In this chapter, we are going to be looking at the history of Moodle—where it came from, and what factors influenced its development. This is important, because Moodle is simply a tool to do a job. If we can understand why Moodle is designed the way it is, then if we come to try to use Moodle in a way it really wasn't intended to be used, we'll know why our approach might not work. Then, we look at logging in and out of Moodle, how to change our user profiles, and (importantly) how to change our passwords if we need to. We'll also be exploring the Moodle user interface—the names of the bits that make up a Moodle page (then you'll know what everyone is talking about when they refer to 'breadcrumbs' and 'blocks').

The rest of the book is broken into two parts: