About
Rick has been using Moodle to deliver his courses at St. Ambrose University and The University of Iowa since 2003. His first version was Moodle 1.8, which he installed on his shared-hosting website using an auto-install utility. Later, he switched to running a VPS and learned to install Moodle manually, which he continues to do. Currently, he is using the latest version of Moodle.
Rick is a strong advocate for online education and learning management systems (LMSs). Although he has experience with Blackboard 9 (now Anthology,) D2L Brightspace, and Canvas, he still prefers Moodle over these.
Rick also provides assistance with Moodle via Moodle.org forums and MoodleMoots. He is a "2024 Particularly Helful Moodler." If you need personalized assistance with Moodle, Rick is the go-to person. You can contact him for expert help without hesitation.
Videos and Professional Presentations
These are presentations and significant videos that I have provided. Many of the presentations have an included video and additional resources that accompanied the presentation.
- Upgrading Moodle (mp4, 7 minutes).
- Moodle 4 Overview (Student orientation to Moodle for students)
- MountainMoot 2023, Captioning Methods For Educational Videos
- MountainMoot 2023, Quality Matters - Where to Begin
- Benefiting from Collapsed Topics 4
- Installing Moodle on a VPS using Only cPanel
- Upgrading Moodle on a VPS using Only cPanel
- Connect_PowerBI_Tableau_MySQL_Moodle
- A Comparison of Canvas and Moodle Discussion Tools (also posted in Canvas Community)
- MoutainMoot2020 "Quality Matters Certification using Moodle"
- MoodleMoot2019 (Global and Mountain), "Using Calculated Multichoice Questions"
- MoodleMoot2019 (Global and Mountain), "How to Install a “Sandbox” Moodle on Your Windows PC/Mac"
- MoodleMoot2018 (Spain), "Using Tableau with Moodle for Visual Analytics"
- MoodleMoot2018 (Spain and Mountain), "Managing Course Content Using a “Personal Repository”
- MoodleMoot2017 (US and Mountain), "Making Boost do MORE"
- MoodleMoot2016, "Customizing MORE to Improve Your Moodle’s Appearance"
- MoodleMoot2016, "Expanding your MoodleCloud Storage to Fill the 'Entire Sky'"
- MoodleMoot2015, "Using RSS Feeds for Distributing Videos"
- The Online Learning Consortium, Blended Learning Presentation: "Time Warping Education", 2013
- West Coast MoodleMoot 2013 Presentation: "The Power of the Podcast"
Moodle 4.5 Boost Customization using CSS
Rick's current Raw initial SCSS. Last updated 10/21/2024. Moodle 4.5+ (Build: 20241018)
Rick's current Raw SCSS. Last updated 10/21/2024. Moodle 4.5+ (Build: 20241018)
Rick's Backup and Upgrade Scripts
Upgrading Moodle (mp4, 7 minutes). This is a quick overview of now I upgrade my Moodle.
Backup script: This can run as a standalone script. I requires a separate file, which I have named "m4_vars.txt" where database credentials are kept.
Upgrade script: In this my Moodle upgrade script. Within it, I call my Backup script.
Rick's Moodle Backup Method: How Rick regularly backs up his Moodle.
Future Planned Videos
This is a list of videos that I plan to produce. Let me know if you think one should be a priority.
- Principles of Migrating Your Moodle (e.g., VPS to MAMP)
- Backing up your Moodle VPS (server, incremental, remote)
- Using Vimeo with LMSs
- Course Comparison: Moodle and Canvas
- What Idaho State University Missed in their Canvas Evaluation
- Preparing a VPS for Moodle
- How to Install Moodle on a VPS
- Are all LMS Discussion Boards Created Equally?
- Installing Moodlebox an a Raspberry Pi
- Upgrading Your Sandbox
- Creating a Course Shell in 15 minutes using Moodle.
- Creating a Course Shell in 45 minutes using Canvas.
Old Videos that Might still be Useful
Many "hosted" servers no longer support the modern features that Moodle requires. So what I show in these videos will likely not work. However, I am keeping these turned on for reference.
1). A video showing how Rick installs Moodle on a GoDaddy hosted server.
3) A video showing how I actually upgrade my production Moodle (a recommended step for migration.)
A video showing how I migrate a copy of my production Moodle to my new Moodle.
A video showing how Rick changes php.ini settings for Moodle on a GoDaddy hosted server.
Here are some resources that Rick uses for his own Moodle.
Theme settings
Daily Backup Script
SSH script files for upgrades (a zip file)
php Settings for GoDaddy Hosted Server
my.cnf MySQL configuration file
Example of my "Welcome Email" for student enrollment.
Some other useful websites and information about Moodle.
Packt Publishing has many books to learn about Moodle.
Online Teaching Information
Article: Asynchronous-Synchronous E-Learning
Places to Visit
moodle.org - the main place for users of Moodle.
https://moodle.org/course/view.php?id=5 - Moodle user forums. This is where I hang out the most.
moodlecloud.com - a free Moodle installation, with some limitations, that can be used to learn Moodle.
qa.moodle.net - A place to experiment with Moodle features. (I seldom use it because I have my own local sandbox.)
https://school.demo.moodle.net - A demo site for Moodle.
https://moodle.org/demo/ - Some other demos (Including Mount Orange School)
http://jamiep.org/login/index.php - An interesting site that has a demo of Moodle’s powerful quiz engine.
https://tracker.moodle.org - A place to post bugs and feature requests. The technical/developmental side of Moodle.
https://docs.moodle.org/401/en/Main_page - Main Moodle documentation
https://moodleassociation.org/index.php - Moodle’s Users Association (I am a $100AUD member).
moodle.com - The “commercial” side of Moodle. (I seldom visit this site.)
Advocacy
Moodle versus Canvas
Migration from one server to another *mostly* worked....
A Comparison of Canvas and Moodle Discussion Tools
Rick's video, "A Comparison of Canvas and Moodle Discussion Tools"
Idaho State University, Canvas and Moodle Features Comparison Report
Migrating Moodle to Canvas:
- Keep your Moodle running, as a reference, to help instructors recreate courses in Canvas.
- Do not trust importing anything into Canvas.
- Prepare your instructors that the transition will not be easy.
- Canvas is much simpler, so instructors may not be able to do as much; however, it reduces the time they spend using Canvas.
- Most students will not care because many instructors do not know how to use any LMS effectively.
Links to Moodle Documentation and Misc
Example of a Moodle Tracker Feature Request: MDL-31355. Link a due date from Forum to the Calendar. Created by Rick on 1/25/2012, implemented on 4/13/2019. This illustrated the thought and care that Moodle programmers put into a feature request idea. It took over 7 years for this request to be implemented.
For comparison, here is a request in the Canvas Community (Sort Students in People List) that is simply asking to be able to sort the list of "People." This was created on 1/24/2018, it has 232 votes, and nothing is being done on it. Furthermore, the system to show progress is terrible. The original request was "canned," meaning moved to "cold storage" (see first post) and cannot be found!
