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How Helpful is a Branded & Customized Moodle Mobile App?

Every product or service you come across comes into the market with specific colours, logo designs, and plenty of other aspects to talk about. That’s how you differentiate your product or service with zillions of others in the same domain or category.

Guess what? The corresponding Moodle mobile app development for your Learning Management System (LMS) has no exception from having a brand awareness. That too, in this new-age, the brand value speaks volumes and fetches continuous business. That’s how helpful branding is!

Branding means value, prestige, and subsequently, constant business.

When you want to provide a mobile app of Moodle LMS for your folks, what you get is a plain Moodle mobile app. You can ask your Moodle LMS vendor to do these two following things:

  • Create a branded mobile app, or
  • Customize that Moodle mobile app

Let’s see what each one means.

Branded Mobile App

Moodle provides a mobile app in case you want to have it along with your Moodle LMS. But you get a plain Moodle mobile app. However, you can ask your Moodle services provide such as eAbyas Info Solutions to provide a branded app for your learners.

The branded mobile app includes:

  • The change of Moodle logo with yours
  • The change of default colour scheme with yours, representing your organization’s

Apart from that, everything is will be as it is from the default Moodle mobile app.

For more information regarding the branded mobile app services, shoot a message to us. eAbyas Info Solutions mobile development team will get back to you with details.

Customized Mobile App

A customized mobile app completely differs from branding mobile app in many ways. Some of the custom requirements for LMS app users such as you are listed here:

  • Dashboards
  • Login page
  • User profiles
  • User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX)
  • Navigation
  • Unique learning modules such as classrooms or learning paths
  • And more unique components

You can have a combination of both branding and customization for Moodle mobile app.

Want to have a look at what a customized mobile app look like? Check this one out. BizLMS is a corporate training software from eAbyas Info Solutions. One of the principal advantages of this built-on-top-of-Moodle-platform is its mobile application.

The LMS app developed by our mobile app team incorporates all major aspects of your Moodle LMS. The learners can even attempt quizzes or submit assignments at their convenience.

Plus, the app showcases the UI/UX part brilliantly with easy-to-find something navigation, classrooms, eLearning, and other focal aspects of a major corporate LMS.

For more information, write to us and we will get back to you as fast as we can.

How Do a Branded & Customized Mobile App Help Your Learners?
Having a branded & customized mobile app offers plenty of benefits for you on the whole. Consider some of the benefits here:

  • Offer micro learning through a custom mobile app
  • Help access the courses’ content both online and offline
  • Provide corporate training at their fingertips for optimal learning outputs
  • Encourage personalized learning at the learner’s own pace of learning
  • Utilize the technology for reducing costs and efforts as in case of product demonstration through live videos
  • Include provisions to take tests online and submit the assignments through the app
  • Make them access the training calendar for their information for registering and taking part in their courses and events
  • And more

Thus, having a branded and customized mobile app only complements your corporate training by helping your learner to access training contents at anywhere and anytime.

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5 Top Moodle Themes of Old & New to Know in 2020

Top 5 Moodle Themes 2020

It’s been about a score year since the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS) in the market as the first of its kind – the Open Source. Today, 100 million users adopt Moodle as their learning software, yet one issue is persistent – UI/UX of the Moodle platform.

The themes solve the problem, but only in part. Because the UI/UX is described as the Achilles heel of Moodle. And only the LMS has the power to fix it right just how you can overcome your own weakness!

In this post, we’ll discuss the 5 top Moodle themes in 2020. Some of them are free and some others come at a cost.

#1 Adaptable 

The name of the theme speaks for itself – you can adapt it to suit your organization branding and style while sharing the burden of testing and development with a community of other Moodle professionals.

The theme showcases a two-column display of items. And it is useful for large to small university installations.

One of the best things about this popular theme is you can place as many marketing blocks as sixty for display, with only two slider images on the homepage.

By the way, you can have two or three-row headers for your sites with customization controls with you. And the support for multiple languages is underway for this theme.

Adaptable Moodle Theme

#2 Theme Lambda 

Theme Lambda has also been one of the best Moodle themes designed and developed by Lambda Solutions so far. However, they need to update the theme versions along with Moodle version releases.

The USP of this theme is it comes with 4+ columns with a completely responsive design so that your users can access the site across the devices. Plus, you have good documentation of theme as a reference resource.

More or less, you will get an eye-catching Moodle site with the Theme Lambda with all the needful customization options from the header to the footer for your branding.

And yes, this premium theme supports languages from RTL to LTR.

Lambda Moodle Theme

#3 Essential 

The Essential theme is one of the most loved free themes for Moodle LMS in spite of its two main drawbacks – no support and end of life beyond Moodle version 3.6.

That is to say, if you download Essential theme for your Moodle version 3.8, your site will be crashed! It doesn’t work.

However, one of the good things of this Moodle theme is it enables you to upload as many icons for fonts as possible. Its layout is simple and a classic three-column type. And you get customization options for the colour scheme.

And it’s best suitable for making sales pages for selling your courses online.

Essential Moodle Theme

#4 RemUI

RemUI is a third-party theme for the Moodle platform from Edwiser. The theme’s USP is its user experience with common features like customization, RTL language support, and the responsive design.

The added advantage of RemUI as of now is you can create courses with two unique course creation formats. And the arrangement of course blocks in a four-column layout in the dashboards looks neat and tidy for the theme users.

As one of the modern themes, RemUI offers multiple colour schemes for its users for branding.

Overall, you get a nice theme to enhance your Moodle eLearning experience.

RemUI Moodle Theme

#5 Moove

Okay. You want to have a theme that showcases what matters the most, the content and learning activities? Moove is the theme! It’s a kind of ‘let’s get to the business’ theme.

The theme offers ‘uniform and enjoyable’ typography, design and customizable login page for you. The USP of this modern theme is it showcases the progress of a Moodle course by topic-wise.

Plus, Moove goes the extra mile and provides an accessibility toolbar to help increase or decrease the font size. And it’s dyslexia-friendly – the readers with dyslexia can make use of this theme without any difficulty.

The drawback of the Moove theme is it’s not fully responsive, and you get the dashboard for admins only. By the way, the Moove theme is a freebie.

Moove Moodle theme

Bonus – Theme Material

The Material theme is designed and developed by eAbyas Info Solutions, a Moodle Partner. It’s pretty good for Universities, Online Learning Portals and K-12 institutions.

And the USP of this theme is a minimalistic design with as little or much as customization to represent your branding – colour scheme, iconography, typography, component design and so on.

The Material theme offers a modern and responsive front-page builder with drag & drop options to position items as such sliders, welcome note, courses, faculty, testimonial and others.

You can place a maximum of four to five slider images.

Coming to the dashboard for this theme users, you get clutter-free and beautifully arranged items with the classic three columns.

The premium theme will be updated seamlessly with the latest versions of the Moodle platform.

Material Moodle Theme

That’s the end of the list. There are other themes as well that earned the admiration of Moodle users. For more details about the rest of the themes, visit the Moodle organization website.

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Welcome to New Moodle Theme for 2020

Material Moodle theme

eAbyas Info Solutions, a Moodle Partner, takes this moment to announce the launch of a brand new Moodle theme for 2020. At the beginning of this New Year, the Company wants to offer something new and yet profound theme for the Moodle LMS for Moodle platform users across the globe.

So you’ll have this brand new Moodle theme to deck up your Moodle sites. And theme showcases a different blend of design components, layouts, and site aesthetics to display items you want to on its front page.

And we call this professional theme, Material. It’s the best basic Moodle theme for Moodle users.

Guess what? Theme Material makes a good choice for your Moodle sites of K-12, Universities, Online Learning Portals or any site in between. With its in-built flexibility, you can custom the theme to represent your brand.

The themes have a list of these features:

  • Based on Moodle’s core theme
  • Boost Responsive design
  • Custom logo
  • Custom menus
  • User menu
  • Frontpage slideshow (up to 5 slides)
  • Frontpage testimonials section (up to 3 items)
  • Footer social media links
  • Footer content
  • Footer social media links
  • Custom SCSS/CSS
  • Custom icons for course activities and files
  • Supports Moodle social logins
  • Supports popular Moodle course format plugins
  • Supports Font Awesome v4.7.0 icons (600+ icons)
  • Supports Bootstrap 4 components
  • Compatible Browsers: (All Latest) IE, Chrome, Firefox & Safari
  • And more

The noteworthy point here as you can already guess from the above list of features is this new Moodle theme is completely customizable. You can add on or take out anything from the available features and make fantastic front-pages using the front-page builder.

By the way, this theme seamlessly supports the Moodle versions starting from 3.5, 3.6 and up to 3.7. However, the theme versions will be released.

Visit the theme’s website now to buy it.

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7 Moodle Authentication Plugins to Know for Secure Login

Moodle Plugin for Secure Login

Moodle platform is one of the few Learning Management Systems (LMSs) that comply with Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) for secure login.

You can login to Moodle LMS in two ways;

  1. Default Login from Moodle
  2. SSO Login for User Authentication

Default Login from Moodle

Moodle LMS provides default login form, where you can self-register to access the platform. By default, the Moodle system is secure. However, for various reasons, corporates or organization go for other secure login integrations to authenticate a visitor before giving access to the LMS.

Moodle Login

Some of the reasons to know are here: namely,

  • Course/Content security
  • Employee/Corporate data sensitivity
  • Data/Content restriction to specific groups in the company

So, that prompts the corporates or organizations to have the integration of authentication tools with their Moodle platform.

SSO Login for User Authentication

The acronym SSO stands for Single Sign-on (SSO). Using the SSO integration tools, the users can access multiple systems (or applications) using single credentials.

Moodle SSO integration

For instance, you want to access your Moodle LMS. But your company integrated the LMS with its HRMS. So, if you try with your Moodle logins, the site will redirect you to the SSO page to authenticate you. Once the authentication is done, then only you can access your Moodle.

This is what happens during the process; if the credentials you entered matches with those of HRMS, then you’ll be granted access to the system. Otherwise, you get a message like a User is not registered with us.

For more info on how we make Moodle SSO integration (or Moodle Single Sign On API), talk to us today.

So, you have several Moodle authentication plugins for giving access to your LMS and other systems integrated into it.

A list of them follows as below:

  1. LDAP
  2. Azure AD
  3. OAuth2
  4. OpenID Connect
  5. SAML2 Single Sign-on
  6. User Key Authentication
  7. A2FA

Let’s see each authentication tool one by one.

7 Moodle Authentication Plugins

The list of the tools provided above isn’t necessarily in the order of the most employed but those are mostly used for User Authentication.

By the way, eAbyas Info Solutions, a Moodle Partner for over a decade, does all these integrations for corporates. BizLMS, which is a corporate training LMS, is a testament to our technical prowess.

Now, let’s see the Moodle authentication plugins.

7 Moodle Authentication plugins

#1. LDAP

The LDAP acronym stands for Light-weight Directory Access Protocol. It’s a slim version of DAP. It’s a kind of internet protocol without which it’s not feasible to set networking between two systems.

The main usefulness of this application protocol is to maintain a distributed directory information of items in an organized way. That is to say that the LDAP stores data in the form of records with ‘Distinguished Name.’

Some significant features of this authentication plugin:

  • Synchronize users to inactivate or to delete them after a set period of time from LDAP servers
  • Prevent users, who never logged in, to create Moodle account by themselves
  • Supports first logins through email just as Moodle core does
  • Use the plugin for any version of Moodle starting above 2.6

For Moodle LDAP sync set up (LDAP integration into Moodle), contact eAbyas Info Solutions today.

#2. Azure AD

Azure Active Directory works for any Moodle installation, not just for Windows Azure with Single Sign-on with Office 365.

How it works:

  • Take the code to generate the login URL as well as the settings from the block code
  • Integrate the code with your Moodle site front page for the integrate login experience

#3 OAuth2.0 (Open Authorization) 

OAuth2 is a framework that allows an end user’s information to share with third-parties without revealing that data.

You get the OAuth2 plugin available in Moodle core from its version 3.3 onward. For other versions, you need to get it separately.

How it works:

  • When you click on Google button, you will be redirected to its page for authentication
  • You allow the site know your basic info
  • In the redirection URL, there is a private token parameter
  • The plugin uses this token to access the info such as the email from Google servers
  • The plugin tries to match the user’s email with a Moodle account. If matched, the user will be given access. Otherwise, a new user is created.

#4 OpenID Connect

OpenID Connect is part of the Office suite 365 plugins for Moodle platform. However, it can be configurable for other OpenID Connect providers.

OpenID Connect for Moodle
Image Credits: Screenshot from Moodle

This plugin provides Single Sign-on (SSO) functionality.

How it works:

  • Existing users with Moodle accounts can switch to use this plugin for logging into Moodle
  • New users will have the accounts created for them
  • Users can disconnect from the OpenID Connect upon the administrator’s approval to go back to their previous login method, Username, and Password

It’s also available for Moodle versions above 3.0.

#5 SAML 2 Single Sign-on (SAML Authentication Moodle)

The acronym SAML stands for Security Assertion Mark-up Language (SAML). It’s an open standard that allows Identity Providers (IdP) to pass credentials to Service Providers to use services. That is to say, with one set of logins you can access multiple applications.

SAML integration forms a link between the authentication of a user’s identity and his authorization to a service. In other words, the plugin provides two-factor authentication; the user’s authentication by verifying the credentials and authorizing the user to allow what application to access.

This plugin (SAML Authentication Moodle) is safer and offers better controls for security to enterprises than the OAuth plugin.

How it works:

  • User logins using SSO to access Moodle
  • Moodle (service provider) sends back the user’s credentials to Identity Provider (IdP) for authentication
  • IdP sends back the communication to authorize the user
  • The user gets access to Moodle

#6 User Key Authentication

Using this authentication plugin, you get a one-time login URL for simple SSO access.

How it works:

  • User logins to his external web application to access Moodle through a web call to Moodle
  • Provides info to match with some of the fields with Moodle
  • A URL will be generated to access Moodle platform without typing his Username and Password

#7 A2FA (Another 2 Factor Authentication)

A2FA allows users to follow two-factor authentication – token and user credentials like User Name and Password. To generate tokens, this plugin uses Google’s authenticator app.

And it is available even to the latest Moodle versions 3.7.

A2FA Plugin for Moodle
Image Credits: Screenshot from Moodle

A2FA is a mobile-friendly plugin.

In conclusion, the Moodle platform incorporates the best and the latest security measures for super-safe access into the system. To get Moodle services for you, visit our eAbyas site today!

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How Good is It to Have Moodle Mobile App for Your L&D?

Moodle Mobile App

In this age of Information Technology, everything changes so fast even the learning methods and means have no exception to these changes. When desktops made learning happen online, smartphones have created feasibility for personalized learning to take place anytime and anywhere.

Moodle Learning Management System (LMS), the number one Open Source platform, takes advantage of this technology advances and has its own Moodle mobile app. Why?

Take a look at the statistics for a moment to understand the impact of mobile learning if you take advantage of a mobile app; Of about 8 billion population, 67 percent (5.112 billion) are unique mobile users but only 57 percent (4.388 billion) have the internet connection. So clearly the mobile has an edge over the desktop.

Subsequently, reaching out to folks at your organization through a mobile app becomes a necessity.

8 Reasons for Why You Need A Moodle Mobile App

Now let’s reason with the list of them given here below for why you need a Moodle mobile app, apart from your Moodle LMS.
8 reasons - Moodle Mobile App

#1 Corporate training/academic learning flexibility

Necessity is the mother of all inventions. Though the saying is a cliché to use for one more time, for want of a better description I have to use it for the aptness of the context here. Coming to the corporate work culture, some of your folks have to travel as part of their job – for example, marketing, and sales teams. Given their work nature, you can’t keep them at the office and train them, except for security-compliance-kind-of corporate training.

In situations as such, Moodle mobile app for corporates comes handy to do a number of things right from the employee’s phone.

#2 Need system for all activities? Have the app for some, right?

Your folks need not sit in front of their desktop to perform A to Z of their eLearning training. Some of them can be done right from their mobile app. For example, a learner wants to upload his due assignment or take a quiz, then he/she can finish it off using their smartphone app.

Plus, they can do such activities wherever they are and whenever they can, within the due timeline.

#3 Keep up to date through notifications

How do your employees know that you’ve enrolled them to so and so courses? Without the Moodle mobile app, the only way they can know is when they login to the system. With the app, they’ll come to know through notifications – a default feature of the Moodle app.

Likewise, your learners will receive notifications about each and everything of their eLearning. That’s a good way to keep them updated instantly.

#4 Access eLearning course content 

Having your Moodle mobile app makes your corporate training/academic learning flexible and personalized. That is to say, you allow your trainings to take place beyond the 9-to-5 schedule by accessing the relevant course content. Flexible and personalized training helps improve learning and development (L&D) outcomes manifolds.

Moodle CoursesAs a result, you will see your training ROI going up and up. It’s as simple as – give (flexibility of accessing courses to employees) and take (better training ROI) policy.

Moreover, the employees can check what courses they enrolled in, which of them in progress, and which they completed.

#5 Offline course content

It’s an advantage of Mobile learning. Your employees can access the course contents anywhere and anytime and go through their training. A desktop doesn’t give this anytime-anywhere flexibility though you can access the courses offline there too. So, your Moodle mobile app encourages your employees’ access course content offline and continue learning.

#6 Calendar Events

Using calendar events, your employees can create their events – to submit an assignment on so and so date, block date to enroll in a course, or as such. Also, they can note the important announcements through the calendar – the launch of a new course. Thus, your employees can keep track of their corporate training through calendar events. This feature is also a default one from the Moodle platform.

#7 Check Grades

Again, your learners need not log in to their systems to check their learning progress. But right on their mobile, they can see their grades for tasks, quizzes, assignments, etc. Overall, the learners can see the grade of a course they completed. The completion criteria may be different from course to course. So are the grades for them.

Thus, your learners can monitor their learning progress, see their performance, and hence, can chart the future course of action concerning their learning outcomes.

#8 All major activities of LMS made available on the app

If you want to know Moodle in three words, here are they – course, activities, and quizzes. The Moodle mobile app includes all major activities available on the Moodle LMS. For example, a quiz is one kind of Moodle activity. So are assignment and glossary.

In other words, your Moodle mobile app resembles a mini LMS in your hands. As a student, you can upload an assignment. Or as a teacher, you can grade a quiz or assignment.

Bottomline

Therefore, the Moodle mobile app is as good as your Moodle LMS and supports your L&D by offering flexibility and personalized learning. For more about having an app for your LMS, contact us today.

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Introducing BizLMS, the Top Corporate Learning Management System

The Learning and Development (L&D) in a corporate setting is a non-negotiable and never-ending process to align the employees’ skills upgrade with the changing economic objectives of the organization. A software – Learning Management System (LMS) – that accommodates the perpetual corporate training plays a pivotal role in meeting the organizational goals.

And choosing the right kind of LMS – out of many in the market – plays a decisive factor in getting the Return on Investment (ROI). Hence, a good enterprise LMS is the need of the hour for corporates. 

Keeping all the factors that enterprises looking for in an LMS, eAbyas Info Solutions has designed and developed a Corporate training LMS – called, BizLMS. And today, we gladly announce its release into the market. 

Not just another LMS…

We strongly believe that BizLMS is worth its salt, despite hundreds of LMSs available in the market. What sets the LMS a pole apart with the crowd is the features that help you have the complete control of the LMS software.

A list of the salient features of BizLMS is given here below:

  • Built on top of the Moodle with the sweeping changes in User Experience
  • Incorporates multi-tenancy and scalability for large enterprises
  • Get complete source code & install it on-premises that put you at the helm
  • Accommodates all types of learning and development – i.e., supports blended learning
  • Make the most of your LMS with the in-built learning and analytics with reports and dashboards
  • Customize everything from color schemes to courses to represent your brand
  • Won’t break your bank budget-wise & any hidden cost or lock-ins

Like to know more about BizLMS? Click here for details or contact us for a live demo.

Make an LMS world of difference with BizLMS

Take any LMS from the eLearning industry, you will encounter a double whammy from it – safe & secure system concerns and shelling out extra bucks on subscriptions. BizLMS, however, turns them into two strokes of luck for corporates. 

 First, as mentioned above in one of the points, you get the complete source code once you buy BizLMS. And the product is installed right on your premises, making the BizLMS the first-of-its-kind to do so. No other corporate LMS in the market takes such a bold initiative for the clients. 

With the install-on-premises feature of BizLMS, your content system will be as secure as Area 51.

Second, in developing this LMS software, no third-party tools are included in the LMS. The modules are indigenously developed on top of the popular Moodle. Thus, you have a robust system, both security, and functionality-wise.  

Third, although you find an LMS you think is fit for you, you might have gone back on grounds of budget concerns – paying too much for too few users or too much for per user. Fortunately, the subscription plans of BizLMS are not a kind of an unreachable bunch of grapes. These plans are favorable to corporates across the spectrum of business. Check these subscriptions here now. 

And last, get this corporate LMS completely customized to fit into your L&D needs from the color scheme to courses to modules. Indeed, BizLMS is that flexible and favorable to corporate training. 

Bottomline

You looking for any corporate LMS for your L&D, with better control options, functionality (advanced features), security, and affordability?

Think BizLMS.

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MoodleMoot Returns to India in 2020

 

A few days back, Moodle HQ announced its plans to conduct a MoodleMoot in India in 2020. Unlike the other earlier times when it used to be conducted at one location for the entire Moodle community in India, this time the event is going to be a roadshow at Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Pune.

Every year Moodle plans MoodleMoot conferences around the world in different countries at different times. For the 2020 year, the Moodle event starts off from India.

The roadshow will kickstart from 27 January to 9 February. And which city is going to host the Moot in what date will depend on the time slot preference by the Moodlers or organizers from that city. For the expression of interest, the registration forms are already out. Check the forms out at Moodle.com/news.

Previously, the MoodleMoot in India took place at Hyderabad in November 2018.

So, what’s this MoodleMoot (for those who know not about the event)?

What is MoodleMoot?

MoodleMoot is an official conference of Moodle, the number one open-source Learning Management System (LMS) in the world, where Moodle enthusiasts and Moodlers gather together to discuss the future updates of the software and how it is being used to meet a specific need to improve Learning and Development (L&D) efforts at Universities, Schools and organizations.

To emphasize its significance in other words, MoodleMoot for Moodle is what WWDC for Apple.

How do you benefit if you attend the MoodleMoot?

 

At this eventful conference, plenty of things happen at the MoodleMoot conference. Some of them are listed here:

  • Get to know what Moodle is straight from the horse’s mouth, the founder of Moodle LMS
  • Participate in relevant workshops where you will come to learn the Moodle standards of code
  • Interact with other Moodlers and Moodle enthusiasts and learn from them how useful the software is to meet their unique L&D needs
  • Find out and engage with a local Moodle Partner for any Moodle-related assistance

 

Check out the Moodle site for more information regularly. And stay connected to know more about MoodleMoot Returns to India in 2020 and beyond.

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5 Reasons Why Learning Analytics Stimulates eLearning More

#1 Personalized Learning Space and Pace

This post aims to remind people of their growth in anything as an absolute. You like to do things at your own pace. And every learner cannot learn at the level and pace with the rest of them. In the same way, the learning analytics helps your learners find their learning space and pace for optimum learning outcomes, which help in effective organizational decision-making. For doing so, draw out the insights at each step of their learning curve. The insights such as the courses that suit her, the timings she prefers to learn, and such others prioritize your learner’s learning /training. To that end, it is feasible to create custom courses to bring out the best from each of your learners, allowing them to learn at the space and pace they are comfortable.

#2 Performance Forecast

A part of the usefulness of learning analytics is to predict learners’ performance in advance so that a trainer or a manager can take necessary steps to engage and encourage at-risk or low-performing learners. Either from their learning analytics from the big pile of system data or directly from themselves, you can elicit why they are not productive at so and so education/training. Ultimately, predicting the performance of your learners helps you take precautionary measures to improve their learning experiences.

#3 Perfect Your Course

Has your course gotten a smaller number of registrations? Or, is everyone passing training? Does your L&D consist of boring, monotonous text material? These facts are enough to smell a rat. The learning analytics helps you get such insights as above. Based on those invaluable suggestions, rework on your courses until you get them right enough to effectively train/educate your learners. Thus, you perfect your courses for optimum learning experiences.

#4 Productive eLearning

How do you make your learners productive at eLearning? For that purpose, you have to first improve their engagement levels beyond your courses. The learning analytics shows which courses, activities, quizzes, assignments, Scorm, or as such getting highest and lowest levels of learner engagement. Again here, if you have designed your courses properly (read, engagingly) based on the insights, you automatically increase your learners’ productivity for better profits. Otherwise, you have to check for where the learners are going wrong, why they are going wrong, and how to get over that unproductivity. You can draw such crucial insights from the learning analytics from your LMS.

#5 Practicable Courseware Budget

You can know to which course or part of it working or not working, then you can either focus on improving the course (or, its parts) or allocate the time and efforts to improve on what’s working for learners. Learning analytics helps you in this regard. Observing the same from your analytics, you can conclude and accordingly allocate your budget to prepare high-quality eLearning material at a reasonable cost. As a result, you cut through the cost of education/training and improve the Return On Investment (ROI). You can see all these reasons viable in LearnerScript, a Moodle learning analytics, and reporting plugin if you employ Moodle LMS. To know more about this tool, visit us or contact us.]]>

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7 Advantages of Moodle LMS You Need to Know

If you don’t know what Moodle is, chances are you take that word for a kind of minutes-made Noodles (the popular South Asian dish). Unfortunately, it’s not. Moodle is an acronym for Modular Objective Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment (MOODLE) developed by the Australian educator and computer programmer, Martin Dougiamas.

It’s the first Open Source Learning Management System (LMS) brought out to the public in 2002. Since then, Moodle is the best alternative to tens of commercial LMS software. Currently, about 100 million educators have used or still using this platform.

You can be one of them. Here are some standalone characteristics/advantages of Moodle LMS for you to consider and go Moodle.

#1 Highly Configurable LMS Software

Moodle Learning Management System (or, Moodle LMS) is highly customizable LMS. Being an Open Source software, Moodle changes continually year after year, with exceptional improvements incorporated in the latest versions, from its community of developers all over the world.
Since Learning/Training and Development requirements change vis-à-vis organization objectives, Moodle allows you to make tweaks to the software. Add the required Moodle plugins, themes or whatever. That way you get the perfect LMS.
Moreover, the big advantage of this fact is that you pay for what you get. The other LMSs come as full-fledged eLearning software. That is, you may find many features which you may not use, yet you shell out more money when you buy that LMS.

#2 Moodle speaks plain PHP

If Moodle LMS is written in PHP programming language, what’s the benefit for you and me? Well, PHP is known for its easy deployment and implementation. That means, the language paves the perfect way for endless capabilities and functionality expansions in the future.
Hence, the continual updating of Moodle in the form of its versions is feasible. So, you won’t lag behind your competitors when it comes to leveraging the technology for learning/training and development requirements. Moreover, its flexibility to run on any platform such as Linux, Unix, Windows, macOS, and even on the newcomer Ubuntu has made PHP a preferred choice for writing Moodle LMS software.
All in all, writing Moodle software in PHP has made the Moodle LMS independent of any platform, just like its software language.

#3 Plugins, plenty!

Chances are that no other LMS except Moodle will have these many plugins. Moodle plugins directory tells us that there is about 1601 plugin, and they are downloaded 366.6K times! (The stats are taken at the time of writing this article).
These add-ons give you great flexibility; whenever you want to enhance your LMS, you can add them. Otherwise, you can discard the same. Isn’t it a cool thing?
Moreover, some add-ons to Moodle are commercially available. The plugins such as – Edwiser RemUI, H5P, Congrea, Poodll, LearnerScript, etc. to name a few, are nothing short of excellence. Plugins like those will not only give it an edge over the other LMSs, but they also make it a great substitute.

#4 Global expertise community

In Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, John Hammond, the millionaire who leases an island to build the Park, exudes in a panicking scene, “who else can I trust than the dinosaur expert (Dr. Alan Grant).” Trust the experts!
Because Moodle has a strong network of 88 partners (at the time of writing this article) and hundreds of millions of users, developers, admins, teachers, etc. around the world. No other LMS has such committed professional network except Moodle LMS. Also, Moodle HQ conducts MoodleMoots around the world to strengthen the community and to discuss anything Moodle.

#5 Assessment-type flexibility

Before writing this article, I met a seasoned Moodle developer and asked him, saying, “what is one big advantage of Moodle (over other LMSs) you observed over the years as a developer, which a commoner cannot find it on Google?”
“Quizzes,” he replied. “They are the heart of Moodle LMS. Unlike the other LMSs available on the market, Moodle offers a variety of assessment types: questionnaire, quizzes, assignments, hot spots, audio-and-video type assessment, etc. all for free cost.”
“It all depends on the kind of assessment that best fits your organization L & D goals, and moreover, if learning is not measured for development, what’s the use of learning after all,” the moodler continued. And the bottom line here, similar to the words of Hal Elrod – The Miracle Morning guy, is this: Learn, measure and grow! The Moodle LMS simply facilitates this approach for you.

#6 Learning Analytics tools

You might remember this famous quote from Peter Drucker, “ What gets measured gets managed.” As I have mentioned it the above paragraph, it’s no use if your eLearning on Moodle is not measured and analyzed for actionable insights to enhance your learning outcomes. These Moodle insights will play a constructive, crucial role for organizations and individuals alike to chart their course of learning action respectively.
For that purpose of getting learning analytics, you will find more or less a dozen analytics and reporting tools available for Moodle LMS. Some of them, like LearnerScript, belong to the Moodle family.
You can read more about this section in my previous article, published in the eLearning Industry

#7 Feedback System

The feedback system in Moodle is part and parcel of the LMS. It helps understand how your course, trainers/teachers, pedagogic methods are doing, which otherwise not possible to know.
The feedback in Moodle aims at improving the quality of L&D efforts. In other words, it helps to put a check to formality-kind-of training which is only a burden and diminishes the chances of better ROI of your organization. To assess your training whether it’s productive or not, various types of questions such as multiple-choice, essay answers, and as such form the feedback in the system.
For more about the advantages of Moodle LMS and its services, enquire with us now. There’s lots more in store for you!

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6 Of Best Ways on How to Improve Your Learners’ Engagement

Learner’s engagement is one of the important concerns for organizations that employ the Learning Management System (LMS) for their employees’ Learning and Development (L&D) needs. On the employees’ side, fighting out the boring, formality-kind of training makes it difficult and hence, they retrograde on their learning curve. Unless their organization provides enough room for a thriving, learning environment, the experience ends up as a useless formality.
There are better, in fact, the more engaging ways to motivate your learners to bring off the optimum training out of their eLearning. That way you can make sure that the ROI of your organization is worthwhile on L&D.
Here is a brief list of some of the best ways to improve your learners’ focus and to improve the organizational decisions.

#1. Interactive Content

You might have come across monotonous, banal training sessions from the time you’ve started your career. There’s not much use of such L&D sessions. It’s better not to even expect something out of such events, both for an employee’ skill upgrade and for organizational decision-making.
If your concern is to benefit somehow from such learning, make sure that your learning material includes a lot of interactive content. And if you are using Open Source LMS platforms such as Moodle, you can employ H5P (HTLM 5 Package) for all such content needs and improve your learners’ engagement.

#2. Insightful Reporting

Personalized reporting helps your learner identify her weak and strong areas of learning and development. And it aids to chart a future of course of action to improve a learner’s engagement and bridge the skill gap.
The pertinent question here is, do you employ such analytics and reporting tools to unearth the truths from the L&D? Make no mistake LearnerScript is such a handy tool for Moodle learning analytics.

#3 Badges

Badges encourage your learners to keep engaging. In other words, they help your learners maintain the same or more level of engagement throughout their L&D. you know badges are nothing but a digital certification and are validated from time to time. Moodle LMS uses them a lot to promote student retention. Of late, the Open Source LMS has made improvements to the badges in its latest version, Moodle 3.7.

#4. Gamification

Learning becomes playful and hence, thoroughly engaging if you would like to gamify your learning. That means you simply barrow gaming mechanics and apply them in eLearning to increase learners’ retention. In case, you would like to have any help from any tool in this matter, better go for Level Up. The tool is a very useful plugin for LMS users.
Through gamification, you can add points and leaderboards, and make a healthy comparison with other learners.

#5. Mobile Learning

According to a German analytics firm, there are nearly 3.9 billion people out of 8 billion world population surf net. Mobile devices have been paving the new way to learn, measure and grow their eLearning. In the
sense, these handsets are providing personalized learning environment at your own pace, time and place. And it’s no surprise that Moodle LMS has its mobile app. Thus, tailor-making your content to suit the mobile users will help you accommodate their engagement and learning.

#6. Social Platform

Would you like to engage, share, and learn from one another? Then you need a social platform. That’s where you share your courses and allow users to enroll and learn from there. If you take Moodle LMS for instance, they have an Open Social Media Platform, MoodleNet (or moodle.net) for the same purpose. And you know millions of educators and learners are making the most of the platform.
In conclusion, you may come across other methodologies, tools or processes which will be useful for learners’ engagement. However, it all depends on your organization’s needs and the kind of engagement ways that suit your learners.]]>