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features.html
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features.html
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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Moodle Docs: Background</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="docstyles.css" type="TEXT/CSS">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff">
<h1>Features</h1>
<blockquote>
<p>Moodle is an active and evolving product. This page lists just some of the
many features it contains:</p>
<h3>Overall design</h3>
<ul>
<li>Promotes a social constructionist pedagogy (collaboration, activities, critical
reflection, etc)</li>
<li>Suitable for 100% online classes as well as supplementing face-to-face learning
</li>
<li>Simple, lightweight, efficient, compatible, low-tech browser interface</li>
<li>Easy to install on almost any platform that supports PHP. Requires only
one database (and can share it).</li>
<li>Full database abstraction supports all major brands of database (except
for initial table definition)</li>
<li>Course listing shows descriptions for every course on the server, including
accessibility to guests.</li>
<li>Courses can be categorised and searched - one Moodle site can support thousands
of courses</li>
<li>Emphasis on strong security throughout. Forms are all checked, data validated,
cookies encrypted etc</li>
<li>Most text entry areas (resources, forum postings, journal entries etc) can
be edited using an embedded WYSIWYG HTML editor</li>
</ul>
<h3 >Site management</h3>
<ul>
<li>Site is managed by an admin user, defined during setup</li>
<li>Plug-in "themes" allow the admin to customise the site colours, fonts, layout
etc to suit local needs</li>
<li>Plug-in activity modules can be added to existing Moodle installations</li>
<li>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 over <a href="http://moodle.org/download/lang/" target="_top">43
languages</a>.</li>
<li>The code is clearly-written PHP under a GPL license - easy to modify to
suit your needs</li>
</ul>
<h3 >User management</h3>
<ul>
<li>Goals are to reduce admin involvement to a minimum, while retaining high
security</li>
<li>Supports a range of authentication mechanisms through plug-in authentication
modules, allowing easy integration with existing systems.</li>
<li>Standard email method: students can create their own login accounts. Email
addresses are verified by confirmation.</li>
<li>LDAP method: account logins can be checked against an LDAP server. Admin
can specify which fields to use.</li>
<li>IMAP, POP3, NNTP: account logins are checked against a mail or news server.
SSL, certificates and TLS are supported.</li>
<li>External database: any database containing at least two fields can be used
as an external authentication source.</li>
<li>Each person requires only one account for the whole server - each account
can have different access</li>
<li>An admin account controls the creation of courses and creates teachers by
assigning users to courses</li>
<li>A course creator account is only allowed to create courses and teach in
them</li>
<li>Teachers may have editing privileges removed so that they can't modify the
course (eg for part-time tutors)</li>
<li>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</li>
<li>Teachers can enrol students manually if desired</li>
<li>Teachers can unenrol students manually if desired, otherwise they are automatically
unenrolled after a certain period of inactivity (set by the admin)</li>
<li>Students are encouraged to build an online profile including photos, description.
Email addresses can be protected from display if required.</li>
<li>Every user can specify their own timezone, and every date in Moodle is translated
to that timezone (eg posting dates, assignment due dates etc)</li>
<li>Every user can choose the language used for the Moodle interface (English,
French, German, Spanish, Portuguese etc)</li>
</ul>
<h3 >Course management</h3>
<ul>
<li>A full teacher has full control over all settings for a course, including
restricting other teachers</li>
<li>Choice of course formats such as by week, by topic or a discussion-focussed
social format</li>
<li>Flexible array of course activities - Forums, Journals, Quizzes, Resources,
Choices, Surveys, Assignments, Chats, Workshops</li>
<li>Recent changes to the course since the last login can be displayed on the
course home page - helps give sense of community</li>
<li>Most text entry areas (resources, forum postings, journal entries etc) can
be edited using an embedded WYSIWYG HTML editor</li>
<li>All grades for Forums, Journals, Quizzes and Assignments can be viewed on
one page (and downloaded as a spreadsheet file)</li>
<li>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.</li>
<li>Mail integration - copies of forum posts, teacher feedback etc can be mailed
in HTML or plain text.</li>
<li>Custom scales - teachers can define their own scales to be used for grading
forums, assignments and journals</li>
<li>Courses can be packaged as a single zip file using the Backup function.
These can be restored on any Moodle server.</li>
</ul>
<h3 >Assignment Module</h3>
<ul>
<li>Assignments can be specified with a due date and a maximum grade.</li>
<li>Students can upload their assignments (any file format) to the server -
they are date-stamped.</li>
<li>Late assignments are allowed, but the amount of lateness is shown clearly
to the teacher</li>
<li>For each particular assignment, the whole class can be assessed (grade and
comment) on one page in one form.</li>
<li>Teacher feedback is appended to the assignment page for each student, and
notification is mailed out.</li>
<li>The teacher can choose to allow resubmission of assignments after grading
(for regrading)</li>
</ul>
<h3 >Chat Module</h3>
<ul>
<li>Allows smooth, synchronous text interaction</li>
<li>Includes profile pictures in the chat window</li>
<li>Supports URLs, smilies, embedded HTML, images etc</li>
<li>All sessions are logged for later viewing, and these can also be made available
to students</li>
</ul>
<h3 >Choice Module</h3>
<ul>
<li>Like a poll. Can either be used to vote on something, or to get feedback
from every student (eg research consent)</li>
<li>Teacher sees intuitive table view of who chose what</li>
<li>Students can optionally be allowed to see an up-to-date graph of results</li>
</ul>
<h3 >Forum Module</h3>
<ul>
<li>Different types of forums are available, such as teacher-only, course news,
open-to-all, and one-thread-per-user.</li>
<li>All postings have the authors photo attached.</li>
<li>Discussions can be viewed nested, flat or threaded, oldest or newest first.</li>
<li>Individual forums can be subscribed to by each person so that copies are
forwarded via email, or the teacher can force subscription for all</li>
<li>The teacher can choose not to allow replies (eg for an announcements-only
forum)</li>
<li>Discussion threads can be easily moved between forums by the teacher</li>
<li>Attached images are shown inline</li>
<li>If forum ratings are being used, these can be restricted to a range of dates</li>
</ul>
<h3 >Journal Module</h3>
<ul>
<li>Journals are private between student and teacher.</li>
<li>Each journal entry can be directed by an open question.</li>
<li>For each particular journal entry, the whole class can be assessed on one
page in one form</li>
<li>Teacher feedback is appended to the journal entry page, and notification
is mailed out.</li>
</ul>
<h3 >Quiz Module</h3>
<ul>
<li>Teachers can define a database of questions for re-use in different quizzes</li>
<li>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. </li>
<li>Quizzes are automatically graded, and can be re-graded if questions are
modified </li>
<li>Quizzes can have a limited time window outside of which they are not available</li>
<li>At the teacher's option, quizzes can be attempted multiple times, and can
show feedback and/or correct answers</li>
<li>Quiz questions and quiz answers can be shuffled (randomised) to reduce cheating</li>
<li>Questions allow HTML and images</li>
<li>Questions can be imported from external text files</li>
<li>Quizzes can be attempted multiple times, if desired</li>
<li>Attempts can be cumulative, if desired, and finished over several sessions</li>
<li>Multiple-choice questions supporting single or multiple answers</li>
<li>Short Answer questions (words or phrases)</li>
<li>True-False questions </li>
<li>Matching questions</li>
<li>Random questions</li>
<li>Numerical questions (with allowable ranges)</li>
<li>Embedded-answer questions (cloze style) with answers within passages of
text </li>
<li>Embedded descriptive text and graphics</li>
</ul>
<h3 >Resource Module</h3>
<ul>
<li>Supports display of any electronic content, Word, Powerpoint, Flash, Video,
Sounds etc</li>
<li>Files can be uploaded and managed on the server, or created on the fly using
web forms (text or HTML)</li>
<li>External content on the web can be linked to or seamlessly included within
the course interface.</li>
<li>External web applications can be linked in with data passed to them</li>
</ul>
<h3 >Survey Module</h3>
<ul>
<li>Built-in surveys (COLLES, ATTLS) have been proven as instruments for analysing online classes</li>
<li>Online survey reports always available, including many graphs. Data is downloadable as an Excel spreadsheet or CSV text file.</li>
<li>Survey interface prevents partly-finished surveys.</li>
<li>Feedback is provided to the student of their results compared to the class averages
</li>
</ul>
<h3 >Workshop Module</h3>
<ul>
<li>Allows peer assessement of documents, and the teacher can manage and grade
the assessment.</li>
<li>Supports a wide range of possible grading scales</li>
<li>Teacher can provide sample documents for students to practice grading</li>
<li>Very flexible with many options.</li>
</ul>
<p> </p>
</blockquote>
<p align="CENTER"><font size="1"><a href="." target="_top">Moodle Documentation</a></font></p>
<p align="CENTER"><font size="1">Version: $Id$</font></p>
</body>
</html>