Some background to Moodle
Moodle is an LMS – so what’s an LMS?
As you proceed through this course, or read anything about online learning, you will often see the term ‘LMS’. LMS is an acronym for Learning Management System. It refers to an application that manages and delivers education and training material, and learner-tutor interactions, online. There are many LMS applications available. Moodle is one of the most popular Open Source LMS in the learning and development sector today.
Some background to Moodle
Some points of interest about Moodle:
- It was originally developed by Martin Dougiamas from Curtin University, Australia.
- Moodle is an acronym for Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment.
- It was launched in 1999.
- It was designed to support a social constructionist framework of teaching and learning.
- The program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence as published by the Free Software Foundation.
The Moodle for New Zealand Schools page has the software download, forums and discussions relevant to New Zealand schools and lots more to assist you.
How widespread is Moodle?
If you are going to use Moodle, you will want to be sure that it is already widely used. Consider the following:
- At the time of writing this course, the Moodle site recorded 46,192 registered and validated sites in 210 countries, offering 2,537,856 courses to 28,093,428 users.
- The Open University in the United Kingdom, with more than 180,000 students, uses Moodle.
- Moodle currently has 81 language packs available. They cover languages from Afrikaans to Welsh, enabling Moodle to be used virtually anywhere.
Clearly, Moodle is widely used and has a sound support network of users and independent developers spread around the world.
The Moodle community
Once you make the decision to be a Moodle user, you join a vast Open Source community full of support networks and developers. The Moodle community can be a source of jobs, educational contacts, friends, and learning. Like all Open Source communities, it is what the users make it.
A good example of the potential for community involvement is the MoodleMoot, a gathering of likeminded individuals who come together to discuss all things Moodle. These occur frequently throughout the world, either in a physical location or via various electronic formats.
