It's important to understand where Moodle has come from so that we can get ourselves into the right frame of mind—have the right mental model—before we start to use it. Why? Firstly, we don't want to do anything that willfully cuts across the way Moodle was intended to be used. Secondly, if we did try to act in some way against the underlying Moodle 'philosophy' without realizing, then we would only be making life hard for ourselves.
Martin Dougiamas worked as webmaster and administrator at the Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Australia. Frustration with the commercial learning management systems available at that time led, in 1999, to the creation of Moodle as part of his PhD, entitled "The use of Open Source software to support a social constructionist epistemology of teaching and learning within Internet-based communities of reflective inquiry".
Dougiamas' educational background has an important influence on Moodle. Martin was brought up in the deserts...