In the early days of the iPhone, Apple ran an ad with the catchphrase: “There’s an app for that.” And it was true. Because the iPhone had an “App Store” that developers could use to distribute or sell apps, you didn’t have to depend on your phone’s out-of-the-box features. You could easily download a huge variety of small applications and turn your phone into a flashlight, calorie-calculator, e-reader, etc.
I’ve recently been feeling some of that same excitement about Moodle. Because Moodle is an Open Source tool, thousands of developers around the world create and share custom applications (called “plugins”) that add new features and functions to Moodle. Plugins come in many varieties, from administration tools to learning activities, quiz question types, and more.
One recent example is that we’ve added a Custom Certificate plugin to our Moodle based Open Education site, boost.up.edu. That means that any UP entities that want to offer continuing ed credits can create a certificate that learners who complete their courses are awarded and can download automatically.
All this is to say, if you are ever wondering if Moodle can do something, feel free to reach out and ask! It may be “there’s a plugin for that”.
