In most institutions, there is a need to maintain data and information related to the education taking place as well as to perform various peripheral tasks that are not directly related to, or are at a macro level to the education itself.
Some examples of this type of peripheral work are:
Monitoring of student attendance records
Presenting information of course offerings to students in order that they may make decisions about what courses to take
Assigning courses to students in programs where students are not allowed to select their own courses
Controlling which courses, and how many courses, students can register for or enroll in
Establishing limits on how many students can enroll in a single course
Delivering and analyzing standardized tests to students within a school or other type of educational or training program and various other educational, administrative, and collaboration-type tasks and activities
As Moodle is designed to be extremely flexible and is provided as an open source package, it is fairly easy to extend, and even stretch Moodle through imaginative uses, installation of third-party contributed plugins, and minor code manipulations to enable it to function as a system that helps to manage an educational curriculum and to support the flow and use of information that is accumulated and digested in such educational settings. As such, Moodle will function as what I call a Curriculum and Information Management System (CIMS), while simultaneously functioning as an LMS. The CIMS idea encapsulates the various tasks that surround an educational institution and includes functions that are often performed by Portals, Student Information Systems (SIS), and Content Management Systems (CMS). As a CIMS, Moodle can perform all of the tasks listed in the previous paragraph as well as a host of others that will be introduced in subsequent chapters. Get ready for an exciting adventure in setting up Moodle as your core CIMS and LMS!