Book Image

Moodle 4 Administration - Fourth Edition

By : Alex Büchner
Book Image

Moodle 4 Administration - Fourth Edition

By: Alex Büchner

Overview of this book

This updated fourth edition of the classic Moodle Administration guide has been written from the ground up and covers all the new Moodle features in great breadth and depth. The topics have also been augmented with professional diagrams, illustrations, and checklists. The book starts by covering basic tasks such as how to set up and configure Moodle and perform day-to-day administration activities. You’ll then progress to more advanced topics that show you how to customize and extend Moodle, manage authentication and enrolments, and work with roles and capabilities. Next, you'll learn how to configure pedagogical and technical Moodle plugins and ensure your LMS complies with data protection regulations. Then, you will learn how to tighten Moodle’s security, improve its performance, and configure backup and restore procedures. Finally, you'll gain insights on how to compile custom reports, configure learning analytics, enable mobile learning, integrate Moodle via web services, and support different types of multi-tenancy. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to set up an efficient, fully fledged, and secure Moodle system.

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Table of Contents (24 chapters)
Preface
Preface
Who is this book for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Download the color images
Conventions used
Get in touch
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1
Chapter 1: Installing Moodle
Chapter 1: Installing Moodle
Preparing your Moodle installation
Installation in a LAMP environment
Installation via the command-line interface
Updating Moodle
Summary
Free Chapter
2
Chapter 2: Exploring the Moodle System
Chapter 2: Exploring the Moodle System
Understanding the Moodle architecture
Navigating Moodle as an administrator
File management in Moodle
Recycle bin
Summary
3
Chapter 3: Exploring Courses, Users, and Roles
Chapter 3: Exploring Courses, Users, and Roles
A high-level overview of core Moodle concepts
Exploring Moodle courses
Exploring Moodle users
Exploring Moodle roles
Summary
4
Chapter 4: Managing Courses and Enrolments
Chapter 4: Managing Courses and Enrolments
Organizing courses into categories
Creating courses
Understanding course enrolment
Summary
5
Chapter 5: Managing Users, Cohorts, and Authentication
Chapter 5: Managing Users, Cohorts, and Authentication
Understanding user profiles
Performing standard user actions
Creating user accounts manually
Managing cohorts
Configuring user authentication
Summary
6
Chapter 6: Managing Permissions, Roles, and Capabilities
Chapter 6: Managing Permissions, Roles, and Capabilities
Exploring Moodle’s predefined roles
Understanding contexts
Assigning roles to users
Understanding capabilities
Roles and context management
Summary
7
Chapter 7: Enhancing Moodle’s Look and Feel
Chapter 7: Enhancing Moodle’s Look and Feel
Exploring Moodle’s look and feel elements
Customizing Moodle’s appearance
Configuring blocks
The Moodle editor
Enabling Moodle video and audio
Creating walk-throughs with user tours
Using Moodle themes
Ensuring accessibility
Summary
8
Chapter 8: Understanding Moodle Plugins
Chapter 8: Understanding Moodle Plugins
Moodle plugins – an overview
The power of third-party plugins
Managing third-party plugins
Good plugins and bad plugins
Summary
9
Chapter 9: Configuring Educational Features
Chapter 9: Configuring Educational Features
Configuring collaboration tools
Configuring content creation features
Configuring grades and assessments
Managing skills and incentives
Summary
10
Chapter 10: Configuring Technical Features
Chapter 10: Configuring Technical Features
Configuring communication tools
Managing localization
Managing repositories
Managing portfolios
Summary
11
Chapter 11: Enabling Mobile Learning
Chapter 11: Enabling Mobile Learning
Understanding Moodle’s app plans
Preparing to use the Moodle app
Configuring the Moodle app
Customizing the Moodle app’s appearance
Summary
12
Chapter 12: Gaining Insights through Moodle Reporting and Analytics
Chapter 12: Gaining Insights through Moodle Reporting and Analytics
Creating custom reports with the report generator
Understanding Moodle’s logging framework
Interacting with log-based reports
Gathering statistics
Making predictions with Moodle Analytics
Summary
13
Chapter 13: Ensuring Moodle Security
Chapter 13: Ensuring Moodle Security
Moodle security – an overview
Configuring security notifications
Ensuring user security
Ensuring content security
Ensuring system security
Summary
14
Chapter 14: Complying with Data Protection Regulations
Chapter 14: Complying with Data Protection Regulations
Understanding Moodle privacy
Designating a privacy officer
Managing policies
Configuring the data registry
Managing data requests
Summary
15
Chapter 15: Optimizing Moodle Performance
Chapter 15: Optimizing Moodle Performance
Understanding Moodle performance
Optimizing Moodle feature performance
Moodle Universal Cache (MUC)
Optimizing Moodle system performance
Moodle performance profiling and monitoring
Summary
16
Chapter 16: Avoiding Sleepless Nights – Moodle Backup and Restore
Chapter 16: Avoiding Sleepless Nights – Moodle Backup and Restore
Managing course-level backups
Managing site-level backups
Managing system-level backups
Using backup and restore for alternative tasks
Summary
17
Chapter 17: Working with Moodle Admin Tools
Chapter 17: Working with Moodle Admin Tools
Exploring Moodle admin tools
Site admin presets
Database tools
CLI
Moosh – the Moodle Shell
Summary
18
Chapter 18: Integrating External Systems Using Moodle Web Services
Chapter 18: Integrating External Systems Using Moodle Web Services
Understanding Moodle web services
Configuring Moodle web services
Enabling web services for external systems
Enabling web services for users
Summary
19
Chapter 19: Setting Up Moodle Networking
Chapter 19: Setting Up Moodle Networking
Understanding Moodle networking
Configuring Moodle networking prerequisites
Setting up peer-to-peer networks
Setting up a Moodle hub
Enabling MoodleNet
Summary
20
Chapter 20: Supporting Multi-Tenancy
Chapter 20: Supporting Multi-Tenancy
Understanding Moodle multi-tenancy
Supporting multi-tenancy via categories
Supporting multi-tenancy via a centralized code base
Supporting multi-tenancy in Moodle Workplace
Summary
21
Index
Index
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22
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Appendix: Configuration Settings
Appendix: Configuration Settings
Configuration reference – an overview
Configuration reference – administration settings
Configuration reference – system settings

To get the most out of this book

For Moodle, you must have the following components up and running on your server (at the time of writing for version 4.0):

  • Database: MySQL (version 5.7 or later utilizing the ACID-compliant InnoDB storage engine), PostgreSQL 10+, MariaDB 10.2.29+, Aurora MySQL (on Amazon Web Services), Microsoft SQL Server 2017+, and Oracle 11.2+.
  • Web server: Apache is the preferred web server option, but Moodle works well with any other web server that supports PHP, such as Microsoft IIS.
  • PHP 7.3.0 is the minimum PHP version to run Moodle 4; PHP 7.4.0 is the minimum version from Moodle 4.1 onwards. PHP 8 is also supported.
  • PHP extensions: Moodle makes use of a number of PHP extensions, most of which are compiled in PHP by default: curl, ctype, dom, fileinfo, gd, hash, iconv, intl, json, mbstring, openssl, pcre, simplexml, spl, xml, xmlreader, zip, and zlib.

Depending on your specific setup, additional software might be required.

If you don’t have access to the preceding components, ensure that you have full administrator access to a Moodle system. You won’t be able to carry out any system-level operations but will be able to administer Moodle via its web interface fully.

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