Moodle Academy, the hub for learning everything about online education with Moodle, announces the launch of two new courses – Set up your Moodle Development Environment and Introduction to Moodle.
Moodle Academy Product Manager, Jessica Gramp explains, “Our goal is to provide ways for everyone in the Moodle community to improve their understanding of Moodle, and ability to use its tools. In addition to supporting educators, Moodle Academy is expanding to provide new professional learning opportunities for developers and administrators.”
Introduction to Moodle
Developed by Richard Lefroy, the Introduction to Moodle course provides a high-level overview of how Moodle works and is suitable for all users new to Moodle – educators, trainers, administrators and developers – or those who want to understand Moodle’s structure and feature set in more detail. Approximately one hour in duration, this course includes an overview of Moodle and its commitment to open-source, security and accessibility. The course provides a broad overview of Moodle LMS key features including user roles, permissions and enrolments; and key elements of a Moodle course, such as the gradebook, activities, resources and blocks. It also covers Moodle’s flexible and extensible structure, the use of plugins and how the Moodle community contributes to its development.
It is recommended as a prerequisite course for anyone not already familiar with Moodle, including developers who can move on to the Moodle Development Environment course.
Set up your Moodle Development Environment
Set up your Moodle Development Environment is a beginner course, developed by Rajneel Totaram and Jonathan Deavers, that will help PHP developers get familiar with the Moodle development environment over an estimated three hours of learning time. It will introduce participants to the Moodle developer community and basic development tasks and standards. This includes setting up a Moodle development environment; Moodle source code management; Moodle code checking tools; creating a basic plugin from a template; and installing and uninstalling plugins.
“Our Moodle Development Environment course is the first course in a series of six that will become the Moodle Developer Basics program and replace the Moodle Plugin Development Basics course on Learn Moodle. This is an exciting new pathway in Moodle Academy. Developers can tackle one course at a time, knowing that they are working towards a full program of learning for which they can achieve a certificate of completion. Allowing participants to access smaller bites of learning that contribute to achieving a micro-credential is intrinsically motivating and an effective way to develop professional skills,” says Gramp.
The full program of courses in Moodle Developer Basics is due for release in April 2022 and will include five follow-on courses on web output essentials; Moodle’s modular architecture and APIs; Moodle access and security essentials; testing configuration and upgrades; and accessible development practices.
Both of these new courses are self-paced and participants can join at any time.
Find out more about Moodle Academy, sign up for courses, join a webinar and get badges and certificates to demonstrate your new knowledge and skills.
