moodle was created to provide educators, administrators, and learners with an open, robust, secure, and free platform to create and deliver personalized learning environments" (eThink 2021).

Moodle is a user-friendly system and offers training support to a variety of institutions and organizations around the world. It is the most widely used web-based LMS worldwide, with more than 100,000 implementations supporting over 150 million learners. Moodle features a mobile-compatible interface, and it has been translated into more than 120,000 languages (eThink 2021).

Also, Moodle has more than 1400 free Plug-ins available, and its open-source software or Moodle code is freely available to download, customize and modify.

How it works?

For the teacher's quick guide Click here

For more about Moodle features click here.

Assessments tools.

These are called the heart of Moodle:

"As technology’s role in society as a whole continues to evolve, a flexible Learning Management System is critical to meeting the needs of today’s modern learner. Moodle provides a central learning hub to connect eLearning tools and simplify the teaching and learning process. With its functionality and plugin capabilities, Moodle offers an engaging and effective eLearning experience for students of all ages. Moodle allows for unique learning methods such as gamification, competency-based education, mobile learning, accessible gradebooks, interactive online classrooms, and much more. Additionally, due to its inherent flexibility and easy-to-use interface, Moodle can be used to reach a wide range of needs. In fact, many learners that are introduced to Moodle in primary, secondary, and higher education find themselves using Moodle again later in life when they enter the workforce. That said, Moodle has the added benefit of providing easy adaption for both instructors and learners who may have experienced the platform elsewhere previously" (eThink 2021). Latest version of Moodle was created to help teachers, and learners during the pandemic.

To navigate Moodle in real time, and explore how students are assessed, evaluated and many other activities click the image.

Parent & Teacher communication

What a parent should see:

A parent should see a My Home style interface when logging in to Moodle. Parents are included in the platform, and the information is easy to access.

A way to choose between children (if more then one)
A view of upcoming events in all courses the children are subscribed (upcoming tests, assignments, …)
A view on the marks of the children.
A way to get to the marked tests, assignments, workshops, …
Documents from school for the parents (Exam overview, notifications, forms, …)
Messages from school to parents.

With Moodle, parents and guardians can get involved in their child's education by keeping regular contact with teachers.

To learn more about how Moodle can keep communication accessible with parents, click the image.

ADVANTAGES

Free
Customizable
Collaborative
Update frequently
Back up
Connectivity
Open source
Secured and privacy
Multilingual
High Interoperability
Assessments
Plugs-in
Mobil support

DISADVANTAGES

Aesthetic
Coding and HTML experience
Overwhelming from many options
Lack of videoconference
Speed serve makes connecting slow at times
Ease of use
Stronger Representation from their Leadership Team

Recommendations

Moodle is a good option because it is considered a complete, robust LMS for its open-source, customization, performance, free, and adaptability platform. It is used worldwide and is one of the remote learning software that provides students and teachers a way to collaborate and interact. Also, Moodle has many features that help teachers to generate quizzes, tests, report activities and interactions. The only downside is that it does need some expertise in coding and HTML. However, it offers many courses, and there is an entire community that is also using it and willing to help you out.

References

What is Moodle? - Comprehensive Guide to Moodle LMS. (2021, February 3). EThink | Hosted Moodle & Totara LMS. https://ethinkeducation.com/what-is-moodle-guide/

S. (2020, September 1). Open Source. Moodle. https://moodle.com/open-source/

Features - MoodleDocs. (2020). Docs.Moodle.Org. https://docs.moodle.org/310/en/Features

Teacher quick guide - MoodleDocs. (2021). Docs.Moodle.Org. https://docs.moodle.org/310/en/Teacher_quick_guide

Parent access - MoodleDocs. (2014). Docs.Moodle.Org. https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Parent_access

Mount Orange School. (n.d.). School.Moodledemo.Net. https://school.moodledemo.net/

eThink. (2021). What is moodle? What-is-Moodle_-The-Comprehensive-Moodle-LMS-Guide.pd.

M. (2019, April 16). Involving Parents in. Moodle. https://moodle.com/news/involving-parents-in-moodle/