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You've heard about the learning content management system with the funny name, and wondered if it's right for your students. This book explains Moodle and what you can do with it.

BackgroundThe Moodle Learning Management System (LMS) is widely used in online teaching and learning, especially in STEM education. However, educational research on using Moodle is scattered throughout the literature. Therefore, this review aims to summarise this research to assist three sets of stakeholders—educators, researchers, and software developers. It identifies: (a) how and where Moodle has been adopted; (b) what the concerns, trends, and gaps are to lead future research and software development; and (c) innovative and effective methods for improving online teaching and learning.The review used the 4-step PRISMA-P process to identify 155 suitable journal articles from 104 journals in 55 countries published from January 2015 to June 2021. The database search was conducted with Scopus and Web of Science. Insights into the educational use of Moodle were determined through bibliometric analysis with Vosviewer outputs and thematic analysis.ResultsThis review shows that Moodle is mainly used within University STEM disciplines and effectively improves student performance, satisfaction, and engagement. Moodle is increasingly being used as a platform for adaptive and collaborative learning and used to improve online assessments. The use of Moodle is developing rapidly to address academic integrity, ethics, and security issues to enhance speed and navigation, and incorporate artificial intelligence.ConclusionMore qualitative research is required on the use of Moodle, particularly investigating educators’ perspectives. Further research is also needed on the use of Moodle in non-STEM and non-tertiary disciplines. Further studies need to incorporate educational theories when designing courses using the Moodle platform.

Moodle represents a great contribution to the educational world since it provides an evolving platform for Virtual Learning Management Systems (VLMS) that became a standard de facto for most of the educational institutions around the world. Through the pedagogical functions provided, it collects in the many globally spread out databases a huge amount of information regarding the activities that teachers and students perform during the learning process. This reality makes Moodle a natural choice for conducting experimental research by Artificial Intelligence researchers interested in theories for improving learning and teaching; particularly those related with the controversial learning styles concept. Roughly defined, a learning style intends to be a model of the way and media an apprentice acquires knowledge and hence the way a teacher should present that knowledge to the apprentice matching his/her learning style. Independently of the many controversies (be these scientific, psychological or even ethical) about the soundness and real outcomes that such ideas can bring to improve learning, it’s a worthy intriguing research area for many researchers pursuing the ideal automated teacher: the teachbot dream. Behind this goal we have developed Middle, a Moodle plug-in able to infer the learning style of each student taking a course using an advanced version of a Bayesian network model that we previously tested. Middle intends support personalized teaching based on the Felder-Silverman’s ILS model and has been evaluated through controlled experiments and pilot test in high schools and university courses. Such experiments showed promising results that shed some light on learning styles modeling and its potential outcomes. During the experience we found strong limitations in the Moodle design regarding its supposed flexibility to incorporate new functionalities. From a strict software architecture point of view, we found that such flexibility is far from being enough to easier the implementation of the dynamic computational behavior required to support a teachbot. This made our effort much harder than expected, perhaps because of the illusion induced by the widespread use of Moodle. In this article we present our results and experiences extending Moddle with intelligent behavior from a software architecture point of view, focusing on the lessons learnt in such extension. Our experience indicates that this simplicity is far from being so and hence it is worth to share the limitations and how we overcome them.

The technology enhancement learning (TEL) needs continuous use and high perception from learners with collaborative of technologies and multi-media applications. The problem of continuous intention in e-learning applications relies on the type of technology used that changes from one university to another. This study aims to design a framework developed from University Communication Model (UCOM) model to enhance the teaching and learning process of universities. This framework gives a high rate of significance and accurate results by examining the relationship between the factors of e-learning application and technology acceptance model (TAM). In additions, an extra factor used for continuous intention to use e-learning applications. The method used shows a survey distributed between 297 participants to validate the hypothesis proposed. The results evaluated by partial-least-structure (PLS) program, suggest and prove the significant use of (UCOM) as a continuous intention in e-learning based on 16 tested hypotheses of model item constructs.

E-learning standards like learning tools interoperability can support at realizing innovative learning scenarios in distributed architectures. A learning tools interoperability connection between a learning management system and a gaming platform offers possibilities like embedding a game into an online course and sending player-specific data back to the learning management system. This allows for a new and data-driven evaluation of students' individual learning performances, especially for alternative methods like qualifications-based learning. The learning tools interoperability-specified mechanisms can also be applied for implementing functionality to exchange students' competence profiles and traces within a knowledge-management eco-system portal that provides a toolkit for creating competence-based games that meet the requirements of qualifications-based learning as well as tools for creating game-specific analytics. As a first result, the authors made a prototypical implementation with a serious game prototype based on the unity game engine and unity analytics as analysis platform.

Although educational online technologies (EOTs) present an extraordinary range of higher education opportunities, significant gaps in knowledge about their purpose and functionality may impede levels of adoption. As the demand for online learning grows, it is critical that tertiary education institutes (TEIs) address gaps in knowledge by developing their understandings of EOT applications. This paper aimed to identify, and describe the application of a range of EOTs popularly used in blended tertiary environments (BTEs). Through qualitatively designed semi-structured interviews with 13 blended learning experts from New Zealand, Australia and Canada, and a 5-step analyses of data, it verified the use of 35 different EOTs in BTEs, including Adobe Connect, Blackboard, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Their key characteristics were summarised using a multi-dimensional taxonomy, called the Pentexonomy, which synergised a range of perspectives into a robust, contextualised, and multi-dimensional framework for categorising EOTs. An outline of recommendations for the effective use of some of these EOTs was also provided. As EOTs advance and usage accelerates, the outcomes of this research will assist TEIs in their efforts to keep abreast of EOT developments, make informed choices about EOT use, and contribute to the delivery of relevant, meaningful EOT support.

Undergraduate students fail to objectively self-assess grammar skills of English as a second language but mastering English grammar autonomously can assist. The article aims to describe and assess the Moodle plugin that offers undergraduate students individual learning paths in studying English grammar. An experiment with 3953 students was conducted at Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia in two academic years: 2017–2018, 2018–2019. The Moodle plugin “RUDN CourseAssist” facilitated the English grammar study. The students subjectively stated their English language proficiency level and set academic goals in a self-assessment learner profile. The diagnostic stage of the experiment identified premises that provided individual learning paths in studying English grammar: automatic level detection (A1, B1, B2) and learning styles (active learners – 59.9%, sensing – 49.7%, visual – 81%, global – 49.7%). At the test assessment stage, 491 students demonstrated a steady rise in doing grammar exercises correctly, and performed more objective self-assessment of the level. At the plugin assessment stage, the Pearson correlation coefficient and the students’ feedback in questionnaires and interviews proved that the plugin is flexible, scalable, user-friendly, and applicable. The state-of-the-art plugin to be customised for other languages is effective in providing students with individual learning paths to improve English grammar skills.

Mobile learning under cloud environment, an amalgamation between mobile cloud computing and mobile learning has gained wide academic and commercial recognition during last few years. Although researches on MOOC and other means of Digital Learning is widely circulated, but research to enhance traditional mobile learning using newer types of ubiquitous and pervasive devices (e.g. Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment or MOODLE) for collecting resources is yet to be widely circulated in the literature. The proposed work is expected to make learning more cost-effective, collaborative and practical for the learners using Personal Cloud environment. The work further expedites the proposed virtualization framework (through VMware vSphere Hypervisor- ESXi) and how it provides technical back-bone in which some pedagogical reforms may optimize knowledge transfer substantiating outcome based education (OBE). This solution can be beneficial for mass learners including poor and under privileged and will help in getting rid of digital divide.

In this paper, we describe an approach to providing adaptivity in e-education courses. The primary goal of the paper is to enhance an existing e-education system, namely Moodle LMS, by developing a method for creating adaptive courses, and to compare its effectiveness with non-adaptive education approach. First, we defined the basic requirements of a course adaptation and the steps required to implement it. Based on the collected data, we identified the characteristic groups of students and then classified all participating students into these groups. The final adaptation of courses was performed in the distance education system of the University of Belgrade, in the Laboratory for e-business, Faculty of Organizational Sciences. Findings of the experimental study showed that the students' effectiveness and achievements in learning were higher when they attended courses adapted using the described method, in comparison to the non-adaptive e-learning courses.