Moodle and Web 2.0

Gavin Hendrik’s keynote at the IEUKMoot16 was filled with a bunch of great information – some of it reflective, but also some very much forward looking. He touched on the research-heavy Japan moot (the next one is in February 2017 if you’re booking in advance) and the excitement around the first official Moot in India this year. He also noted there may be an official Moot in Latin America sometime in the near future.

My interest was piqued at around the 20 minute mark when Gavin started to talk about branding for Moodle Mobile. This looks like it is becoming a reality (via the Partner network) and, I think a fantastic next step. As mentioned in the talk, this has been possible for a long time, but implementation is a bear and resource heavy. Here’s hoping we see the first examples of that coming along very soon.

Then, 25 minutes into the presentation, Gavin mentions the launch of the Moodle Academy. This looks like a direct response to the Canvas Network. I’m excited about the prospects given the size and breadth of the Moodle community.

The Moodle Academy will be a centralized MOOC hosting platform run and managed by Moodle. This is for institutions or Moodlers who want to hold a MOOC but don’t necessarily have the bandwidth to deal with the short term (massive) hit on their internal resources from a much heavier user load. Moodle will also offer consultancy and instructional design services via Partners.

A couple of cool Moodle Academy features that Gavin showed mock ups for included a different profile page, course completion tracking from the user dashboard and a new dashboard look for the teacher/admin that includes upcoming, current and archived courses (as you’d expect in a MOOC environment).