We know you're new at this!

We are all forging new ground with online training, Moodle, e-Learning, Learning Management Systems, Content Management, websites, web hosts, synchronous, SCORM...WHAT?

We know it is sometimes hard to understand "tech-speak", so here are some (hopefully) simple answers to some common questions about Moodle and our role in Moodle e-Learning. You might also want to download our eBook "Moodle e-Learning: Questions and Simple Answers about Online Training".

What is Moodle? Moodle is software that was designed to create online training (e-Learning). Moodle has built-in features that promote learning, such as peer interaction forums, glossaries, quizzes, and many other ways in which students and teachers can interact with each other. Moodle is a full-featured Learning Management System (LMS), built on strong pedagogical principles.

How is Moodle better than anything else? Well, we're partial to Moodle, but studies of university students have shown that Moodle is well-received, as compared to other applications. Moodle is designed for learning, where many LMS are designed for tracking.  It all depends on what your training objectives are.  We like to teach, not count heads, so we use Moodle.

If Moodle is free, why do I have to pay you? Moodle, the software is "open source", meaning that it is not only free of charge, but that the source code can be changed to suit the users needs. While this sounds cool, it doesn't mean that it is easy to rewrite code! A group of people, known as Moodle Partners and "Moodlers", do this for fun, and for a living. They will do it for you, for a fee. Albany Analytical does not rewrite Moodle code, but we are highly proficient at creating Moodle courses. Our core expertise is instructional design and we have found that Moodle supports our blended learning approach.  We design, create, upload, and maintain content such as flash animations, graphics, stories, external links, examples, activities, audio, video...all those pieces that make a Moodle course fun and interesting. We work with our Moodle host, ClassroomRevolution.com, to provide you with a full-service Moodle experience. Our fees to you are for our content creation and training design for your Moodle course or Moodle site.

What does Albany Analytical have to do with Moodle? Albany Analytical began using Moodle in 2005 (after a year of searching for the right LMS). At that time, it was our objective to create a complete online curriculum of our existing training material in Six Sigma, Quality, Lean, and Data Analysis tools and methods. We climbed the "learning curve" and soon had gained a reputation for creating "clean, interesting, and well-formatted" Moodle pages. As inquiries came to us regarding Moodle, we decided to expand our business to include Moodle content development. This fits in perfectly with our original business because Moodle is a high-quality method to provide excellent learning opportunities to a wide variety of people. Our motto has always been "We Teach Thinking" and we are very pleased that Moodle supports us in that effort. We work with ClassroomRevolution.com, our Moodle host, in our Moodle endeavors. They provide the hosting for our client sites. They create the themes and provide the security, maintenance, upgrades, and all aspects of hosting. We create the content, design your site layout (what pages and features to include and where to put them), and upload it. We help you get started, so that you don't have to climb that learning curve...you won't have to plunge to the ground several times the way we did!

Can Albany Analytical teach me to use Moodle? Do you offer Moodle training? We are not Moodle Partners, so we can not teach you how to use Moodle. ClassroomRevolution.com offers online and in-person training, as well as an excellent support contract that allows you to ask anything you want and get an answer within a few hours. Their training and support are perfect if you want to be your own training and Moodle designer/creator. If not, we'll do it for you!  We do offer consulting in Blended Learning Instructional Design, which is how to design a great course, not how to build it in Moodle.

What's the difference between creating my course and teaching me how to use Moodle?  Why won't you show me how to do it?  Well, if you hire a bookkeeper, she might use QuickBooks Online^®.  You hired her to keep your books, not to train you in how to be a bookkeeper.  If you hire a graphic artist to design your logo, he most likely will use Adobe Illustrator^®.  He's going to give you some artwork to choose from, but he isn't going to train you in how to use Illustrator^®.  Hardly anyone hires a typist any more because word processing software is pretty easy to use.  QuickBooks^®, Illustrator^®, and Moodle are easy to do something in, but they are not easy to master.  It's up to you to decide if you want to do it yourself or focus your energies elsewhere.

Is Moodle just for training? Do I need a second website for my company to have a web presence? No! Moodle is more than "just training"! Moodle sites have Content Management Systems (CMS) built-in to them so that you can have the standard web pages and menus, such as "About Us", "Contact Us", descriptions of your courses, news items, etc. It all depends on what you need! 

What makes Moodle a good Learning Management System (LMS)? Moodle is highly stable (it doesn't lock up your computer if you press the wrong key), popular (lots of people use it and have contributed ideas to make it better), and it was designed for learning. Unlike those ghastly CD-ROMs of a lecturing Professor Boring of yesteryear, Moodle promotes the exchange of information. Students are not expected to "sit there and listen". Discussion (albeit electronic) is encouraged. Moodle facilitates this communication; Moodle was designed with a social constructivist approach. While Moodle provides grades and reports on student activities, it is not merely a database of "checkmarks"; too much training (in person or online) is focused on the number of people who completed the training instead of seeking to teach those people something! Moodle facilitates learning.

Does Moodle have a shopping cart? No. This is one thing that Moodle does not support (yet), we presume because shopping carts are not important in the learning process. After all, Moodle is a Learning Management System! However, if you have books or other materials that you sell as part of your training, you can include them as downloads in each course. You can create "courses" that require payment to enter, and the only content is your material for download. If you have a large volume of book, DVD, etc. sales, you might consider opening up a store front on a third party seller, like Amazon.com. They do a great job at order fulfillment!

What is the difference between a Moodle host and a regular web host? A Moodle host is a Moodle Partner. They are knowledgable about Moodle - upgrades, fixes, options - and they will keep your Moodle installation (software) current and running smoothly. Also, because Moodle is interactive, users take up more memory when they are signed in. A typical commercial web host has 200 - 1000 sites on one server. That same size server with a Moodle host would typically have only 20 Moodle sites!

What's the difference between sharing your site and having my own site?  Well, having your own site is like owning a house...and sharing a site is like owning a condo.

Why should I host my Moodle site with a Moodle host instead of the web host I already use? See above! Trust us; we tried it! Our Moodle site was so slow on a well-respected and reliable host server that it was practically unusable. We had no support (to install modules or adjust settings) and it was so slow, we couldn't even up date a page! We switched to ClassroomRevolution.com years ago and have had zero trouble since!

What is a Moodle Partner? The Moodle Partners are a group of service companies guided by the core developers of Moodle. They provide a range of optional commercial services for Moodle users, including fully-serviced Moodle hosting, remote support contracts, custom code development and consulting. We recommend ClassroomRevolution.com.

Can Moodle accept credit card payments? Yes! Moodle has plug-ins that support PayPal and Authorize.net.

Is Moodle SCORM-compliant (and what does that mean, anyway!)? SCORM is a standard that e-Learning objects are written in so that the content can be transferred from one system to another. It is similar to how a power cord will plug into any electrical outlet...in your country. There is no standard from one country to another. This causes problems for users, so someone with some brains decided that e-Learning should have a standard even if power outlets didn't. Yes, Moodle is SCORM-compliant. This makes it easy to dump your existing program and switch to Moodle!

How many users can I have on my own Moodle site? The first tier of Moodle hosting with ClassroomRevolution.com allows you to have 500 userids at any one time. That means that you can have 500 profiles set up on your site. These are called "asynchronous users".  At any given time, only some of those 500 will be logged in.  Users logged in at the same time are called "synchronous users"; this limit is usually less than the total number of profiles you have.  If you have a situation that calls for more synchronous users, you can upgrade your hosting services.

How do I get started with Moodle? Contact us!

Please check out our BeeLearn.com Free Demos to see what we can do in Moodle!