Moodle joins the AI Revolution

Did we mention we went to Learning Technologies in London last year? Well, we did, and we’re going back next year. Whilst we were there, almost every LMS vendor waxed lyrical about how they’ve integrated AI into their technology. However, one company, in particular, kept its cards very close to its chest. And that company was Moodle.

Moodle has consistently stated it wouldn’t rush into AI, instead opting to take a much slower approach and to fully understand the ethical implications of doing so. This month, we saw the release of Moodle 4.5 and a new AI subsystem designed to make it easy to integrate various AI providers.

So, where does the ethical part come into play? Well, you can choose which AI tools to use and control how they are used on your site. Moodle calls this “The Human-Centred Approach”, which prioritises user choice, transparency and control.

“This is AI, your way.”

This is Moodle’s promise to users, which allows institutions and educators to maintain complete control over how AI is utilised within their Moodle sites, from choosing specific AI providers to determining which features are enabled for different user groups.

This will allow you to choose from various providers, such as ChatGPT, through open-source alternatives like Ollama and LocalAI. The benefit of this is that you are not locked into a specific vendor. Very cool and very clever.

So, what can you do with this AI once you’ve hooked it up to your Moodle?

As you would expect, you can use it for content generation from within the Moodle editor. This allows you to produce content, quizzes, or lessons from prompts. You could automatically generate descriptions from images for accessibility, summarise your lessons, and do a whole bunch of other AI stuff you can currently do with copy and paste, but having everything neatly wrapped up in Moodle is, well..neat ‘n’ tidy, I guess.

But it goes beyond this. Moodle’s pledge to transparency allows the user to see where the content has come from and how it was generated. This “transparent-tagging” allows the user to know whether or not the content was AI-generated. And the icing on the cake, Moodle will provide a comprehensive log store of all AI interactions for review.

Ethical Principles in Action

Each feature in Moodle 4.5’s AI implementation has been designed to align with specific ethical principles, creating a comprehensive framework that serves educational and moral imperatives. Building trust through transparency is at the top of the list, with all AI-generated content clearly labelled to ensure users are always aware when interacting with AI-created materials.

Privacy and data protection are also a key part of the implementation. The AI subsystem has been designed with security at its core, balancing enabling AI capabilities and ensuring student data remains protected.

Moodle’s commitment to configurability allows institutions to maintain granular control over AI features, and institutions can carefully align AI usage with their specific educational goals and policies. Ethical AI, who’d have funked it?

Looking Forward

It’s all early days, and Dirtyword will be watching how this unfolds and what plugins and innovations arise from this approach. The release of Moodle 4.5 represents more than just a technical upgrade. It’s become somewhat of a blueprint for how educational technology can embrace AI’s potential while maintaining strong ethical principles. Something we feel the entire e-learning sector could benefit from. Moodle is now definitely leading the way with this in the LMS Space. It would be good to see the likes of Articulate follow suit, allowing us to choose what AI we plug into our development stack.

Moodle certainly shows us that it’s possible to be both innovative and ethical in our approach to AI in education, and Dirtyword loves it, so you know it’s good.