What Is Moodle?
Moodle is a Learning Management System sometimes referred to as an LMS. It is a web application that allows instructors to post course materials (like documents, discussion boards, assignments, video and audio) online making them convenient and available to their students around the clock. In addition, instructors can make use of discussion boards, announcements and other social media, expanding the conversion beyond the confines of a traditional classroom.
FYI for geeks: The acronym "Moodle" stands for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment.
What is Moodle?
Moodle is an Open Source Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It has become very popular among educators around the world as a tool for creating online dynamic web sites for their students. To work, it needs to be installed on a web server somewhere, either on one of your own computers or one at a web hosting company.
The focus of the Moodle project is always on giving educators the best tools to manage and promote learning, but there are many ways to use Moodle:
- Moodle has features that allow it to scale to very large deployments and hundreds of thousands of students, yet it can also be used for a primary school or an education hobbyist.
- Many institutions use it as their platform to conduct fully online courses, while some use it simply to augment face-to-face courses (known as blended learning).
- Many of our users love to use the activity modules (such as forums, databases and wikis) to build richly collaborative communities of learning around their subject matter (in the social constructionist tradition), while others prefer to use Moodle as a way to deliver content to students (such as standard SCORM packages) and assess learning using assignments or quizzes.