Overall design of Moodle

Some overall design features

Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a software package designed to help educators easily create quality online courses. Such e-learning systems are sometimes also called Learning Management Systems (LMS) or Virtual Learning Environments (VLE)

Some general features that would interest a system administrator:

• Moodle runs without modification on Unix, Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Netware and any other system that supports PHP (which includes almost every webhosting provider).
• Moodle is designed in a modular way, and allows a great deal of flexibility to add (and remove) functionality at many leveles.
• Moodle upgrades very easily from one version to the next - it has an internal system to upgrade it's own databases and repair itself over time.
• Moodle requires only one database (and can share it with other applications if necessary).
  
• Moodle includes comprehensive database abstraction that supports many major brands of database.
• Emphasis on strong security throughout. Forms are all checked, data validated, cookies encrypted etc

Some other features that would interest an educator.

• Moodle promotes a social constructionist pedagogy (which includes collaboration, activity-based learning, critical reflection, etc)
• Moodle is suitable for 100% online classes as well as supplementing face-to-face learning
• Moodle has a simple, lightweight, efficient, compatible, low-tech browser interface
• Course listings show descriptions for every course on the server, including accessibility to guests.
• Courses can be categorised and searched - one Moodle site can support thousands of courses
• Most text entry areas (resources, forum postings, journal entries etc) can be edited using a capable, embedded WYSIWYG HTML editor