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What is Moodle

Moodle is a leading open-source Learning Management System (LMS) used worldwide to create fully-featured online courses and learning communities. It’s written in PHP, distributed under GPLv3+, and maintained by Moodle HQ together with a global open-source community (Wikipedia).

Core Features

  1. Customisable Site Design and Layout Easily tailor the look and feel of your Moodle site—logos, colour schemes, block layouts, and even entirely bespoke themes are supported (docs.moodle.org).

  2. Secure Authentication & Mass Enrolment Over 50 authentication methods (LDAP, OAuth2, SAML, manual, guest access, etc.) and enrolment plugins allow you to control who joins which courses and when (docs.moodle.org).

  3. Multilingual Capability Full interface translation and language packs let learners view content in their preferred language, while teachers can offer multilingual course materials (docs.moodle.org).

  4. Learning Activities & Resources A rich assortment of built-in activities (forums, wikis, glossaries, quizzes, assignments, databases, lessons, workshops) and resource types (pages, files, URLs) enables diverse pedagogical approaches (docs.moodle.org).

  5. Progress Tracking & Competencies Activity- and course-level completion tracking, custom competency frameworks, and learning plans help both learners and educators monitor progress and mastery (docs.moodle.org).

  6. Gradebook & Assessment Tools Flexible grading scales, advanced aggregation methods, grade overrides, and built-in rubrics/workflow support seamless assessment. Quizzes support dozens of question types plus import/export via IMS QTI or GIFT (docs.moodle.org).

  7. Collaboration & Communication Forums, messaging, announcements, group/team management, and peer-assessment activities foster interaction. Integration with BigBlueButton and other conferencing tools enables real-time virtual classrooms (docs.moodle.org).

  8. Analytics & Reporting Detailed logs, activity reports, completion reports, and custom report tools let admins and instructors gain insights. Learning analytics dashboards help identify at-risk learners (docs.moodle.org).

  9. Mobile App & Offline Learning The official Moodle mobile app offers responsive course access, push notifications, offline work (draft submissions, downloaded materials), and H5P interactivity (docs.moodle.org).

  10. Extensibility via Plugins Thousands of community-contributed plugins cover everything from gamification to attendance, plagiarism detection, content import/export, authentication, enrolment, and more (docs.moodle.org).

What’s New in Moodle 5.0 (Released June 30, 2025)

Moodle 5.0 brings over a hundred enhancements focused on AI, usability, accessibility, and administration (docs.moodle.org):

AI Enhancements

  • Ollama API Provider: Integrate custom LLMs via the Ollama API.
  • Provider Instances & Per-Model Settings: Create multiple AI provider instances and fine-tune behaviour per model.
  • ‘Explain’ Option: Learners can request on-demand content explanations.
  • AI Policy & Usage Reports: Admin dashboards to monitor who’s accepted AI policies and overall AI usage.

Content & Activity Management

  • Activities Overview: New teacher and student dashboards to track all course activities at a glance.
  • Course Question Banks & Filters: Centralised question banks with six powerful filtering options for faster quiz creation.

Accessibility & Editing

  • Longer Image Descriptions: Up to 750 characters for alt-text to improve accessibility.
  • TinyMCE Improvements: Drag-and-drop media, MP3 format option, and more intuitive media editing.

Assessment & Notifications

  • Grade Penalties for Late Submissions: Set and display automatic late penalties within the gradebook.
  • Assignment SMS Notifications: Notify students of feedback via SMS, including file details.
  • New ‘Graded’ Filter & BigBlueButton Grading: Quickly filter graded submissions and manually assign grades to BigBlueButton sessions.

Miscellaneous Enhancements

  • Pre-created Quiz Attempts to boost quiz performance.
  • Custom Report Duplication for quicker report setup.
  • Category-Level User Tours exclusion and H5P Autoplay in the mobile app.

With this latest release, Moodle continues to evolve into a more intelligent, accessible, and user-friendly platform—empowering educators and learners alike.