Moodle CMS: What is it ?

Moodle is a Course Management System (CMS) that allows educators, students and parents to communicate :

  • course content (e.g )
    • course materials from the teacher in any digital format
      • syllabus - able to be constantly updated
      • documents detailing course activities (text, web page, image, sound, movie)
      • links to resources within and outside the CMS
      • photo libraries of school activities (placed within a forum, a database or one of the many software systems that can be embedded into moodle such as gallery2)
    • course materials from students
      • forum posts shared by students for viewing by all or restricted to a course or a group of students within a course (e.g.) containing any digital content
      • wiki pages allowing shared editing where all contributions form a single coherent whole - but all changes can be attributed and reversed if need be. (e.g.)
  • course processes
    • assignment submissions from students privately to teachers (e.g.) also useful for storing and communicating student whole school reports.
    • assessments (marks and comments either standard or freely designed by the individual teacher)
    • messages sent privately to anyone on the system (teacher or student) (e.g.)
    • choices or addon modules such as questionnaires

Moodle is Open Source which means that it free for anyone to use and developers around the world continuously share improvements.

As it is designed for education, it's structure is based around teachers and students being enrolled in courses.

Content and communication is usually restricted to course participants (student, teachers etc.) althought the public can be allowed to view most content if desired.

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