Magnificent Moodle!

One of the biggest rising starts in the LMS industry over the last few years has been Moodle. It's quite, frankly, a progression has has startled many in the e-learning industry.

Moodle, which is in fact an acronym, albiet a coll sounding one, stands for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. It is a free e-learning Course Management System (CMS), or Learning Management Systems (LMS), or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Probably the most impressive thing that stands otu to me about Moodle is the fact that the user base is up to 38,896 registered sites with 16,927,590 users and 1,713,438 courses. All of this has predominantly happened since the release of Moodle 1.6 in 2006.

Moodle does a lot of the same things that Blackboard does, with the difference being that Moodle is an open source software. Open Source software, for those tech illiterates, is basically free software that can be roundly distributed without any restrictions on access or licensing. With this comes positives and negatives. The positive is that software is free of charge and can be altered, prodded, and used for trial runs by companies and organizations that want to use no resources. the downsize is that most open source software provides no support, help, or guarantees that everything will work.


In a way, Moodle has re-designed the Open source market, especially for content management for three reasons.


1)It's very effective and very functional for those who use it: Moodle provides nearly the same service package as systems like blackboard, but with none of the costs. It can operate on just about every operating system, and it's highly accessible.


2) Ease of Use: this might be the most influential factor in the popularity of Moodle. It is remarkably simple and non-complex, so it caters to even the least software savvy of individual. Plus, contributions by all are relatively easy to make and can be made by multiple parties.


3) Partnering: this may be a trend that all of e-learning is headed for. Moodle has partner companies who give a share of revenue from Moodle projects back into the software's development. In this fashion Moodle can position itself competitively in the market for LMS software all while being accessible to anyone. It's a win win for both moodle and it's consumers.

Moodle is casing a lot of WEB CT and Blackboard clients to re-think their approaches to LMS solutions.

This article from the Chronicle of Higher Education outlines some of why Moodle is such a breakaway hit.

Moodle leaves choice of features up to faculty, students


Moving to Moodle: Reflections Two Years Later