Introduction 

Moo

dle 

(

m d l) 

If you were a computer programmer the term  Modular  Object Oriented  Dynamic  Learning         

Environment  (Moodle) might make your heart skip a beat.  If you were a teacher you might 

recognize the word as 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. 

The Australian developer of Moodle (Martin Dougiamas), is both an educator and computer 

scientist. This combination brings unique qualifications to the art and science of using              

technology to reach learners in the 21

st

 century.

Open Source e Learning Software 

Moodle is a course management system (CMS)   a software package designed to help               

educators create quality online courses and manage learner outcomes. Such e learning         

systems are sometimes also called Learning Management Systems (LMS), Virtual Learning 

Environments (VLE) and Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS). Students need only 

a browser (e.g., IE, Firefox, Safari) to participate in a Moodle course.   

Moodle is Open Source software, which means you are free to download it, use it, modify it and 

even distribute it (under the terms of the GNU General Public License). Moodle runs without 

modification on Unix, Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Netware and any other system that supports 

PHP, including most web host providers. Data is stored  in  a  single  database:  MySQL  and           

PostgreSQL are best supported, but it can also be used with Oracle, Access, Interbase, ODBC 

and others. 

Language Support 

Moodle has 50 language packs, including: Arabic, Catalan, Chinese (simplified and traditional), 

Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (UK and US versions), Finnish, French (France and Canada 

versions), German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian,  Japanese,  Maori,  Norwegian,        

Polish, Portuguese (Portugal and Brazil), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai 

and Turkish.

Design Philosophy 

The design and development of Moodle is guided by a particular philosophy of learning, a way 

of thinking that you may see referred to in shorthand as a "social constructionist pedagogy". 

This page tries to explain in simple terms what that phrase means by unpacking four main 

concepts behind it. Note that each of these is summarizing one view of an immense amount of 

diverse research so these definitions may seem thin if you have read about these before. 

If these concepts are completely new to you then it is likely that these ideas will be hard to    

understand at first. We recommend that you read this carefully, while thinking about your own 

experiences of trying to learn something. 

1. Constructivism 

This point of view maintains that people actively construct new knowledge as they interact with 

their environment.  

Everything you read, see, hear, feel, and touch is tested against your prior knowledge and if it is 

viable within your mental world, may form new knowledge you carry with you. Knowledge is 

strengthened if you can use it successfully  in  your  wider  environment.  You  are  not  just  a           

memory bank passively absorbing information, nor can knowledge be "transmitted" to you just 

by reading something or listening to someone. 

http://moodle.org 

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