Last week Martin Dougiamas, the creator of Moodle, the world’s leading open source learning management system, joined our Future Trends Forum to discuss the future of that technology.
Someone on the Moodle.com site wrote up an extraordinarily rich report on the session, complete with numerous screen captures. Bravo!
The full video recording is now available on YouTube:
During the hour Forum participants offered many questions. Martin tackled a slew of them, yet still more came in. I’d like to reproduce them here, edited very lightly. They indicate the richness of today’s unfolding LMS discussion, and help illuminate where things might be headed.
Text question from Ed Finn: OER Game Changer – Moodle Community could separate it from Canvas and Blackboard who keep these types of sharing resources behind a wall. I see it as similar to the Canvas Commons for resources with a social media component?
Text question from Sonja Strahl: Community question – Will the community you were discussing be available for only those with Moodle as their LMS (for both creation of OER and use of OER)? Or will it be open to everyone, and under Creative Commons license?
Text question from Richard Wack: Accessibility – Blackboard recently acquired Ally which appears to be a very impressive tool to address accessibility as it pertains to courses. What is the present and future direction by Moodle on this important topic? Thank you.
@BryanAlexander @Moodler
Are you aware of any learners using Moodle to create and document their own personal learning pathways? #FTTE— Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson.bsky.social (@MCorbettWilson) July 13, 2017
Text question from Josh: Anti-LMS – How do you respond to the anti-LMS pedagogy voices, even those who might object to an open-source tool like Moodle? Does that debate interest you at all?
Text question from Ed Finn: Communication – Just out of curiosity, does Moodle offer social media, text and other communication coordination? I know that Canvas has a rich development here where you can choose to communicate by email, tweet, text, or app.
Text question from Ed Finn: Versioning – What are your thoughts on different versions of Moodle and sharing between them? How do you see the community working with multiple versions?
What are you wondering about Moodle and the LMS, looking ahead?
My thanks to Martin and the Forum community for their generous time and thought.
I’m wondering when and if moodle will make scheduling and rescheduling multiple quizzes easier, do-able from one master list of quizzes. Also, how to make it permanently and completely STOP calculating percentages in the grade book.
Not very high-level conceptual issues, I admit.