Calling all educators! Yesterday Moodle released MoodleCloud designed specifically to help educators that are looking for small installations of Moodle. Intended for teachers who are looking to implement online learning to 50 users or less, MoodleCloud provides a free Moodle Hosting site for those who are working with no budget.

If you are looking to implement a new LMS, or you are planning a LMS migration, you may be wondering how to narrow down your search. How do you know what to look for in a LMS? What are the best features of a LMS, and which ones can benefit your organization specifically? With our 20+ years worth of knowledge in the learning management system market, we have made a list of the top 5 things to look for when shopping for a new LMS. If you're looking for more information on what you should expect from an LMS, sign up for our webinar, Top 7 Hidden Costs of Deploying an LMS, on December 10th. 

Now that you have Moodle installed onto either a Mac or PC (Windows) it’s time to set up your Moodle user accounts! Before we teach you how to set up a course in Moodle, you will need to know how to set up Moodle user accounts. This capability is given to the Moodle LMS administrators, Moodle managers and in some cases Moodle users if you choose to allow learners to self-register.

Knowing how to set up Moodle courses is essential for any and all Moodle LMS administrators. You can only add new courses if you have Moodle administrator, course creator, or Moodle manager rights. 

Totara recently announced the launch of Totara Cloud, which will become available later this month. If you are a small business or proprietorship who needs a corporate learning management system for a handful of people, then TotaraCloud is for you. Or perhaps you looking to implement Totara LMS for a large organization - Totara Cloud is a great to play around with the deep feature set.

Since they were recently acquired by LinkedIn, lynda.com has become an extremely well-known name in the eLearning industry. We are excited to be partnering with them to provide our learners access to their large library of video tutorials, and online courses. 

Once you have created your Moodle course the next step is to enroll your learners into that course! The following instructions are for manual Moodle enrolments.

Lambda is partnering up with the online learning company, lynda.com, to provide an extensive library of video tutorials, and online courses that can be directly integrated with Moodle.

Now that we have shown you how to set up Moodle, courses, and users, it’s time to learn how to set up the most used Moodle feature - Quizzes! Knowing how to create a moodle quiz is going to be essential for Moodle administrators and teachers as it is a great way to test knowledge comprehension before, during and after modules and courses. The great thing about the Quiz feature in Moodle is that quizzes can be set up to be automatically marked, or saved for grading by the instructor later.

We've previously discussed how gamification is changing corporate training. But what does a gamified course actually look like? And how do gamified course results compare with those of a more traditionally designed course based on the same content?

Introduction Here’s the scenario: You are about to setup your Moodle LMS installation, and you aren’t sure where to start, what to consider, or what you should know. The good news is if you are outsourcing your Moodle hosting - which is the recommended method - the Moodle installation process will be taken care of for you. Moodle hosting vendors, like Lambda Solutions, help take away the headache of installing the site on a server, and remove stress surrounding the optimization of your Moodle site's performance. 

Six Companies Form the Partners of Open Source Educational Technologies (POET) Working Group to Develop Common Standards for Moodle Plugin Development The nature of open source projects allow for massive growth in a small periods of time due to contributions from many developers. Like any large project or organization, one can imagine the difficulties that may arise to ensure that innovation in code is kept on track with a common goal and mission.

Introduction Here’s the scenario: You are about to setup your Moodle LMS installation, and you aren’t sure where to start, what to consider, or what you should know. The good news is if you are outsourcing your Moodle hosting - which is the recommended method - the Moodle installation process will be taken care of for you. Moodle hosting vendors, like Lambda Solutions, help take away the headache of installing the site on a server, and remove stress surrounding the optimization of your Moodle site's performance. 

Course Creation in Moodle There are a few best practices to follow when it comes to creating Moodle courses. Here are some things to consider. Keep students engaged by having activity based courses (with assignments, and quizzes), or socially based (with forums, chats, and wiki’s). Sticking to only one delivery method can cause boredom, but changing up the delivery method keeps the mind stimulated.

Lambda is officially going to become a one-stop shop for all your Moodle reporting needs as Lambda Analytika™ for Moodle is on the way! Earlier this year, Lambda launched their new reporting and analytics solution, Lambda Analytika™ for Totara LMS. The response in the short time since its release has been tremendously positive. Lambda Analytika has relieved a number of our Totara clients of their reporting pains and problems, and it has really filled the gap in the LMS market.

Moodle reporting is likely one of the most requested of Moodle’s extended features, because LMS reports are an essential component of the eLearning process; both for learners and managers. Learning analytics provide teachers with learning trends to provide better education, and general reporting allows managers to report on overarching progress like completion, compliance and competencies. Moodle has standard reporting functions which we outline below.

One of the greatest benefits of eLearning, is the ability to incorporate multimedia. Moodle’s multimedia capabilities are available through plugins. By enabling your Multimedia plugins filter in Moodle, multimedia will be transformed from a link that points to a multimedia resource, to the appropriate multimedia player. An example of this is if a teacher places a video file as a resource in a course, or includes a URL link to an external video file. When the multimedia plugin is turned on, students will then be able to play video files from a screen within their Moodle interface.

A steady stream of communication is essential for learner engagement. There are a few common tools available for communication in Moodle: Forum modules, blogs, messaging, and attendance. 

Mobile Moodle learning can refer to two things - mobility of learning (i.e. learning on the go), and learning directly from your mobile device. Not surprisingly, the two definitions are interdependently related. Learning on your mobile phone allows increased collaboration, and it acts as an extra channel for communication in a course. Mobile Moodle learning is best when used as a supplementary method to eLearning environments, or even face-to-face classes.

Gamification in Moodle is one of the most effective ways to engage and motivate learners, by using game mechanics and games. Let us quickly clarify the difference between the two. Game mechanics are common gaming tactics used to ignite competition and the desire for learners to ‘win’. Games on the other hand, are the tangible games themselves, such as hangman, or crosswords. The Moodle Games Plugin allows you to utilize glossaries, short answer questions, multiple choice questions, and true/false questions to quiz learners with the following available games:

The Harvard Business Review named elearning badges as one of the most innovative trends to watch in 2013, and two years later, lms badge functionalities have only gotten better. A digital Moodle badge is essentially an online recognition of your achievements and skills. If a user has a number of certifications, for example, they can receive and display lms badges online to recognize their achievement or competency. Moodle badges can be given out based on a number of different achievements or criteria. With the ability to track a recipient’s communities of online interaction, a Moodle badge will show the work completed, and the outcomes learned to achieve said badge.

Moodle’s Feedback module is not the same as its Survey module. With Moodle’s Feedback module, you can create your own questions, to conduct surveys. This is in contrast with Moodle’s Survey tool, where you have to choose from a list of pre-written questions (similar to Moodle Quiz). Moodle Feedback Activities are also ideal for course, trainer, or teacher evaluations, as you have the option of creating non-graded questions.

Lambda is heading down south to Las Vegas at the end of the month, to attend the DevLearn 2015 Conference and Expo! DevLearn is focused on showcasing new learning technologies, making it the ideal conference for the movers and shakers in the eLearning industry. With the recent development of Lambda Analytika™ under our belt, Lambda is excited to meet and connect with fellow thought leaders, and innovators.  

With the instant access to information that the wonderful world wide web offers us, plagiarism has been a serious byproduct. There are a number of plagiarism prevention tools used by schools and education institutes, and Moodle is now one of them. There are a few different plagiarism plugins for Moodle that are available to Moodle users. Here are the top Moodle plugins for plagiarism prevention in Moodle.