Chapter 1. Moodle Architecture

Moodle is an open source Learning Management System (LMS). It can be used to deliver online learning in a variety of settings. These settings include virtual schools, K12, higher education, corporate universities, charter schools, and commercial training, to name but a few. Moodle is designed to be used primarily as an asynchronous learning tool, where learners study at different times. However, it also includes synchronous tools. Moodle is used both as the primary delivery vehicle for courses as well as a supplemental tool for face-to-face learning. To put it simply, Moodle is a teacher's toolkit to help improve learning. Moodle is designed in a community with teachers interacting directly with programmers. Moodle's intuitive and simple interface is the result of this collaboration.

Moodle originally stood for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. From a programmer's perspective, the "M" in Moodle is a very important concept. Modularity is designed throughout Moodle. This lets a developer make significant modifications to Moodle without having to modify its code. This is a very important capability in terms of reducing the amount of time taken to make modifications when new versions of Moodle are released. Writing modular plugins for Moodle will be a large focus of this book.

You can learn more about general Moodle functionality and history on the Moodle Documentation site at http://docs.moodle.org/en/About_Moodle.

This chapter introduces some of the important concepts of Moodle architecture; how Moodle is structured and how Moodle works. This chapter introduces the following concepts:

As you can see from the list, we will be covering a lot of ground in this chapter. Let's get started with a discussion of the technology stack that drives Moodle.