An easy and practical virtual way for distance education

Moodle, allows to offer an exchange space in activities for learning, these can be online or as a support for content management without using the web interface, also through the platform you can create private forums to stimulate discussions online or used as the main interface to perform exams and assessments.

Pros

This tool is also designed in free software is a multimedia program that explores the way to generate virtual ways of quality distance education through its virtual environments, the tool is one of the most used for this type of tasks or activities one of its positive elements is in creating private virtual environments where a group of students with their teacher interact online, which after defining the role of administrator capable of creating subjects and administrator, with the role of teacher with permission or without permissions allows to generate the educational base necessary to fulfill a course. Another positive aspect is the ease of making or creating questionnaires by subjects to facilitate the teaching-learning process and the different evaluative uses necessary to assess the student's progress.

Cons

The tool presents standardized content which prevents differentiating the treatment between advanced and regular students, as well as presenting differentiated content since when the group is created a signature and the access role all share the information according to the profile held by the participants, as to the interface this is not very friendly with the students since it does not have an iconography that facilitates the identification of the different options besides the menus are not intuitive that does not generate a pattern of habit on the actions within the program. layout is similar to a normal blog something that in my opinion could be improved to take more advantage of the online application.

Flexible for designers, teachers and students

Pros

As an online learning designer, Moodle is a fantastic tool because it integrates multiple options for learning and collaboration between both on and off campus students. It is incredibly flexible with a plethora of both simple and advanced features which can be integrated at a teacher’s preference, and the entire teaching experience can be run through the system. It’s agile enough to integrate with multiple external software systems so is less restrictive than some LMS systems.
The interface can be configured to suit individual institutions or teaching and allows a teacher to monitor all activity.
As a course designer, Moodle Analytics are extremely valuable because I can see exactly what parts of the course are being accessed, how often, and if they are being completed. This allows me to know if individual components of the course are beneficial to learning or if it needs changing or replacing, without the risk of violating student or institution privacy.
When working for an institution that is a Moodle partner, I like the opportunity to help shape Moodle’s future by offering submissions direct to the designers.

Cons

Whenever updates for Moodle are released (six monthly) there are always some problems with existing content, especially with non-standard features that have been designed exclusively for a course or institution. Sometimes they are not immediately evident and can cause issues during the teaching period.
Moodle is a very large, powerful system, so it can take considerable time to understand it well enough to be confident designing and teaching courses. Also, if support staff are not on hand it can be difficult to resolve issues or find ways to integrate special requests from teachers.

Moodle has been one of the best tools I have ever implemented in my high school courses!

I think I stated most if not all the benefits in the "pro" section. It's a great time saver once courses are set up. I can see the stats on my students' involvement with the various parts of it. I can cut down paper work by having files submitted electronically. I can use rubrics of my own design to quickly grade programming assignments I can mark up PDF submissions on the screen to give feedback. I can moderate discussions and teach students how to speak in a forum setting. I can provide more opportunities for students to think and produce more creatively. I can enjoy creating my own materials!

Pros

Moodle allows me to provided a blended learning environment for my students. I use it for AP Statistics, AP Computer Science A, AP Computer Science Principles, and Integrated Math 1. I can post assignment schedules, additional readings, links to off-site materials, etc. just as I did in my web pages in the past. However, it also allows me to assign "lessons" that my students do interactively online, discussion boards where they have to write their thoughts coherently, and assignments where students upload files for me to review and grade.

It has become an important communication tool for me to use with both students and parents outside school hours. No student can say they forgot their book at school or don't remember the assignment because texts and assignments are online in Moodle. Parents can see what their students are doing in my class academically and not just the grades they receive.

Moodle has become more important to my teaching than the textbook. All resources can be found in one place and students can interact with the materials, each other, and me in class and outside class.

We have even implemented a computer lab and device reservation system for teachers in Moodle which has saved our librarians a ton of hours of work each week.

Cons

Moodle is not intuitive to the novice. It took some time for me to learn how to use its many features and implement them well. I have been doing this for at least 8 years, but I am still learning more about the system and its capabilities.

As the server administrator, doing upgrades has always been problematic. I don't think an upgrade has ever gone smoothly. The reason I stick with it is because I haven't found a LMS that can offer me as much as Moodle. Plus, it's free and we can run it in-house.

Moodle as a student and administrator

There is not really any cons about Moodle. It is a highly satisfying product that is worth a try.

Pros

First: It is free!

As a student: it has easy navigation, provides a dashboard with all the related courses currently enrolled, it has a calendar on the right highlighting all the upcoming submission dates. It also notifies us about the upcoming events the lecture has set. All the information are arranged in a neat format. It shows the online users. It has portfolio option, makes it easy to keep track of all our works. It also has email facilities so we can email other users.

As an administrator: There is so many features incorporated in Moodle! The teacher has the power to design the moodle course in however way they want: It integrates SCORM packages, documents, videos, links, quiz, different grading systems (average/individual) and the grade history of the students on the platform. The teacher also has the flexibility to program when to make one lesson visible (by presetting the time and date), when to close assignment submission past deadline automatically, or to create specific forums and events. One can use moodle to run a class or to act as a learning repertoire. There is also the option to add a chat room for a particular lesson. What I also appreciate is the feature to monitor course participation and activity log report of students. By including keys to the lessons, we can control who we give access to the contents on the forum. Thus it can either be open contents or private. The power lies in the hands of the administrator.

Cons

The chat feature should be an in-built feature rather than a pop-out screen available only when the administrator adds it as part of a lesson.

Moodle LMS - Administrator and Trainer Point of View

Pros

There are lots and lots of resources for help. Almost every page on the Moodle site has a link at the bottom of it taking you to the specific documentation of what you are working with. Moodle has a huge community of worldwide users that are extremely responsive to user forums, so help is literally a couple of clicks away.

Moodle is easy to figure out, even if you have never used and LMS. The site I currently administrate is at http://classes.ala.org. As you land on the homepage, you will see the list of our different divisions who offer online courses. We do this using the categories feature, allowing each of our separate divisions to be represented on the single ALA site. What you might also notice is that the login for the site is a convenient eyebrow link. If you click it, there are a variety of options for setting up your own guest credentials in addition to signing in with your official credentials granted by one of the administrators.

Most user issues are simple to troubleshoot. Moodle's no nonsense layout and intuitive interaction makes it pretty straightforward to figure out user issues. Error messages tell you specifically what a problem is in plain English (or whatever language you want to set up). Most user problems are rights related in the system.

Moodle allows you to restore previous courses into new courses. The backup and restore feature pretty much does everything for you. Take out the user data from a backup and you can restore the previous version of a course into a brand new course with very little downtime.

Cons

Version 1.9 requires an older version of Java running in order to use the wysiwyg html editor (something that comes in handy for the introduction to the course and each section/Topic for the course) -- a version of Java is required, that if you are on Windows 7, has security issues that your Network Admin is probably blocking.

The workaround not having an html editor is to open your web content editor (we have Drupal and Dreamweaver) and then paste the code into the setting fields. It is not difficult to do, just inconvenient. I am sure the current version 2.6 has this capability and more that we are waiting to upgrade to.
You have to dig a bit to get to the settings and permissions for specific activities. For example, a common user issue is with Student access to a forum. It is not obvious that some forums are specifically for teacher announcements (meaning that students aren't able to respond, just read the announcements). By the time I get issue, the course creator has a dozen or so forums setup with participants already subscribed, which means that it is easier for me to go into each forum and override the native rights. When you have scores of courses running each containing a dozen or more forums that each need to have permissions touched, it is a lot of work from the admin point of view. The lighter side is that with the proper training, or sandbox playing, creators can discover this nuance before its' too late.
The native chat activity doesn't really work in version 1.9. We use FlashChat by Host123 when our course leaders need a course chat room.
In version 1.9, there is not a lot of wiggle room in changing the look and feel of the courses. You can add, subtract and move blocks around, you can assign a theme, but it is not the most modern look and feel.

My school has used Moodle for as long as I can remember, and it works well within our district!

Using Moodle has been--and continues to be--incredibly convenient for students and teachers alike in my district. Teachers can easily create online tests/quizzes that don't require the hassle of printing and making copies, then grading an entire stack of papers. Students can take the tests and quizzes with ease, and see the immediate results of the automatically-graded multiple choice questions (which saves teachers time, too!). Also, videos can be implanted into lessons, which is very convenient for pausing or rewinding at one's own pace if they zone out or don't understand the topic and need to hear the explanation again. My life as a student was made simpler with the use of Moodle, and I cannot recommend it enough!

Pros

Moodle makes online classwork incredibly easy to create (as a teacher), as well as simple to do and turn in (as a student). All the classes a student is enrolled in are clearly displayed, and classwork within each class is organized well. In addition, being able to immediately see how one did on a quiz/test (the multiple choice, at least) is very convenient.

Cons

When posting in a discussion/forum (my teachers called them "journal entries"), all students can see each other's responses. While this could be good for class discussion, it also makes it incredibly easy for a student to see another student's response, then copy and paste it as their own. (This happened with myself and another student, as she was copying my responses.) In smaller classrooms, this may not be much of an issue as it will be easy to spot, but in larger class sizes it can be easy for teachers to not remember every student's exact answer, and give the cheater the credit.

Moodle from a Helpdesk Perspective

Pros

I have been supporting faculty and students for over four years on Moodle. One of the best features is the friendliness of the LMS environment. It is fairly easy to take an adult learner with minimal online experience from the login page to submitting assignments. The second aspect on my scale is usability. The LMS is simple enough to learn without a manual. To learn some of the advanced features may take sometime to discover unless you are utilizing the user guide and then it becomes a jumping point to enhance a course even more. Working and playing with the environment with a "seek and find" approach provides a great foundation for supporting various clients.

My institution uses the hosted environment, Moodlerooms. It is a great time and budget saver as we really cannot afford a full-time position and pay what should be paid to an individual and expect the environment to be up 99%+ and 24x7. One other advantage is planned updates every 6 months. Moodlerooms is typically one version behind which gives the Moodle community time to finish shaking out all the bugs.

Cons

The one thing I dislike about the vendor is the minimal number of add-in modules provided to the institutions. There are numerous add-ins out in the Moodle user world that could be an asset to our students but are not there because of the locked down environment provided by Moodlerooms.

Moodle helping e-learning

Moodle is a very useful platform for e-learning. It has everything to teach online. I can recognize 3 levels of users for this software. - The administrator who is in charge to set up the environment and moodle experience for other users. - The teacher who is going to use tools to make an online course exciting, and - The student that will enjoy the course and participate in it though the collaborative tools. If you can do the work of the 2 first levels, congratulations, you are a Moodle expert.

Pros

- You can manage a whole school or university in the academic area with Moodle and for the administrative help you have a big list of choices to get plugins or ERPs compatible with Moodle.
- If you know how to use it is a wonderful experience for the teachers and students.
- Once that you have the course online, it is a beautiful tool.
- There is a lot of documentation and forums about Moodle that can help you to solve almost every issue that you will face using it.

Cons

- It's a free software but is difficult to install and maintain for a person who is not related with IT. So a good option is get it as a SaaS (software as a Service) paying for hosting and upgrades but having the experts doing it, so you can focus in the academic area.
- You have to learn how to use it properly and it takes time.
- Prepare a course is heavy and a hard work, there are some functionalities that could help us to do it easier, like be capable us to erase or move multiple objects at the same time.

Good for students

I have used it for years to upload assignments and track my grades. I like the instant feedback of grades if the professors are prompt in grading.

Pros

I like that I can track my grades, submit assignments in the drop boxes and take quizzes. this is a good program for keeping track of assignments weekly. I like the check box feature which allows me to check off files I have viewed or quizzes I have completed which allows me to not keep clicking on powerpoint files I have already downloaded.

Cons

I dislike how if you have an administrator of the page such as a professor who is not savvy with technology or does not keep up with the moodle page, it looks like you have a bad grade if certain things aren't entered correctly or if they haven't corrected things. It also has limitations of any online platform where the administrator doesn't make the file or quiz visible and then they have a hard time seeing why the students havent done the assignment. I only used canvas briefly, but I think it was slightly better in its ease of use, but I am not very familiar with moodle so it is hard to compare ease of use from the student prospective. The alerts and messaging system is a little clunky and I prefer to use email instead. you have to change your preferences or you will get way too many email notifications every time someone comments on a massive discussion post.

I built the server, installed the software and moodle runs flawless for many years.

Its Free, powerful and user friendly. It constantly get updates and improvements.

Pros

When installed on a good server and once it is setup, then leave it alone and it will run flawless. I update moodle every 6 months for security and feature improvements. It has not ever crashed on me. You have to follow the installation instructions exactly. Always create backups.

I use supermicro motherboards with xeon processors and lots of ram. We have a little over 200 college students and they like using it.

Some teachers say that Blackboard might have a few more features. Moodle is free and can do anthing we want.

The only extra apps we install in moodle is the attendance and collapsed topics. No problems with these.

We mainly use the default settings on the server install and also on moodle. We use one of the skins that come with it.

We have one person that creates the classes each semester and helps the teachers if they need it.

Once your classes are setup, you can copy them over for the next semester.

Cons

None that we have.

Basically stick with the basic setup. Do as little experimenting as possible with different addons. Then just let it run.

Ours only goes down when I install updates or a large power outtage.