Moodle

Moodle is a Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It is a Free web application that educators can use to create effective online learning sites.

Homepage: moodle.org

Moodle is a Course Management System that is designed using sound pedagogical principles to help educators create effective online learning communities. It can scale from one computer to a 50,000-student university and is used in over 175 countries.

Moodle (abbreviation for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) is a free source e-learning software platform, also known as a Learning Management System, or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). As of October 2012 it had a user base of 70,793 registered and verified sites, serving 63,204,814 users in 6.7+ million courses with 1.2+ million teachers.

Moodle was originally developed by Martin Dougiamas to help educators create online courses with a focus on interaction and collaborative construction of content, and is in continual evolution. The first version of Moodle was released on 20 August 2002.

The Moodle project comprises several distinct but related elements, namely  the software.
Moodle Pty Ltd (also known as Moodle Headquarters or the Moodle Trust, based in Perth, Western Australia), an Australian company which performs the majority of the development of the core Moodle platform.
    the Moodle Community, an open network of over one million registered users who interact through the Moodle community website to share ideas, code, information and free support. This community also includes a large number of non-core developers, with Moodle's free source license and modular design allowing any developer to create additional modules and features that has allowed Moodle to become a truly global, collaborative project in scope.
    the Moodle Partner network, which forms the commercial arm of the Moodle environment and provides the bulk of the funding to Moodle Pty Ltd through the payment of royalties.

Features
Moodle has several features considered typical of an e-learning platform, plus some original innovations (like its filtering system).Moodle is very similar to a learning management system. Moodle can be used in many types of environments such as in education, training and development, and business settings.

Typical features of Moodle are:

•     Assignment submission
•     Discussion forum
•     Files download
•     Grading
•     Moodle instant messages
•     Online calendar
•     Online news and announcement (College and course level)
•     Online quiz
•     Wiki

Developers can extend Moodle's modular construction by creating plugins for specific new functionality. Moodle's infrastructure supports many types of plug-ins:

•     activities (including word and math games)
•     resource types
•     question types (multiple choice, true and false, fill in the blank, etc.)
•     data field types (for the database activity)
•     graphical themes
•     authentication methods (can require username and password accessibility)
•     enrollment methods
•     content filters

Many freely available third-party Moodle plugins make use of this infrastructure. Moodle users can use PHP to write and contribute new modules. Moodle's development has been assisted by the work of open source programmers. This has contributed towards its rapid development and rapid bug fixes.

By default Moodle includes the TCPDF library that allows the generation of PDF documents from pages.

Deployment
Users can install Moodle from source, but this requires more technical proficiency than other automated approaches such as installing from a Debian package, deploying a ready-to-use TurnKey Moodle appliance[8] or using the Bitnami installer.

Some free Moodle hosting providers allow educators to create Moodle-based online classes without installation or server knowledge. Some paid Moodle hosting providers provide value-added services like customization and content development.
Interoperability

Moodle runs without modification on Unix, Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, Mac OS X, NetWare and any other systems that support PHP and a database, including most webhost providers.

Data goes in a single database. Moodle version 1.6 could use MySQL or PostgreSQL. Version 1.7, released November 2006, makes full use of database abstraction so that installers can choose one from many types of database servers such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server.

E-learning systems can have many dimensions of interoperability. Moodle's interoperability features include:

• authentication, using LDAP, Shibboleth, or various other standard methods (e.g. IMAP)
• enrollment, using IMS Enterprise among other standard methods, or by direct interaction with an external database
• quizzes and quiz questions, allowing import/export in a number of formats: GIFT (moodle's own format), IMS QTI, XML and XHTML (NB although export works very well, import is currently not complete). Moodle provides various types of questions - Calculated, Description, Essay, Matching, Embedded Answers, Multiple Choice, Short Answer, Numerical, Random Short-Answer Matching, True/False.
• resources, using IMS Content Packaging, SCORM, AICC (CBT), LAMS
• integration with other Content Management Systems such as Drupal, Joomla or Postnuke (via third-party extensions)
• syndication, using RSS or Atom newsfeeds - external newsfeeds can be displayed in a course, and forums, blogs, and other features can be made available to others as newsfeeds.

Moodle also has import features for use with other specific systems, such as importing quizzes or entire courses from Blackboard or WebCT. However, these import tools are not perfect. At the time of writing (Feb 2010), Moodle will not import Blackboard courses, apparently due to changes in php code-releases. Some available utilities help convert Blackboard courses to a Moodle-friendly format.

In March of 2012 Blackboard acquired two companies based on Moodle's software including Baltimore-based Moodlerooms Inc. and NetSpot of Adelaide, Australia. Moodlerooms Inc. is located in the same building as another online education company called StraighterLine and has close relations.