Moodle™ is the perfect platform to teach online. But achieving a site that stands out in the crowd and engages learners is a hard nut to crack.
However, it’s still the most preferred LMS by universities and higher education institutes.
Given that, you might have definitely tried to level up your site for your University but the limitations of the platform may have held you back.
Customizing your Moodle™ site can be a time-consuming task and there is a need to go the extra mile and stand out in the crowd.
But HOW????
First impression is the Best Impression
Considering the volume and the type of courses offered at universities as part of higher education, slaying LMS engagement goals can be tough!
So, it’s advisable leaving a great impression on your students by enhancing your site in a way that covers all aspects.
It might involve a lot of challenges like coding, editing sections, custom styling, branding, designing, improving responsiveness, and so on…
But fortunately, we have a lot of options to choose from to customize and make Moodle™ delightful and engaging for Universities/Higher Education.
This listicle of top 40 Moodle Plugins is about to make your job 10X easier. Let’s explore:
40 Best Moodle™ Plugins for Universities/Higher Education
Interface, navigation, and Branding
Top Moodle™ Themes
1.Edwiser RemUI
Edwiser RemUI comes with aesthetically pleasing themes to give a modern and fresh look to your LMS. It wins the game when it comes to looks, functionality, and ease of customization.
It allows you to keep a tab on your learners progress across courses. At the same time, your learners can also see their progress in courses by viewing the course progress bar on every course.
Key features:
- Easily Customizable dashboard
- Two slick course layouts: Card Format & List Format
- Translates any language supported by Moodle™, including RTL languages
The Edwiser RemUI has been designed to keep the needs of Teachers, Admins, and Students alike! It is specially designed to ensure the best User Experience and enhanced User Engagement.
2. Fordson
Fordson is designed to give the easiest learning experience possible to your learners.
Designed to quicken the process of student enrollment, Fordson is packed with a plethora of features that help you increase student engagement in courses.
Fordson allows you to customize your interface completely as it comes with a wide range of color customization options, styling options, and more. So you can get creative and give a professional and unique look to your site the way you like it.
And it has an improved navigation system that guarantees a smooth experience for your learners.
3. Edumy
Edumy is a colorful and radiant theme for Moodle™. If you’re looking for a vibrant and futuristic theme, then you’d love this! It has a well-organized homepage that makes it easier to browse all the available courses. And it’s completely responsive and customizable.
This theme with beautiful design includes various pre-made demos so you can quickly launch your site. It comes with more than 85 custom blocks, homepage sliders, custom animations, and more.
4. Moove
Moove is an eye-catching yet simple Moodle theme. With Moove, you can design a professional site on a budget.
It is designed in a way that makes your learners focus on the main content of your course. It allows you to hide both the sidebar columns which help to enjoy maximum space on your device screen and focus on learning material.
Key features:
- Clean, concise, and intuitive interface
- Responsive design
- Modern Course page designs
- an events calendar
Recently, it was updated to a new version compatible with the Moodle™ 3.4 version. This theme was awarded the Early Bird 3.4 badge for having a compatible Moodle™ 3.4 on the date of release.
5. Lambda
redpithemes.com
Lambda is one of the Best Moodle™ Themes of 2021. It’s Completely responsive and customizable. With this theme, you can create a visually appealing and engaging website that is accessible across devices, using a single code base.
Lambda comes with various easy-to-use features like slideshows, promotion boxes, etc. You also get 1000 scalable vector icons with Font Awesome in the picture. And it lets you modify the color, size, and drop-shadow.
You can also set Social Media icons to ensure users are always connected to you for important updates.
It also comes with full support for multilingual websites in both LTR and RTL languages.
Course engagement
Top Moodle Course Formats
1. Edwiser Course Formats
Edwiser Course Formats are specially designed to enhance the look of your course content irrespective of the Moodle™ theme. It comes with two intuitive and simple course layouts – Edwiser list format and Edwiser Card format.
Edwiser Course Format can present your course in the form of collapsible lists or display your content items on neatly stacked cards. It also comes with a progress bar for all course activities to keep track of.
It is completely responsive and gives a minimalistic look to your course presentation. And it’s available for free! No hidden costs.
2. Grid CF
As the name suggests, this format presents your course topics in a grid. This course format covers all topics and creates a grid of icons for each topic with short titles. This format makes it easier for learners to create an overall picture of the Moodle™ page and the content available.
When you click on an icon, it brings up the content of the topic in a ‘light box’ style display. This format makes it easy to navigate between Sections.
3. Tiles CF
Tiles’ course format is similar to grid format as it also presents course topics in a grid rather than a list. When you click on a tile, content is displayed under the tile with an animated transition effect.
It allows you to pick an icon from a predefined set, or upload a background photo from your device that best represents the course topic.
Key features:
- easily adapts to different screen sizes and orientations.
- easy to switch into Tiles from other formats (e.g. Topics, Grid) without changing course content.
- Customizable tiles
- set activities within each tile, as “sub-tiles” to display.
4. Collapsible Topics
If your Moodle page is becoming overly lengthy and cluttered with content, then the Collapsible Topics format then you may find this useful.
The Collapsible Topics course format allows you to collapse and view topics in courses that have a large number of topics, or a lot of information.
This can help in reducing the page size as its collapsing feature doesn’t take up a lot of space.
With a plugin setting, it allows retaining topics to collapse state for the current session or across all sessions. It’s arranged in a drop-down manner and it looks elegant and simple.
It can be set for both topic and week-based formats.
5. Buttons
The Buttons course format generates a menu with buttons to access the various sections or topics, one by one. It has features to create a group of sections and change the button colors and shapes.
It also allows you to assign names to the groups to identify them. (e.g. First Semester, Topics about a specific chapter).
This is a simple plugin that can give a modern look to your courses.
Note: You’ll have to write the code for hexadecimal color for the visible section button or use the default one.
6. MindMap Format
MindMap format is a cool way to present your courses. This Course Format allows Moodlers to access courses through interactive, personalized mind maps. It graphically presents the distinction of modules where learners have problems and which are near the deadline.
A Mind map is a great way to learn new concepts as It allows learners to create individual mind maps while they’re studying. It leads to a better understanding of the topic they are studying. This unique plugin will encourage your students to be creative and think bigger.
It is fully compatible with standard Moodle course formats (like weekly format or topics format). It also lets you switch your existing courses to MindMap format.
For Improved Content and LMS engagement
Best Gamification tools
1. Level Up
Level Up! Is a popular gamification plugin for Moodle™. It can be used to identify learners’ progress during a course.
At the same time, your learners can also look at the Level Up! block on their course to see the badge displayed, the points count, and the progress bar. Such indicators can motivate your learners and keep them engaged.
You can check a learner’s status through the Class report on Level Up! You can use this as an efficient means to get an overview of class mean progress, identifying at-risk students, and high-flyers in the course.
It automatically sends notifications to congratulate students as they level up, another great motivator for your learners!
2. Quizventure
Quizventure is an interesting activity block that takes questions from the course it’s added to. It makes taking quizzes more fun, the possible answers come down as spaceships, and learners have to shoot the correct one to earn points.
It basically creates an arcade-type game from multiple choice and matching questions in the Question bank.
Quizventure makes the learning process more fun! But it can only support multiple choice and matching questions.
3. Ranking Block
Ranking Block provides a ‘leader board’ in a Moodle™ course. It basically assigns points based on activities that your learners complete and can be viewed by week, month, or all time.
If a learner completes an assignment the ranking adds 2 points and it is ended only when the student receives a grade. In this way, it ensures that each learner completes an assignment and motivates them to do more.
This plugin works together with the moodle course completion, so you have to set criteria at the end of the course.
Interactive content
1. H5P
H5P is basically a content authoring solution. It allows you to create content such as interactive videos, presentations, and quizzes.
It’s a perfect tool to create a variety of self-paced activities that learners can do on their own time in Moodle™. They can be used as exercises for an online lecture, to assign tests, to get learners to practice what they have learned, and many more activities that lead to effective learning.
H5P content can be created in the Content bank or on the h5p.com site, or with the LUMI app for desktop, and added to your course as an H5P activity or placed into any other activity.
Best Moodle plugins to simplify everyday Moodling
Top Moodle Grading plugins
1. Edwiser RapidGrader
Edwiser RapidGrader comes with an extremely clean user interface. This smart plugin has everything you need to grade, in the same window.
With Edwiser Rapid Graders Question-based grading mode, you can easily grade 1 particular question of all students, one by one. This feature allows you to grade questions easily, without switching multiple tabs and screens.
Its intuitive Interface and easy-to-share feedback box ensure that teachers don’t just grade, but also help their students to grow.
Edwiser Rapid Grader makes the whole grading process easy and convenient for teachers. It helps you save the time that is spent on understanding the grading process.
2. Turnitin Plagiarism Plugin
Turnitin is an academic integrity solution in a true sense, It can easily integrate with existing Moodle™ Assignments, workshops, and forums. However, you require a Turnitin license for use.
When you create activities such as assignments or forum discussions, additional settings appear for the plagiarism checker, which can be customized to provide an accurate similarity score to detect any plagiarism.
3. Team Assignment
The Moodle™ Team Assignment lets your learners organize themselves into teams of 1 or more students for the purpose of completing a group assignment.
A group submission (which may consist of one or more files) is then submitted for grading by the teacher.
As a teacher, you can give marks or grades to the submission with a single team mark. If required, one or more learners of a team can be given individual marks.
Note: This version does not support rubric grading.
4. Grade Me
Grade Me shows you all of the assignments and manual quiz questions such as essays and file responses that have been submitted, but not yet graded.
It saves you the time spent looking to see if learners have submitted work. It also notifies you when a student wants feedback. Instructors can only see the assignments that are submitted by learners that are members of the same group as the instructors.
The plugin is designed to work with groups, that is, teachers can only see the assignments that are submitted by learners that are members of the same group as the teachers.
Best Moodle Reporting plugins
1. Edwiser Reports
If decreasing student engagement is your concern, then Edwiser Reports could be your go-to reporting plugin. It helps you take a holistic approach to report and analytics in Moodle™.
Key features:
- Dashboard with 10+ customizable modules that can display the information of your choice.
- Track active users, enrollments, course completion rates, inactive users, and more…
- Auto-schedule reports and directly access them in your inbox without logging in graphical representations of reports
2. LearnerScript
LearnerScript is a great learning analytics plugin for Moodle™ LMS. This install-on-premises plugin is produced by eAbyas Info Solutions, a Moodle™ Certified Partner.
It saves you from having to share your data with a third party for making reports. This smart plugin comes with 4 dashboards for the admin. With this plugin, Teachers and even students have a dashboard.
Key features:
- 4 dashboards
- 80+ Canned Reports
- Graphical reports
For getting actionable insights, it lets you perform Comparative Analysis using Course Profiles or User Profiles.
3. Configurable Reports
Configurable Reports is a custom reports builder for Moodle™LMS. This block allows you to create custom reports without SQL knowledge. It lets you select which users can view the reports.
You can create various types of reports such as course reports, categories reports, user reports, and timeline reports.
4. Intelliboard
IntelliBoard provides comprehensive analytic and reporting assistance to education communities and organizations that use Moodle™ as their Learning Management System.
With IntelliBoard you can extract the statistical data gathered within your site and see it on a single dashboard in graphical form of printable charts, graphs, and analytics.
With Intelliboard, you can deliver better, more effective, more engaging learning informed by what your data is informing you.
Top Video Conferencing tools for Moodle™
1.BBB
BigBlueButton is an open-source web conferencing system specially designed for online learning. This plugin can be used to effectively engage remote students in real-time anywhere in the world.
With BigBlueButton, you can conduct live online classes, webinars, and workshops.
Key features:
- real-time sharing of slides (including whiteboard)
- breakout rooms
- screen, chat, and emojis.
- record all content for later use.
2. Zoom
Zoom is a popular cloud-based video communications solution that allows you to set up virtual video conferencing rooms, live chats, webinars, screen-sharing, and other collaborative activities.
You don’t need an account to visit a Zoom meeting, and the platform is compatible with Windows, Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android. So literally anyone can access it.
Key features:
- Simple and accessible.
- Intuitive interface
- Gallery View — a mode that allows you to see each person on the call at once.
3. Poodll
Poodll is a large set of tools for language teachers to build effective courses that integrate easily with Moodle™ LMS. Its set of plugins includes means for audio and video recording, vocabulary learning, and evaluation of reading and speaking.
Poodll offers Better Audio/Video Recording when compared to other tools. It gives a choice of recorders and storage locations, auto transcription and optional time limits, assignment submission, Atto/TinyMCE plugins as well as native quiz questions, and feedback plugins.
4. AdobeConnect
Adobe Connect is a cloud-based web conferencing solution. It is specially designed to help educational institutions, and businesses create meetings and training sessions.
Key features:
- Customizable branding,
- engagement analytics,
- Reporting
- Polls
It has a white-labeling feature that allows you to add images, logos, color, and other visual aesthetics that can resonate with your site.
You can also conduct polls with multiple-choice, open-ended, and multi-answer questions to keep your learners engaged.
Top Recommended Filter in Moodle™
1. Multimedia plugins filter
The Multimedia plugins filter detects a link in text that leads to a multimedia resource and replaces the link with a relevant multimedia player code that can play the resource. The actual player remains on your device.
Let me give you an example, if you put an MP3 audio file as a resource in your course, or have a URL link to an external MP3 file. When the MP3 audio plugin has been turned on, the student will be able to play them in Moodle™ using a media player on their device.
2. Lightbox Gallery
The Lightbox Gallery lets you create image galleries within your Moodle™ course. The Lightbox system is a set of scripts that can be used to apply various effects to image galleries.
The main configuration process involves telling Moodle™ which directory includes the images you want to include in the gallery. Small thumbnails will then be created, which are used for the thumbnail picture of the gallery.
Key features:
- Great presentation of visual content
- Scroll through thumbnails
- Transition effects
You can also encourage your learners to directly contribute to the gallery as you can modify permissions on a site- or course-wide level. You may later “switch” this capability on or off in your courses.
Best Moodle™ Activities
1. Certificate
Certificates are a great reward for your learners. The Certificate allows you to create engaging certificates based on predefined requirements set by you (teacher) and then award them to your learners.
Certificates are recognition that can be awarded upon completion of course activities, courses, programs, and certifications.
If you want to add any new feature to this plugin then you’ll need to write a code.
2. Feedback
The Feedback activity allows you to design and send surveys to collect feedback. Unlike the Survey tool, it allows you to write your own questions, rather than choose from a list of pre-written questions. You can also create non-graded questions.
Feedback activities can also allow your learners to see each other’s answers, anonymously.
3. SCORM
SCORM (Shared Content Object Reference Model) is a set of specifications that provide interoperability, accessibility, and reusability for educational Web content.
The SCORM action allows teachers to load any SCORM or AICC package into a course.
The best use of SCORM is interoperability. When creating content, you can upload it to your site. For LMS or learning platform providers, you just need to import content from other sources. SCORM verifies that the content is compatible with the LMS and that the LMS can import, launch and track the content.
Your students will click the SCORM icon in the course to access it. Depending on their Appearance settings, they can preview the action before trying, and then select Normal to get started.
4. Lesson
Lesson activities allow you to create “branch” exercises to present content to students and navigate to specific pages depending on their answers. The content can be text or multimedia. Lessons can be curated for students and it displays a progress bar. It also has a table of contents that shows all pages, or you may have hidden navigation.
Teachers can view additional tabs when they access the lesson. You can preview the flow, edit the page, view the report, and grade the essay (if the essay question was used).
5. Assignments
With the help of assignments, you can collect and evaluate your learner’s work. Managing student work using an assignment activity gives a convenient database of student contributions that you can organize and manage online.
Assignment activity comes with a grading interface where you can enter grades and give feedback to each student, this date automatically appears in the calendar block and in the upcoming events block. Your learners can check when their work is due.
Other recommended plugins
1. Quickmail
The Moodle™ Quickmail block is a tool that is located on the right side of your course. It allows you to send emails to learners or instructors of the course.
Quickmail sends the email to the user’s RRU email address. Emails sent to multiple recipients via Quickmail will use BCC for all participants, so the recipient would not know who the email is sent to, and the recipient will not be able to select a “reply all” option to reply to the email Everyone sent to.
Key features:
- Multiple attachments
- Filter by Role
- Filter by Groups
- Signatures
- Drafts
- Optionally allow Students to email people within their group.
Note that Quickmail can only send emails, it cannot receive emails.
2.Course menu block
Course menu block was the first to create a structured course menu for Moodle™ before any other plugin. The course menu provides navigation between sections/weeks of the course as a folder that collapses/unfolds in the standard folder navigation metaphor.
The links will take you directly to a section of the course or directly to an event or resource in each section. It includes links to administration and other commonly used tools and can provide alternative navigation.
The course menu block takes the title of each section and sets it in the menu block. Combined with the format presenting one section per page, you get to navigate through the <> sections easily.
3.Wikipedia block
If you want to provide students with a quick and easy way to search Wikipedia directly from the site, try the Wikipedia block.
It is easy to use, you can switch languages
This is a simple block that collects Wikipedia queries and directs the user to a Wikipedia entry in the appropriate language. The language is automatically determined from the user’s language settings.
You can install the WikipediaBlock directory in the / moodle / blocks/directory and access the notification page.
4. Questionnaire module
You can use the Questionnaire Module to survey learners in your course. This is a contribution module that you can download from the Moodle™ plugin directory.
This module allows teachers to create a variety of questions and get student feedback on courses, activities, and more. The goals of the questionnaire module are quite different from the goals of the Moodle™ lesson or quiz module.
Key features:
- It allows you to add all types of questions, including essay questions, MCQs, yes / no questions, and numeric questions that allow respondents to set the number of decimal places and lengths.
- Responses can be exported as .csv, .xlsx, HTML table, .json, .ods, or PDF.
5. My Files
With My Files, you can Import files and folders from one course to another very quickly and easily with edit permissions.
You can install My Files in three simple steps:
- Turn on editing,
- add the block to your course,
- and click Import My File.
You’ll see a list of all courses for which you have edit permission. Click on any of these and it will take you to all the files/folders in that course, just select the one you want and click Import at the bottom.
6. Book resource
Books resource allows you to create multi-page resources in a book-like format with a table of contents. It’s a great tool to create a virtual book. You can also embed any multimedia such as images, videos, sound, and H5P content for better understanding.
As a teacher, you can edit books from the Table of contents when the editing is turned on. You can also hide a page from learners.
Key features:
- You can embed multimedia
- You can print as PDF
Book resources can help you organize your course content in one place if there are so many resources for a single subject. This will keep you from sharing multiple PDFs with your learners which may lead to confusion while studying.
Takeaway
That was a pretty long list.
But these tools can help you create an impactful Moodle™ site for your University. And drive higher learner engagement.
With a good balance and blend of Edwiser products and the above-mentioned plugins, a brilliantly transformed Moodle™ site with a modern twist is not difficult to achieve – and that too in half the time, money, and work.
If you check out Edwiser products, it has a variety of plugins you can install for a professional-looking & flawlessly working LMS.
And that’s how you transform, manage and maintain your entire LMS like a BOSS
1 thought on “Top 40 Moodle™ Plugins for Universities/Higher Education [Free+Paid]”
i love this post. i needed post like this.Really interesting. Thank you for sharing this.
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