OUTBACK LIFE INSPIRED MOODLE -a free and open-source learning management system

After the impact of COVID-19, an eLearning project aimed at enhancing access to meaningful and high-quality education in specific higher education institutions in Uganda began its activities in the country. This involved the introduction of online learning through Learning Management Systems. Despite having a preconceived plan for the Learning Management System to be implemented, Ugandan universities expressed considerable enthusiasm for adopting and sustaining Moodle. They specifically highlighted its modularity and inclusivity features, and it was noteworthy that these universities were already familiar with Moodle.

But what is Moodle? a global learning platform used around the world, but it actually started from just one man in one small area for one small project. And I'd like to tell you the story of Moodle very quickly. In the outbackin the sparsely populated, semi-arid desert region right in the centre of Australia in 1969 was born Martin, a little boy who lived in the outback of Australia. And because he lived with his family a thousand kilometres away from the nearest physical school building or village, he, like many of the children, had to do his lessons remotely. And so remote learning was happening even over 50 years ago, and in those days, they used to do them with something called the School of the Air, and they used to do them using shortwave radio as the photo below Now the School of the Air still exists in Australia because there are still people living in the outback remotely. But now, interestingly, many of them, including Martin's own school, use Moodle for their remote learning.

Let's fast-forward 30 years and see where Martin is, and I expect you've worked out that Martin was the person who began Moodle. It's much more than just Martin now. He is working at the University of Curtin in Western Australia as an internet consultant. Now these are the early days of the internet, and he's very interested both in the technical side of websites and programming, but also in pedagogy in education. And he decides to do a PhD, a doctorate in scientific education, and he's interested in finding out how using the internet this new initiative could help the small group of adult learners that he has himself at the university. He's particularly interested in a philosophy or pedagogy called social constructionism where people build their knowledge together, they collaborate together to learn. And so he starts work on designing a website, a program software just to do this, to help his group as part of his thesis, his doctorate. And by 2002, he'd actually got it to a point where he was happy to put it out on the internet for other people to download it and try it and give him feedback. So that, in fact, was the 20th of August 2002. And that day when they were the first people downloading the Moodle software to test it were also the first forum discussions because Martin was very keen to have people collaborating, discussing, giving opinions on it. So this was the first part of the growth of a Moodle community.

We don't usually talk about this, we just say Moodle.But the word Moodle is actually a verb, and it was a verb when Martin decided to use it for his software, but he actually turned it into an acronym. Now, we don't use the acronym, as I said, we say Moodle, but I'd like to point out that Moodle stands for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environments. Modular and dynamic are very important aspects of that acronym and of Moodle.
Moodle is Modular in that it is made up of different modules, plugins, activities, add-ons, whatever you want to call them, elements that you can use, you can choose and use for your learning or your training. And you can add on or bring in extra ones which are contributed by other people or organisations.
Also, it's
dynamic because you can customise and adapt Moodle to use for your own particular learning purposes or needs as we'll explore soon.

So let's fast-forward to today 2024, and Moodle is actually used all around the world. And the interface, so the wording of Moodle, where you press the buttons or where your instructions for logging in or for going to different areas are translated into over a hundred languages. So, you can actually be in a country and use Moodle in your language, and it is available in all the countries of the world. And yes, it is everywhere. There are over 160,000 Moodle sites, sites that use Moodle around the world that we know of because, as I'm going to explain, Moodle is entirely free. So, no one has to tell us OR the developers if they use it. There could be millions of Moodle sites around the world that we don't know of. These are the only ones that have registered to tell the organisation, which we call Moodle HQ, that makes and maintains Moodle, it has headquarters in Australia and Spain, Barcelona. is a physical building. In Australia, since Covid, they realised like many of us did, that employees were happy to work remotely from home. And so the Australian headquarters is an occasional shared office space. And, in fact, But I want to make a few points about Moodle and the use of Moodle. Yes, Moodle is used in large prestigious organisations around the world. The University of Cambridge, in Paris, UNESCO, and the United Nations also use versions of Moodle, Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Busitema University, Shell, the petroleum company, uses Moodle and many other corporations and education Institutions.

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Moodle is a business that runs on ethical lines, that is aware of the environment,Moodle can be used from the largest to the smallest of organisations. You can use Moodle as one individual teacher, as a homeschooler in a small elementary school, all the way up to those large organisations. But never lose sight of the United Nations sustainable development goal number four, ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. So you see here, there is that word equitable. And how does Moodle do that? Ensure inclusive, equitable quality education, and how can it be done for all, for everyone?

Well, first of all, I want to clarify and explain that Moodle is entirely free. You can just get Moodle and use it. You don't need to ask permission; you don't need any license. Moodle is also open source ;That means that the code that was used to make Moodle originally Martin's, but now contributed by many, many other developers, which is PHP mainly is available for anyone to adapt. If you know how to code, you can just get the code and change the Moodle to use it exactly how you want. Now additionally, there is a Moodle app. We have a Moodle app, so you can have an app for your smartphone or your tablet, which is entirely free. Again, you just go and get it from whichever app store you use. And what is really useful about this, which is mainly for students, is that if you are in an area where internet connection is poor or not stable. For example, some areas of India or Africa, then if you use the app, you can download your tasks, your assignments, you can do them offline. And then the next time that you can get onto the internet somehow you can sync your assignments, your other tasks back onto the Moodle website to continue your learning. And this is a very, very powerful and free feature.