lang/en_utf8/docs/features.html

   1 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
   2     "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
   3 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
   4 <head>
   5
   6 <title>Moodle Docs: Features</title>
   7
   8 <link rel="stylesheet" href="docstyles.css" type="TEXT/CSS" />
   9
  10 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
  11 </head>
  12 <body>
  13
  14 <h1>Features</h1>
  15 <blockquote>
  16   <p>Moodle is an active and evolving product. This page lists just some of the
  17   many features it contains:</p>
  18   <h3>Overall design</h3>
  19   <ul>
  20     <li>Promotes a social constructionist pedagogy (collaboration, activities, critical
  21     reflection, etc)</li>
  22     <li>Suitable for 100% online classes as well as supplementing face-to-face learning
  23   </li>
  24     <li>Simple, lightweight, efficient, compatible, low-tech browser interface</li>
  25     <li>Easy to install on almost any platform that supports PHP. Requires only
  26     one database (and can share it).</li>
  27     <li>Full database abstraction supports all major brands of database (except
  28     for initial table definition)</li>
  29     <li>Course listing shows descriptions for every course on the server, including
  30     accessibility to guests.</li>
  31     <li>Courses can be categorised and searched - one Moodle site can support thousands
  32     of courses</li>
  33     <li>Emphasis on strong security throughout. Forms are all checked, data validated,
  34     cookies encrypted etc</li>
  35     <li>Most text entry areas (resources, forum postings etc) can
  36     be edited using an embedded WYSIWYG HTML editor</li>
  37   </ul>
  38   <h3 >Site management</h3>
  39   <ul>
  40     <li>Site is managed by an admin user, defined during setup</li>
  41     <li>Plug-in "themes" allow the admin to customise the site colours, fonts, layout
  42     etc to suit local needs</li>
  43     <li>Plug-in activity modules can be added to existing Moodle installations</li>
  44     <li>Plug-in language packs allow full localisation to any language. These can
  45     be edited using a built-in web-based editor. Currently there are language
  46     packs for over <a href="http://moodle.org/download/lang/" target="_top">43
  47     languages</a>.</li>
  48     <li>The code is clearly-written PHP under a GPL license - easy to modify to
  49     suit your needs</li>
  50   </ul>
  51   <h3 >User management</h3>
  52   <ul>
  53     <li>Goals are to reduce admin involvement to a minimum, while retaining high
  54     security</li>
  55     <li>Supports a range of authentication mechanisms through plug-in authentication
  56     modules, allowing easy integration with existing systems.</li>
  57     <li>Standard email method: students can create their own login accounts. Email
  58     addresses are verified by confirmation.</li>
  59     <li>LDAP method: account logins can be checked against an LDAP server. Admin
  60     can specify which fields to use.</li>
  61     <li>IMAP, POP3, NNTP: account logins are checked against a mail or news server.
  62     SSL, certificates and TLS are supported.</li>
  63     <li>External database: any database containing at least two fields can be used
  64     as an external authentication source.</li>
  65     <li>Each person requires only one account for the whole server - each account
  66     can have different access</li>
  67     <li>An admin account controls the creation of courses and creates teachers by
  68     assigning users to courses</li>
  69     <li>A course creator account is only allowed to create courses and teach in
  70     them</li>
  71     <li>Teachers may have editing privileges removed so that they can't modify the
  72     course (eg for part-time tutors)</li>
  73     <li>Security - teachers can add an "enrolment key" to their courses to keep
  74     out non-students. They can give out this key face-to-face or via personal
  75     email etc</li>
  76     <li>Teachers can enrol students manually if desired</li>
  77     <li>Teachers can unenrol students manually if desired, otherwise they are automatically
  78     unenrolled after a certain period of inactivity (set by the admin)</li>
  79     <li>Students are encouraged to build an online profile including photos, description.
  80     Email addresses can be protected from display if required.</li>
  81     <li>Every user can specify their own timezone, and every date in Moodle is translated
  82     to that timezone (eg posting dates, assignment due dates etc)</li>
  83     <li>Every user can choose the language used for the Moodle interface (English,
  84     French, German, Spanish, Portuguese etc)</li>
  85   </ul>
  86   <h3 >Course management</h3>
  87   <ul>
  88     <li>A full teacher has full control over all settings for a course, including
  89     restricting other teachers</li>
  90     <li>Choice of course formats such as by week, by topic or a discussion-focussed
  91     social format</li>
  92     <li>Flexible array of course activities - Forums, Quizzes, Resources,
  93     Choices, Surveys, Assignments, Chats, Workshops</li>
  94     <li>Recent changes to the course since the last login can be displayed on the
  95     course home page - helps give sense of community</li>
  96     <li>Most text entry areas (resources, forum postings etc) can
  97     be edited using an embedded WYSIWYG HTML editor</li>
  98     <li>All grades for Forums, Quizzes and Assignments can be viewed on
  99     one page (and downloaded as a spreadsheet file)</li>
 100     <li>Full user logging and tracking - activity reports for each student are available
 101     with graphs and details about each module (last access, number of times read)
 102     as well as a detailed "story" of each students involvement including postings
 103     etc on one page.</li>
 104     <li>Mail integration - copies of forum posts, teacher feedback etc can be mailed
 105     in HTML or plain text.</li>
 106     <li>Custom scales - teachers can define their own scales to be used for grading
 107     forums and assignments</li>
 108     <li>Courses can be packaged as a single zip file using the Backup function.
 109     These can be restored on any Moodle server.</li>
 110   </ul>
 111   <h3 >Assignment Module</h3>
 112   <ul>
 113     <li>Assignments can be specified with a due date and a maximum grade.</li>
 114     <li>Students can upload their assignments (any file format) to the server -
 115     they are date-stamped.</li>
 116     <li>Late assignments are allowed, but the amount of lateness is shown clearly
 117     to the teacher</li>
 118     <li>For each particular assignment, the whole class can be assessed (grade and
 119     comment) on one page in one form.</li>
 120     <li>Teacher feedback is appended to the assignment page for each student, and
 121     notification is mailed out.</li>
 122     <li>The teacher can choose to allow resubmission of assignments after grading
 123     (for regrading)</li>
 124   </ul>
 125   </ul>
 126   <h3 >Chat Module</h3>
 127   <ul>
 128     <li>Allows smooth, synchronous text interaction</li>
 129     <li>Includes profile pictures in the chat window</li>
 130     <li>Supports URLs, smilies, embedded HTML, images etc</li>
 131     <li>All sessions are logged for later viewing, and these can also be made available
 132     to students</li>
 133   </ul>
 134   <h3 >Choice Module</h3>
 135   <ul>
 136     <li>Like a poll. Can either be used to vote on something, or to get feedback
 137     from every student (eg research consent)</li>
 138     <li>Teacher sees intuitive table view of who chose what</li>
 139     <li>Students can optionally be allowed to see an up-to-date graph of results</li>
 140   </ul>
 141   <h3 >Forum Module</h3>
 142   <ul>
 143     <li>Different types of forums are available, such as teacher-only, course news,
 144     open-to-all, and one-thread-per-user.</li>
 145     <li>All postings have the authors photo attached.</li>
 146     <li>Discussions can be viewed nested, flat or threaded, oldest or newest first.</li>
 147     <li>Individual forums can be subscribed to by each person so that copies are
 148     forwarded via email, or the teacher can force subscription for all</li>
 149     <li>The teacher can choose not to allow replies (eg for an announcements-only
 150     forum)</li>
 151     <li>Discussion threads can be easily moved between forums by the teacher</li>
 152     <li>Attached images are shown inline</li>
 153     <li>If forum ratings are being used, these can be restricted to a range of dates</li>
 154   </ul>
 155   <h3 >Quiz Module</h3>
 156   <ul>
 157     <li>Teachers can define a database of questions for re-use in different quizzes</li>
 158     <li>Questions can be stored in categories for easy access, and these categories
 159     can be &quot;published&quot; to make them accessible from any course on the
 160     site. </li>
 161     <li>Quizzes are automatically graded, and can be re-graded if questions are
 162     modified </li>
 163     <li>Quizzes can have a limited time window outside of which they are not available</li>
 164     <li>At the teacher's option, quizzes can be attempted multiple times, and can
 165     show feedback and/or correct answers</li>
 166     <li>Quiz questions and quiz answers can be shuffled (randomised) to reduce cheating</li>
 167     <li>Questions allow HTML and images</li>
 168     <li>Questions can be imported from external text files</li>
 169     <li>Attempts can be cumulative, if desired, and finished over several sessions</li>
 170     <li>Multiple-choice questions supporting single or multiple answers</li>
 171     <li>Short Answer questions (words or phrases)</li>
 172     <li>True-False questions </li>
 173     <li>Matching questions</li>
 174     <li>Random questions</li>
 175     <li>Numerical questions (with allowable ranges)</li>
 176     <li>Embedded-answer questions (cloze style) with answers within passages of
 177     text </li>
 178     <li>Embedded descriptive text and graphics</li>
 179   </ul>
 180   <h3 >Resource Module</h3>
 181   <ul>
 182     <li>Supports display of any electronic content, Word, Powerpoint, Flash, Video,
 183     Sounds etc</li>
 184     <li>Files can be uploaded and managed on the server, or created on the fly using
 185     web forms (text or HTML)</li>
 186     <li>External content on the web can be linked to or seamlessly included within
 187     the course interface.</li>
 188     <li>External web applications can be linked in with data passed to them</li>
 189   </ul>
 190   <h3 >Survey Module</h3>
 191   <ul>
 192     <li>Built-in surveys (COLLES, ATTLS) have been proven as instruments for analysing online classes</li>
 193     <li>Online survey reports always available, including many graphs.  Data is downloadable as an Excel spreadsheet or CSV text file.</li>
 194     <li>Survey interface prevents partly-finished surveys.</li>
 195     <li>Feedback is provided to the student of their results compared to the class averages
 196 </li>
 197   </ul>
 198   <h3 >Workshop Module</h3>
 199   <ul>
 200     <li>Allows peer assessement of documents, and the teacher can manage and grade
 201     the assessment.</li>
 202     <li>Supports a wide range of possible grading scales</li>
 203     <li>Teacher can provide sample documents for students to practice grading</li>
 204     <li>Very flexible with many options.</li>
 205   </ul>
 206   <p>&nbsp;</p>
 207 </blockquote>
 208 <p align="center"><font size="1"><a href="." target="_top">Moodle Documentation</a></font></p>
 209 <p align="center"><font size="1">Version: $Id$</font></p>
 210 </body>
 211 </html>