Book Image

Moodle 3 Administration - Third Edition

By : Alex Büchner
Book Image

Moodle 3 Administration - Third Edition

By: Alex Büchner

Overview of this book

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.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
Moodle 3 Administration Third Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Communication


Communication is a key feature in Moodle as it enhances the learning experience of all the users that are involved. Moodle supports synchronous and asynchronous communication, which have to be configured by the administrator.

Synchronous communication

We cover two types of synchronous communication in Moodle: instant messaging and video conferencing, both of which are discussed in the following sections.

Instant messaging

Moodle's inbuilt facility for instant messaging is the Chat activity that is used in courses or the front page. The module works out of the box and without any configuration using Ajax method (default) or Normal method. However, it creates a significant load on the server in large installations or when chat rooms are used intensively.

To rectify this, the activity supports a chat server daemon, which has to be configured. You can set up of the daemon by navigating to Plugins | Activity modules | Chat.

To make use of a chat server daemon, you will have to change...