Moodle 3 Administration

Book excerpt: An administrator's guide to configuring, securing, customizing, and extending Moodle About This Book Learn how to plan, install, optimize, customize, and configure Moodle Guarantee a cutting-edge learning experience in a secure and customizable environment while optimizing your day-to-day workload A one-stop guide with a problem-solution approach and a wide range of real-world examples Who This Book Is For If you are a technician, systems administrator, or part of academic staff, this is the book for you. This book is ideal for anyone who has to administer a Moodle system. Whether you are dealing with a small-scale local Moodle system or a large-scale multi-site Virtual Learning Environment, this book will assist you with any administrative task. Some basic Moodle knowledge is helpful, but not essential. What You Will Learn Install and update Moodle on multiple platforms manually and via CLI and GIT Manage courses and categories, users and cohorts, as well as roles Get Moodle hooked up to repositories, portfolios, and open badges Configure Moodle for mobile usage, accessibility, localization, communication, and collaboration Guarantee backups, security and privacy, and achieve maximum performance via the Moodle Universal Cache and the new cron system Configure the Moodle events system to generate comprehensive reports, statistics, and learning analytics Network Moodle with Mahara and extend it with third-party add-ons and via LTI Customize Moodle web services to enable mobile learning and integration with other IT systems In Detail Moodle is the de facto standard for open source learning platforms. However, setting up and managing a learning environment can be a complex task since it covers a wide range of technical, organizational, and pedagogical topics. This ranges from basic user and course management, to configuring plugins and design elements, all the way to system settings, performance optimization, events frameworks, and so on. This book concentrates on basic tasks such as how to set up and configure Moodle and how to perform day-to-day administration activities, and progresses on to more advanced topics that show you how to customize and extend Moodle, manage courses, cohorts, and users, and how to work with roles and capabilities. You'll learn to configure Moodle plugins and ensure your VLE conforms to pedagogical and technical requirements in your organization. You'll then learn how to integrate the VLE via web services and network it with other sites, including Mahara, and extend your system via plugins and LTI. By the end of this book, you will be able to set up an efficient, fully fledged, and secure Moodle system. Style and approach The book takes a problem-solution approach to fall in line with your day-to-day operations. This is a one-stop reference for any task you will ever come across when administering a Moodle site of any shape and size.