Moodle is fast becoming the world's favourite learning management system or virtual learning environment. We have been strong advocates since we launched back in 2005.

Moodle has the potential to turn the LMS market upside down - many would argue it already has. Rich in functionality, easy to use, with the power of a huge developer community at your disposal...is there a better stocking filler this Christmas than a Moodle for your loved one?

The world's favourite LMS?

We are strong believers in the use of Open Source software and Moodle in particular. Over 100,000 organisations use Moodle, including large organisations in the UK such as Capita and the Open University.

Moodle is Open Source software, which means that the software is freely available to download and can be used without a fee by any organisation. There are no licence fees for Moodle, the main requirement of using the software is that if you develop new modules for Moodle these are made available freely to the Open Source Community.

The number of Moodle installations and size of the user base has made Moodle a very robust and reliable LMS. Moodle was originally designed for the education community and has been adopted on mass by Universities and Colleges. In our experience, this has meant that corporate organisations need to make quite a few changes to ensure it fits with the approach and culture of a corporate university or learning department. In our work with clients, we have developed a standard corporate Moodle installation which we can tailor quickly and easily. Current clients include BUPA, Europcar and Marks & Spencer.

You can see and try Moodle for yourself at our free kineo moodle demo site. 

Tasty functionality

There is a vast amount of functionality available within Moodle. We have developed an approach of using a Moodle course format which allows many different learning resources to be added to any particular course. These learning resources include:

-    word documents
-    e-learning courses and modules
-    pdf documents
-    audio
-    video
-    web links

Moodle itself also provides tools to create simple html pop up web pages, so that you can create additional learning resources.

Moodle also has standard modules which you can use with a course which we use such as:

-    calendar (to book workshop/event dates)
-    discussion forum
-    chat room
-    RSS feeds
-    the ability for users to create their own blogs or learning records

Moodle allows users to be set up manually by an administrator or uploaded from a source file such as a text file. Moodle also provides an option for users to self register on the site.

Tracked and secure

Moodle restricts access to a particular course by use of an enrolment key. If a user hasn't been enrolled by an administrator in a course, the user is prevented from accessing the course by being asked for the enrolment key, basically a password.

Within a course, users can be allocated to Groups. Thus if you have a sales course you might run this for many different cohorts. Each cohort can be set up as a Group. Each Group can see all of the learning resources in the course but can only see and discuss with other people in their Group.

Moodle provides a wide range of tracking data from course access data to course scores on e-learning modules. In short: it's not a good time to be a commercial LMS player heading into 2007. Moodle is cooking your golden goose, if you'll permit the mixed metaphor...

Let Kineo help

Want your own corporate Moodle? Kineo Moodle LMS Services can help.
Contact us to discuss your requirements, or find out more about the Open Source itself at Moodle.