Lew's Moodle Playground

Welcome to my new regular feature!

I’ve never hidden my love for the world’s largest open-source learning management platform, so I figured I may as well steal some space and dedicate it to my passion for all things Moodle. So get ready to enter... The Moodle Playground.

Thousands of Moodle users (known affectionately as Moodlers) will be heading to the wonderful city of Edinburgh in September this year. The conference runs from 16–18 September 2025, hosted at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre

Tickets are on sale for an early bird price of £595 + VAT (until 30 June 2025), rising to £795 + VAT from 1 July 2025

The 3-day event includes presentations, discussions, workshops, and networking. Expect keynotes from global education and technology leaders.

WHAT’S NEW?

First up, we need to talk about the upcoming Moodle plugin store. That’s right, Moodle is launching a store for plugins where developers (like me) can get paid for their work. It’s set to be called The Moodle Marketplace.

This provides a huge opportunity, not just for Moodle itself but for the entire community. It means plugins will have funding, ensuring their longevity and encouraging innovation, upgrade compatibility, and proper roadmapping. Also, Moodle will take a cut, which puts money into the coffers to support the global project overall.

GLOBAL MOODLE MOOT

Thousands of Moodle users (known affectionately as Moodlers) will be heading to the wonderful city of Edinburgh in September this year. The conference runs from 16–18 September 2025, hosted at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre

Tickets are on sale for an early bird price of £595 + VAT (until 30 June 2025), rising to £795 + VAT from 1 July 2025

The 3-day event includes presentations, discussions, workshops, and networking. Expect keynotes from global education and technology leaders.

This year, sessions will be organised across two streams:

• Expanding knowledge - aimed at higher education

• Evolving skills - focusing on organisational training

Each stream will cover four topics: Engaging Learners, Social Learning, Design for Tomorrow, and Nurturing Growth. Yours truly will be presenting a session called “Netflix for Moodle: Why User Interfaces Matter.” So it’s almost worth the admission just to see me.

All jokes aside, we know things are expensive these days (that’s why Dirtyword is free). But once you factor in the ticket, the train to Edinburgh and back, hotel, food, drinks, and three days out of the office, it quickly adds up. Even if you’ve got a mate’s couch to sleep on, you’re still looking at the thick end of £1,500.

If you’re new to Moodle, it’s well worth it.

But if you’re a seasoned pro, an experienced developer, or a long-term user, you might want to consider Moodle DACH instead – this year’s Moot doesn’t look especially dev-focused, unlike previous ones.

MOODLE RELEASES

Moodle launched version 5 on 14 April 2025. Version 5.1 is due on 6 October 2025

It wasn’t quite the big splash I hoped for. If it were an iPhone launch, it would’ve been one of those “lite” versions where very little changes – perhaps just the colour of the phone.

That’s not to underplay the work that went into it. A ton of work has been done: bug fixes, UI and usability improvements, and (as always) better accessibility. But version 5 didn’t bring much innovation. I think Moodle is setting the groundwork by building a solid foundation before rolling out the big stuff.

What does interest me is that both the Chat and Survey modules have been removed from core and are now standalone plugins. Eventually, they’ll likely be phased out. Chat, for instance, might be replaced with something far better – it’d be cool if it linked to Slack or Element, for example. Who knows?

PLUGIN SPOTLIGHT

This issue’s featured plugin is the Learning Map plugin for Moodle. It allows educators to transform course structures into visual, intuitive, and motivating learning paths – and it’s fully compatible with version 5

You can upload an image for your map and place hotspots linked to activities anywhere on the grid. You choose the start and end points of your journey, and learners follow your trail, completing each activity to unlock the next.

It’s genius gamification.

Features include:

Showing the whole map in advance (with unreachable places dimmed)

• Displaying activity titles next to places

• Uncovering the map step-by-step, hiding unreachable places behind fog

• Showing the path the participant took through the map

• Hiding paths from students (dependencies still work)

• Pulse animation for unvisited places

• Hover animation for places

• Hiding the stroke of places

• Checkmarks for completed places

• Using the map as the main course navigation (requires the Learning Map course format)

What I really love is that you can create escape rooms, Goonies-style treasure adventures, campus maps, practically anything you can imagine. Pair this with AI image generation to create beautiful, professional course maps, and you’re good to go. Want to take it even further? Use conditional release (e.g. groups) and the learning journey can differ for different groups of students. You could even give an individual student their own path based on quiz grades.

Imagine that... truly personalised, gamified learning journeys.

This is where Moodle really gets interesting for me. I don’t know of another LMS that offers this level of ingenuity from community developers. Combine that with your own creative madness (or genius), and you can do things that are only possible in Moodle.

See you next issue! - Lew