# Moodle Docs: Background

## Features

Moodle is an active and evolving product. This page lists just some of the many features it contains:

### Overall design

- Promotes a social constructionist pedagogy (collaboration, activities, critical reflection, etc)
- 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 database (and can share it).
- Full database abstraction supports all major brands of database (except for initial table definition)
- Course listing shows descriptions for every course on the server, including accessibility to guests.
- Emphasis on strong security throughout. Forms are all checked, data validated, cookies encrypted etc
- Most text entry areas (resources, forum postings, journal entries etc) can be edited using an embedded WYSIWYG HTML editor

### Site management

- Site is managed by an admin user, defined during setup
- Plug-in "themes" allow the admin to customise the site colours, fonts, layout etc to suit local needs
- Plug-in activity modules can be added to existing Moodle installations
- Plug-in language packs allow full localisation to any language. These can be edited using a built-in web-based editor. Currently there are language packs for more than 28 languages.
- The code is clearly-written PHP under a GPL license - easy to modify to suit your needs

### User management

- Goals are to reduce admin involvement to a minimum, while retaining high security
- Supports a range of authentication mechanisms through plug-in authentication modules, allowing easy integration with existing systems.
- Standard email method: students can create their own login accounts. Email addresses are verified by confirmation.
- LDAP method: account logins can be checked against an LDAP server. Admin can specify which fields to use.
- IMAP, POP3, NNTP: account logins are checked against a mail or news server. SSL, certificates and TLS are supported.
- External database: any database containing at least two fields can be used as an external authentication source.
- Each person requires only one account for the whole server - each account can have different access
- An admin account controls the creation of courses and creates teachers by assigning users to courses
- Security - teachers can add an "enrolment key" to their courses to keep out non-students. They can give out this key face-to-face or via personal email etc
- Teachers can unenrol students manually if desired, otherwise they are automatically unenrolled after a certain period of inactivity (set by the admin)
- Students are encouraged to build an online profile including photos, description. Email addresses can be protected from display if required.
- Every user can specify their own timezone, and every date in Moodle is translated to that timezone (eg posting dates, assignment due dates etc)
- Every user can choose the language used for the Moodle interface (English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese etc)

### Course management

- Teacher has full control over all settings for a course
- Choice of course formats such as by week, by topic or a discussion-focussed social format
- Flexible array of course activities - Forums, Journals, Quizzes, Resources, Choices, Surveys, Assignments.
- Recent changes to the course since the last login can be displayed on the course home page - helps give sense of community
- Most text entry areas (resources, forum postings, journal entries etc) can be edited using an embedded WYSIWYG HTML editor
- All grades for Forums, Journals, Quizzes and Assignments can be viewed on one page (and downloaded as a spreadsheet file)
- Full user logging and tracking - activity reports for each student are available 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, journal entries etc on one page.
- Mail integration - copies of forum posts, teacher feedback etc can be mailed in HTML or plain text.

### 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 date-stamped.
- Late assignments are allowed, but the amount of lateness is shown clearly to the teacher
- For each particular assignment, the whole class can be assessed (grade and comment) on one page in one form.
- Teacher feedback is appended to the assignment page for each student, and notification is mailed out.
- The teacher can choose to allow resubmission of assignments after grading (for regrading)

### Choice Module

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

### Forum Module

- Different types of forums are available, such as teacher-only, course news, open-to-all, and one-thread-per-user.
- 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 forwarded via email, or the teacher can force subscription for all
- The teacher can choose not to allow replies (eg for an announcements-only forum)
- Discussion threads can be easily moved between forums by the teacher

### Journal Module

- Journals are private between student and teacher.
- Each journal entry can be directed by an open question.
- For each particular journal entry, the whole class can be assessed on one page in one form
- Teacher feedback is appended to the journal entry page, and notification is mailed out.

### 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 be "published" to make them accessible from any course on the site.
- Quizzes are automatically graded, and can be re-graded if questions are modified
- 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 feedback and/or correct answers
- Quiz questions and quiz answers can be shuffled (randomised) to reduce cheating
- Questions allow HTML and images
- Questions can be imported from external text files
- Multiple-choice questions supporting single or multiple answers
- Short Answer questions (words or phrases)
- True-False questions
- Matching questions
- Random questions

### Resource Module

- Supports display of any electronic content, Word, Powerpoint, Flash, Video, Sounds etc
- Files can be uploaded and managed on the server, or created on the fly using web forms (text or HTML)
- External content on the web can be linked to or seamlessly included within the course interface.
- External web applications can be linked in with data passed to them

### Survey Module

- Built-in surveys (COLLES, ATTLS) have been proven as instruments for analysing online classes
- Online survey reports always available, including many graphs. Data is downloadable as an Excel spreadsheet or CSV text file.
- Survey interface prevents partly-finished surveys.
- Feedback is provided to the student of their results compared to the class averages

Moodle Documentation

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