About Moodle

About Moodle

Background Philosophy License Features Release Notes Future Credits Case for Moodle Top 10 Moodle Myths

Moodle is a software package for producing internet-based courses and web sites. It is a world-wide, ongoing development project designed to support a social constructionist framework of education. Moodle is provided freely as Open Source software (under the GNU Public License). Basically this means Moodle is copyrighted, but that you have additional freedoms. You are allowed to copy, use and modify Moodle provided that you agree to: provide the source to others; not modify or remove the original license and copyrights, and apply this same license to any derivative work. Read the license for full details and please contact the copyright holder directly if you have any questions. Moodle can be installed on any computer that can run PHP, and can support an SQL type database (for example MySQL). It can be run on Windows and Mac operating systems and many flavors of linux (for exampleRed Hat or Debian GNU). There are many knowledgable Moodle Partners to assist you, even host your Moodle site. The word Moodle was originally an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment, which is mostly useful to programmers and education theorists. It's also a verb that describes the process of lazily meandering through something, doing things as it occurs to you to do them, an enjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight and creativity. As such it applies both to the way Moodle was developed, and to the way a student or teacher might approach studying or teaching an online course. Anyone who uses Moodle is a Moodler. Come moodle with us! Moodle is an active and evolving product. This page lists just some of the many features it contains:

Contents
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1 Overall design 2 Site management 3 User management 3.1 Overview 3.2 Enrolment 3.3 Roles 4 Course management 4.1 Overview 4.2 Assignment Module 4.3 Chat Module 4.4 Choice Module 4.5 Forum Module 4.6 Glossary Module 4.7 Lesson Module 4.8 Quiz Module 4.9 Resource Module 4.10 Survey Module 4.11 Wiki Module 4.12 Workshop Module

Overall design
Moodle's overall design: Promotes a social constructionist pedagogy (collaboration, activities, critical Suitable for 100% online classes as well as supplementing face-to-face learning Simple, lightweight, efficient, compatible, low-tech browser interface Easy to install on almost any platform that supports PHP. Requires only one

reflection, etc)

database (and can share it).

Full database abstraction supports all major brands of database (except for Course listing shows descriptions for every course on the server, including Courses can be categorised and searched - one Moodle site can support Emphasis on strong security throughout. Forms are all checked, data validated, Most text entry areas (resources, forum postings etc) can be edited using an

initial table definition) accessibility to guests. thousands of courses cookies encrypted etc embedded WYSIWYG HTML editor

Site management
Site is managed by an administrator user Site is defined during setup. Defaults can be edited during setup or globally Site can be modified by a robust Site administration block. Plug-in "themes" allow the administrator to customize the site colors, fonts, Plug-in activity modules can be added to existing Moodle installations Plug-in language packs allow full localization to any language. These can

accepted

layout etc to suit local needs

be edited using a built-in web-based editor. Currently there are language packs for over 70 languages. The code is clearly-written PHP under a GPL license - easy to modify to suit your needs

User management
Overview
Goals are to reduce admin involvement to a minimum, while retaining high Supports a range of authentication mechanisms through plug-in authentication Standard email method: students can create their own login accounts. Email

security modules, allowing easy integration with existing systems. addresses are verified by confirmation.

LDAP method: account logins can be checked against an LDAP server. Admin IMAP, POP3, NNTP: account logins are checked against a mail or news server. Students are encouraged to build an online profile including photos, description. Every user can specify their own timezone, and every date in Moodle is Every user can choose the language used for the Moodle interface (English,

can specify which fields to use. SSL, certificates and TLS are supported. Email addresses can be protected from display if required. translated to that timezone (e.g. posting dates, assignment due dates etc) French, German, Spanish, Portuguese etc)

Enrolment
Teachers can add an "enrolment key" to their courses to keep out non-students. Teachers can enrol students manually if desired Teachers can unenrol students manually if desired, otherwise they are External database: any database containing at least two fields can be used as Each person requires only one account for the whole server - each account can Meta courses can group together related courses so participants can interact

They can give out this key face-to-face or via personal email etc

automatically unenrolled after a certain period of inactivity (set by the admin) an external authentication source. have different access with each other

Roles
Roles for specific participants can be defined for each course An admin account controls the creation of courses and creates teachers by Course creators can create courses, teach in them, and assign others to teacher Teachers are a role in a specific course. Non-editing teacher roles are available for adjuncts, and part-time tutors.

assigning users to courses roles.

Course management
Overview
A full teacher has full control over all settings for a course, including restricting Choice of course formats such as by week, by topic or a discussion-focussed Course Themes. A course can have its own theme of colors and layout. Flexible array of course activities - Forums, Quizzes, Glossaries, Resources, Groups - teacher(s) and students can be placed in one or more groups Recent changes to the course since the last login can be displayed on the Most text entry areas (resources, forum postings etc) can be edited using an All grades for Forums, Quizzes and Assignments can be viewed on one page Full user logging and tracking - activity reports for each student are available

other teachers social format

Choices, Surveys, Assignments, Chats, Workshops

course home page - helps give sense of community embedded WYSIWYG HTML editor (and downloaded as a spreadsheet file) with graphs and details about each module (last access, number of times read) as well as a detailed "story" of each students involvement including postings etc on one page. Mail integration - copies of forum posts, teacher feedback etc can be mailed in Custom scales - teachers can define their own scales to be used for grading Courses can be packaged as a single zip file using the Backup function. These HTML or plain text. forums and assignments can be restored on any Moodle server.

Assignment Module
Assignments can be specified with a due date and a maximum grade. Students can upload their assignments (any file format) to the server - they are Late assignments are allowed, but the amount of lateness is shown clearly to

date-stamped. the teacher

For each particular assignment, the whole class can be assessed (grade and Teacher feedback is appended to the assignment page for each student, and The teacher can choose to allow resubmission of assignments after grading (for Allowing resubmissions can allow the teacher to progress monitor student Advanced assignments can allow multiple files to be uploaded. This could keep

comment) on one page in one form. notification is mailed out. regrading) projects/assignments as they evolve. together preplanning maps, outlines, research papers and presentations. (Not for beginners)

Chat Module
Allows smooth, synchronous text interaction Includes profile pictures in the chat window Supports URLs, smilies, embedded HTML, images etc All sessions are logged for later viewing, and these can also be made available

to students

Choice Module
Like a poll. Can either be used to vote on something, or to get feedback from Teacher sees intuitive table view of who chose what Students can optionally be allowed to see an up-to-date graph of results

every student (eg research consent)

Forum Module
Different types of forums are available, such as teacher-only, course news, All postings have the authors photo attached. Discussions can be viewed nested, flat or threaded, oldest or newest first. Individual forums can be subscribed to by each person so that copies are The teacher can choose not to allow replies (eg for an announcements-only Discussion threads can be easily moved between forums by the teacher

open-to-all, and one-thread-per-user.

forwarded via email, or the teacher can force subscription for all forum)

Attached images are shown inline If forum ratings are being used, these can be restricted to a range of dates

Glossary Module
This is one of the modules that best illustrates the way that Moodle can When students contribute to a course in a public place like the glossary, their

fundamentally improve upon the experience of a traditional classroom ideas are given weight and attention and often result in a greater pride or ownership of the assignment Allows participants to create and maintain a list of definitions, like a dictionary Student entries can be previewed by instructors before publishing Entries can be searched or browsed using alphabet, category, date, and author A glossary of terms can be easily referenced by students Almost any module of Moodle can be set to hyperlink - automatically - to any Glossary items can be grouped in categories Participants can comment on glossary entries Entries can be rated using teacher-defined scales Glossaries can be easily exported and imported via xml Glossaries can be fully searched Glossaries can be viewed with different display formats

word or phrase that is stored in or added to the glossary

Lesson Module
A lesson is a series of pages which can be presented in a linear fashion, like a Navigation through the lesson can be straight forward or complex, logical or Pages can allow students choices through answers to teacher directed Each choice can be associated with jumps that link to other tables Offers different scoring and grading potentials Interfaces with Grade and Glossary modules Lessons can build upon each other through conditional dependencies upon one

slide show, or in a non-linear, branching manner, or in a combination of the two. random questions or descriptions

another

Question pages include Multiple choice, Multi-answer, T/F, numeric, short Pages can be imported either as questions in a variety of formats or from Student attempts, time limits, minimum score and retakes can be set. Page content is HTML compatible, with a full set of edit tools for the teacher Students may see progress bars, running score, reinforcement to student Password, start and end times, and other restrictions can be placed on

answer and essay. PowerPoints

questions students.

Quiz Module
Teachers can define a database of questions for re-use in different quizzes Questions can be stored in categories for easy access, and these categories can Quizzes are automatically graded, and can be re-graded if questions are Quizzes can have a limited time window outside of which they are not available At the teacher's option, quizzes can be attempted multiple times, and can show Quiz questions and quiz answers can be shuffled (randomised) to reduce Questions allow HTML and images Questions can be imported from external text files Quizzes can be attempted multiple times, if desired Attempts can be cumulative, if desired, and finished over several sessions Multiple-choice questions supporting single or multiple answers Short Answer questions (words or phrases) True-False questions Matching questions Random questions Numerical questions (with allowable ranges) Embedded-answer questions (cloze style) with answers within passages of text Embedded descriptive text and graphics

be "published" to make them accessible from any course on the site. modified

feedback and/or correct answers cheating

Resource Module
Supports display of any electronic content, Word, Powerpoint, Flash, Video, Files can be uploaded and managed (zipped, unzipped, renamed, moved, etc..) Folders can be created and managed on the server and linked to Internal web pages (html formatted) can be created with WYSIWYG editor and Internal text pages (no formatting) can be created and linked to External content on the web can be linked to or seamlessly included within the External web applications can be linked to with data passed to them Linked MP3 audio files will display with elegant flash player

Sounds etc. that are stored locally, or remotely on the server

linked to

course interface.

Survey Module
Built-in surveys (COLLES, ATTLS) have been proven as instruments for Online survey reports always available, including many graphs. Data is Survey interface prevents partly-finished surveys. Feedback is provided to the student of their results compared to the class

analysing online classes downloadable as an Excel spreadsheet or CSV text file.

averages

Wiki Module
Wiki is a web page that anyone can add to or edit It enables documents to be authored collectively and supports collaborative Old versions are not deleted and may be restored if required

learning

Workshop Module
Allows peer assessement of documents, and the teacher can manage and grade Supports a wide range of possible grading scales Teacher can provide sample documents for students to practice grading

the assessment.

Very flexible with many options.

Cultural
Support
Moodle's open source nature means that there are far more avenues for support available than is the case for other LMS systems. Pop-up help - clicking the blue icons wherever you see then (almost all fields on

forms and many other places) gives you access to the main help files that come with the distribution Moodle Docs (this site) is built by the community and is not only available to browse, but each page you see in Moodle has a link at the bottom, which goes to the corresponding documentation on Moodle Docs. This saves you from having to create your own training materials or website in-house and lets you combine any information you wish to provide with the sum of all the knowledge already accumulated Community forums - the 'using moodle' course at moodle.org has thousands of dedicated teachers and programmers who are active in conversations every week. You can ask a direct question, or browse all the archived conversations going right back to 2001. You can speak to other teachers or directly to moodle's designers and programmers Paid for support contracts and service level agreements - moodle.com lists partner companies who will provide commercial support for your moodle installation. Instead of having to rely on one company to solve your problems or provide training (an effective monopoly, as with other systems), you have a number of companies competing for your training and support business, leading to lower prices and more choice

Customisation
Moodle's open source nature means that you own the system and have rights allowing you to change and modify it, rather than renting it 'as is', which is the case for many competing systems. This, combined with the huge community means that there are an enormous number of third party plugins available so that you can add functionality that is non-standard e.g. support for sending text messages, podcasting, new types of quiz question, 3D molecule models, etc). You can also commission a programmer (see

moodle.com if you need one) to make any extra plugin or alteration you like, which if you post it up on moodle.org, others may well improve further for you.

Philosophy
Moodle is based on a solid foundation of social constructionism (strong community, shared experiences, building things together for others to view and use) and grew out of postgraduate research by Martin Dougiamas, its founder. Other companies tend to be led by profit, leading to a focus on marketing to what school decision makers think they need, rather than what actually works best.

Innovation
Moodle is not constrained by what will sell well, so the code that is developed, especially by third parties, is often at the cutting edge of educational thinking. The open source philosophy helps here too, as schools and universities often choose to have moodle enhanced for their own purposes and contribute their code back to the community. Recent examples include the new wiki, developed by a team at Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya and the new groups code developed by the UK Open University.

Usability
To support a host of automated and personalized services, such as self-paced and rolespecific learning, the access, delivery and presentation of material must be easy-touse and highly intuitive like surfing on the Web or shopping on Amazon.com. Perhaps the best sentence to short Moodle usability is: "simple and powerful". There is some talk about Moodle usability. The Interface guidelines aim to help developers work towards a highly usable system. And the general consensus is that Moodle excels in this area.

Technical

High availability
The LMS must be robust enough to serve the diverse needs of thousands of learners, administrators, content builders and instructors simultaneously. Usage patterns will vary strongly with the specific context of the deployment. But in general, Moodle presents a high-availability web-based interface, allowing learners, tutors, and administrators routinely to log in and carry out their daily tasks. See the scalability section for other relevant information.

Scalability
The infrastructure should be able to expand or scale to meet future growth, both in terms of the volume of instruction and the size of the student body. Moodle runs on a wide variety of webservers/database technologies. As with any installation of a server-based software system, it is crucial to refine carefully the choice of hardware, operating system, and database system, to ensure that the system can cope with a high throughput. The largest live Moodle installation at time of writing (Open Polytechnic of New Zealand) handles 45,000+ students and 6,500+ courses registered. There is a page about other large installations. The consensus in the Moodle community seems to be that a Linux-based webserver running Apache, with PHP installed as well as a PHP accelerator, is commonly the best choice, and that the webserver and database server should sit on separate machines. It should be possible to load-balance a Moodle installation, for example by using more than one webserver if necessary. The separate webservers should query the same database and refer to the same filestore area, but otherwise the separation of the application layers is complete enough to make this kind of clustering feasible. Similarly, the database could be a cluster of servers (e.g. a MySQL cluster). All this implies that Moodle's architecture makes it easy to respond to future demand, by adapting the technologies upon which it runs. This should be possible even in a live setting, to improve the service without major disruption.

Interoperability
To support content from different sources and multiple vendors' hardware/software solutions, the LMS should exchange data using open industry standards for Web deployments.

For authentication, Moodle supports authenticating against LDAP, which is the

most widely-used standard protocol for this purpose. It also supports authentication based on direct database lookup (e.g. in an external Oracle database), or on the Shibboleth protocol, or alternatively using IMAP, NNTP, CAS or FirstClass. For enrolment, Moodle supports the use of an LDAP server (e.g. Active For content, there are a number of aspects: Moodle supports the import/export of Reusable Learning Objects Quiz questions can be exported in the international standard IMS QTI 2 RSS newsfeeds can be integrated into a Moodle site or course. Forum discussions can be accessed as RSS newsfeeds, and therefore packaged according to the SCORM / IMS Content Packaging standards. format. Directory), and the IMS Enterprise standard (via a downloadable plugin).

integrated into other RSS-capable websites or systems. The use of XML for import/export is standard in Moodle. The "web services" method of exchanging data with other systems (e.g. via SOAP or XML-RPC) is not yet standard but is in active development.

Stability
The LMS infrastructure can reliably and effectively manage a large enterprise implementation running 24x7. This is the same issue as discussed in Availability and Scalability above.

Security
As with any outward-facing collaborative solution, the LMS can selectively limit and control access to online content, resources and back-end functions, both internally and externally, for its diverse user community. Moodle's current system of roles includes administrators, teachers, teachers without editing privileges (sometimes called teaching assistants), students, and guests. Each has a clearly defined set of privileges and cannot act beyond those privileges. The basic unit of organisation is the course. An administrator can assign any number of teachers (with or without rights to edit content) to a given course, which has its own file area as well as its own discussions forums and other activities. Teachers can decide whether content is visible or hidden to students.

Moodle is designed and audited to be secure for its purpose. A security issues/announcements site exists at http://security.moodle.org

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1 Once Moodle is stable, it will be put under licence. If it were any good, theyd already be charging for it 2 Moodle needs a full time, php developer on your staff- or at least a lot of technical support to run it in house 3 Moodle wont be compatible with our other systems/software 4 Moodle just doesnt have the commercial experience were looking for 5 You cant just use Moodle out of the box the basic Moodle install just isnt that sophisticated 6 Theres no documentation, training or technical support available youre on your own 7 The total Cost of Ownership is actually higher for Moodle than it would be with a wholly commercial platform 8 Moodle is just no good for an institution as large as mine 9 Moodle is just not designed to cope with my specific group of learners or customers 10 We have all our stuff on *******, its just not worth the hassle of switching to Moodle 11 Moodle is free and therefore can't really be as good as something produced by a large company which earns millions in Licence fees every year

Once Moodle is stable, it will be put under licence. If it were any good, theyd already be charging for it
Martin Dougiamas is on record that Moodle will always be free and under the GPL. Even if it weren't, the community could take the latest GPL code and continue development from there. One of the reasons why Moodle's so good is that it's open source code, and so the world wide educational community can contribute to making it better still. In other cases where such things have happened, the community quickly "forked" the tool and continued it, with ongoing improvements, as an open-source project. What is

out there up to this point will stay out there - legally - even if something in the future did not. Nobody can "buy" Moodle, and any coopting without the consent of the global community wouldn't get very far.

Moodle needs a full time, php developer on your staff- or at least a lot of technical support to run it in house
There are plenty of institutions running Moodle as is, without any php developers in sight. You don't need to know any programming if you just want to run an out of the box, feature rich Moodle site. That said, PHP is actually a fairly easy language to pick up, and the Moodle code is well documented, so if you did want to help with development, it's a fairly gentle learning curve. It is also fair to say you need a certain amount of technical know-how to run any program on the web securely. But this has more to do with getting a web-server, SQL database and scripting language up and integrated than a Moodle instance itself. If you can run your own webserver, you should be OK to run Moodle on it. You don't actually have to run Moodle in house though - there are well respected Moodle Partners who'll run Moodle for you, some of the more enlightened Local Authorities and Regional Broadband Consortia (in the UK) will provide Moodle hosting, and Moodle will work on plenty of commercially hosted webspaces too.

Moodle wont be compatible with our other systems/software

Moodle will run on FreeBSD, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, Windows and many others. It's compatible with a huge range of databases through ADODB integration. There's a whole host of authentication and enrollment mechanisms, including LDAP and arbitrary external databases. Moodle will allow teachers to integrate content in a wide range of different formats, including SCORM, Flash, MP3s and RSS feeds. On theRoadmap for future releases is a Web API which will allow easy integration with other web-based applications. Finally, remember that this is open source software, with a well documented data and file structure. If Moodle's not compatible with a particular application at the moment, then you can pay a developer to code up that integration, or develop it in-house.

Moodle just doesnt have the commercial experience were looking for
Check out the partners. Moodle is also in use throughout the world by corporate clients for in-house training, including flight schools, pilot and mechanic certification, and all other varieties of professional development. Moodle as a tool is an application, not an organization. The PEOPLE that make up the Moodle world-wide community have experience across the board in every industry and every sort of education. In fact, you'll be hard-pressed to find a more committed group of educators and trainers in one place than on moodle.org. Further evidence of the commercial applications of moodle are supported by the fact that Microsoft Corporation funded the modification of moodle to work on their SQL Server platform (if you choose to use that instead of mySQL) and that the support for features ranging from clustering to built-in payment mechanisms is growing with each version.

You cant just use Moodle out of the box the basic Moodle install just isnt that sophisticated
Have a look at the feature list, all of which comes as standard. Additional themes, blocks and activities are easy to integrate and the vast majority are free, open source code too. It is true that is basically easy to install all those features out of the box as a standalone desktop or on a web server. You can do a full install on a Windows-based pc in the time it takes to download a 50MB file, unzip it, change a folder name, double-click a file, and open a webpage. This install includes a webserver, the database, and the moodle installation. While this basic install is not appropriate for an enterprise installation, the simplicity with which it offers the full power of moodle is remarkable, and a testament to the robustness of the platform.

Theres no documentation, training or technical support available youre on your own

There's excellent (and expanding) documentation online, provided by the user and developer community. Being online and digital, this resource is updated daily and keeps abreast of moodle developments as they happen - with far more details than any book could provide, and certainly more than any commercial vendor offers for their product.

The Open University's Jason Cole has written an excellent introduction to Moodle for teachers, available as a proper book from O'Reilly. In addition William Rice has written a Moodle book Moodle E-Learning Course Development available from Packt Publishing. Most users find the Moodle interface intuitive and this helps reduce the training requirements. It's possible for institutions to run in-house training and many have successfully adopted this approach. Some Moodle Partners moodle.com also specialize in training. High quality, timely technical support is available from the user and developer community in the Using Moodle course on moodle.org. Some LAs and RBCs (Local Authorities and Regional Broadband Consortia in the UK) support Moodle in their areas. Commercial support contracts are available from authorized Moodle Partners moodle.com.

The total Cost of Ownership is actually higher for Moodle than it would be with a wholly commercial platform
Stop and think for a moment. With both Moodle and commercial platforms, you'll still need to pay for hosting, support, training and content, one way or another: with Moodle, more of these costs can be brought in-house, because the code's open source and Moodle's great at providing the tools teachers need to write online activities themselves, but that doesn't mean you have to. The difference is that with Moodle, there are no licence fees to pay. None. The money you do spend can go back into making the software better, or remain within the educational community for the common good. None of it needs to go to meet shareholder dividends or pay back the venture capitalists. Furthermore, you're not exposed to the risks of commercial suppliers unilaterally increasing their licence fees, or going out of business. You are also not restricted by license agreements - you can use it however you like. There isn't an "Enterprise" version that costs many times more than the basic (but has the features you actually) need - Moodle comes with everything you need. It's therefore not surprising that when the UK government agency Becta examined the Total Cost of Ownership of open-source software on desktops in UK schools, they found significant savings compared to commercial alternatives. The savings on support costs were particularly impressive. It's likely that these savings would have been greater still had they examined web-based applications like Moodle.

A 4 page summary of considerations can be found at Using Open Source Software in Schools.

Moodle is just no good for an institution as large as mine

So, that would be one larger than the UK's Open University, with 180,000 students, yes? The OU has announced that they're moving to Moodle as their institutional VLE, and there are plenty of other large institutions officially using Moodle, and a good number of others where sections are.

Moodle is just not designed to cope with my specific group of learners or customers
Moodle's being used successfully from elementary education, including early years provision, up to higher education, in all subject areas including art, languages, the humanities and mathematics. It's also established itself in the world of life-long learning, teachers' CPD, corporate and government training environments.

We have all our stuff on *******, its just not worth the hassle of switching to Moodle
The switch may not be that much of a hassle, as Moodle will happily import content in a wide range of standard formats, including SCORM, Blackboard and WebCT questions. There are an increasing number of Further and Higher Education institutions that are making the move. Pedagogically, there's much to be gained from moving to a VLE which puts social, collaborative learning at the centre, and acknowledges the vital role that learners have to play, as well as providing teachers with the tools that they need to build effective on-line learning communities, rather than just presenting resources and activities. From a financial perspective, the costs involved in switching to Moodle should be quickly recouped through savings in licence fees.

Moodle is free and therefore can't really be as good as something produced by a large company which earns millions in Licence fees every year
The fact that Moodle is Free (not free as in no money, but Free as in Free Speech) means that the efforts of the core team are entirely public. You can watch progress in the tracker, download the code they have just written and take part in their conversations in the forums. This means that anyone who wants to (and there are literally hundreds that do) can assist in developing either the core code, custom plugins and modules, integrations and themes, or by reporting bugs that appear. There are over 150 such third party extensions in the modules and plugins database and a quick look at the tracker will show you how effectively the community keep bug reports coming in. On top of that, many institutions that use Moodle decide to devote some of their own in-house expertise to maintaining parts of the Moodle code, or developing new features. Because Moodle is free, this makes sense. If they were using a commercial product, they would not only be unable to do this due to licencing, but also would have to continue to pay every year to keep using what they have made, so this doesn't really happen with commercial software. This means that, as is generally the case with Open Source, Moodle develops much faster for a given amount of cash input than commercial software does, where everything must be done by the company developers in house. Additionally, a commercial company selling a VLE is in a poor position in marketing terms because their product is big, complex and hard to sell to people who know little or nothing about it and don't have the time to invest in learning it and several others so they can make an informed choice. This means a big marketing budget with lots of sales reps, which takes up a large chunk of the licence fee income. Moodle has no such overhead, leaving more money for development in the first place. The above factors also tend to make Moodle more innovative than other platforms, because when someone wants a feature, they are free to either write it themselves, or pay for a developer to do it. With a commercial VLE you would only get an extension made if you could convince the company it would be profitable for them. Put together, the stable core and dozens of custom plugins means that Moodle can be tailored to fit your institution much better than a monolithic one-size-fits-all offering.