Moodle and Web 2.0

The latest release of Moodle, out on November 16th, contains a number of cool new additions and enhancements for teachers, admins, students and everyone. We’ve gone through them and picked our five favourites below, but if you want a closer look at the highlights, check our New features list or, for a fuller, more technical view, our Release notes.

Wow, Moodle 3.0 is here!

It's hard to believe 13 years have passed since I first released Moodle 1.0 right here - I still feel we are just getting started!

Compared with Moodle 2.0 in 2010, which is notable for having a large number of radical changes, Moodle 3.0 is a much gentler release.  In fact it could easily have been 2.10 if not for the fact that the mathematicians and programmers amongst us can not tolerate that kind of numerical abuse.

In short, upgrades from any Moodle 2.x should be smooth!

A good way to look at Moodle 3.0 is as the end result of all the good work done in the last 5 years since Moodle 2.0.

That's not to say there's nothing new in Moodle 3.0 - there's plenty!  Our Moodle Tracker shows 269 issues were finished in the past six months, including a lot of smaller new features such as popular new quiz question types from Open University, new table editing controls in the text editor, tidier section editing on the course page, heaps of new mobile features and much much more.

We took a look through all nearly 150 tracker items slated for Moodle 3.0 and rounded up a few of the ones we think will have the biggest impact. There aren’t many earth-shattering features or improvements in 3.0 which is not the same type of jump forward that 2.0 was.

This release features all sorts of minor updates, fixes, and improvements that will simply make Moodle that much more enjoyable to use. Think more customizable options, fewer bugs, time saving features, and lots of web services to support the ever expanding Moodle Mobile. Looking back at the Moodle 3.0 roadmap mentioned by Martin a few times, it doesn’t appear that we are going to get the competency and learning plan work that was originally slated though it has been mentioned since that was more likely for 3.1 or beyond.

Check out what is currently being worked on here: https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Roadmap#Moodle_3.0. A code freeze is in effect next Monday in advance of the QA cycle.

Below is a list of the features/improvements we thought were more notable. Don’t forget to also check out the Topic Editing Prototype which was recently announced at Moodle.org.

Moodle 3.0 has brought with it a number of nice new features, fixes and updates. One that we like in particular is the ability for administrators to reset, or even simply reconfigure the default dashboard for all users with the click of a button.

Lewis Carr, Director of Education Technology at adaptiVLE, has done us all a great service (and provided those Moodlers in the US a fantastic post-turkey-better-than-black-friday opportunity) with his SlideShare overview of Moodle 3.0.

So what exactly is the LMS world expecting from Moodle 3? A whole new UI experience? A completely re-written SCORM engine? An integrated portfolio? xAPI? Baked-in plagiarism tools? Analytics engines? 1-second page loads? The truth is, we won’t get any of these things (yet). And that’s because Moodle 3, is really Moodle 2.9.10 in the first instance. You see, Moodle isn’t Apple. It’s not trying to be. It doesn’t need the fanfare nor Martin walking on stage in a pair of New Balance trainers and a turtle neck jumper.

Moodle HQ would rather leave the version in the 2.9 sphere for a while longer I’m sure, but now is the right time to announce 3 to the stage.

With all the commotion in the media of late regarding Moodle Partners, inflection points, the Totara saga and general Moodle bashing, the release of Moodle 3 will show the LMS world that Moodle is very much alive and kicking. Yes, there will be some disappointment when 3 is released. It won’t set the world on fire. It will be criticised for not looking as sexy as some of its competitors but give it time. Like with Moodle 2.0, it wasn’t until 2.3 that things really started to come together.

So when Moodle 3 is released in November, I’ll be proud to shout about it. My shouting won’t be a feature battle with other LMS platforms nor will it be about a war with Totara. But it will very much be focussed on what 3 will become. With the strength of the community behind it, and Martin at the wheel I can’t wait to see what evolves. Maybe we can gear up to Moodle X, Moodle Mountain Goat, or Moodle Snow Dog and scrap numbers altogether. Maybe the future of Moodle will be one big trove of API’s and data and that Moodle itself won’t be the platform but the connector or enabler for the internet learning of things. Whatever comes, I’m happy that we get to start on version 3.0 and work our way up the ladder once more towards 4.0. Moodle is evolving.