Tearing down the (likely bad) design of Moodle

Now, I don't know how many people here have heard of Moodle and other (semi community based) eLearning software, but as someone who's used it and hated it for the last few colleges I attended, I thought I may as well write what's basically a case study/experiment on how well (or badly) the software actually works.

It's not a great field when it comes to well designed community software, and it seems every single provider is either selling/giving away an extremely buggy poorly coded piece of software, or selling for way above what's a logical price range. Okay, they're almost all apparently poorly coded, buggy software, so it's almost like every software maker is the equivalent of Internet Brands (parallels with the UI design comes as well, it's about as poor on the graphics and design front, along with the bug count).

Never the less, I can't judgement software without installing it, so I decided to check it out myself via the free download on the official site. Well, first bad sign. Requires PHP and MySQL 4 and above. Considering the former is at least a year past end of life, that can't be a good thing, but at least it apparently does work on PHP/MySQL 5.

But I downloaded it. Possible mistake number 1... the download file is about 20MB in zip format. That's the equivalent of the full vB 4 Suite download as seperate files all together, and when extracted, it's about SEVENTY MEGABYTES in file space. That's not including the database, which leaves a new install at apparently about TWO HUNDRED MEGABYTES of space used off the bat. People on low grade shared hosting will have to give this a miss, because if their hosting amount isn't oversold, that'll take up a good chunk of the available space. I almost fear for the Inode count bit, because the amount of files in the download by default is 5159 files. And 909 folders. It's supposed to be a CMS, but Drupal is only 500+ files and about 50 folders. Joomla is more, but nowhere near as high. Even vBulletin 4 only has about a thousand files and what not.

Never the less, you're probably wondering why I'm not saying much about the useability yet... Well, it takes about an hour to upload the files through File Zilla, that's why. And because my first two installs went horribly wrong with no help to be found on the official website/forum/documentation. But never the less, a few problems cropped up.

Base folder has to be writeable. Aka, the whole site at 777 for permissions. That's not good security wise. It also requires a data directory, meant to be above the file root. Why? Because you can use it on the site root, but anyone who accesses it can basically get access to the admin accounts or something. It's probably like PHP Nuke all over again...

So okay, I got to the install page. Time 1... massive errors everywhere. All these PHP warnings, access denied warnings, database problems... it was a right pain to try and install, and eventually I had to nuke the first installation attempt and try again because it was just messing up so badly.

Time 2... installation went well, but then the whole site and admin page were just blank. No help on the official site, because the error I experienced had apparently never happened before, and all this despite having a host which said it should work fine with the software. Errors were stuff like 'no site found' or what not, which is almost impossible to figure, especially as I never even got the set up chance in the first place.

So while I'm trying to reinstall a demo for the third time, I'll let people know about a few things I found out about the software from my use as a normal user and from internet articles.

 

First things first, my experiences as a user. Feature wise, it seems quite poor for anything that's not directly related to grading subjects. Forums, blogs and wikis are all included, but none really work well. The former have nearly no features (but the editor to post with is fairly good, and has an import from Word option).

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^Default avatars are rubbish.

Features aren't great. It's basically just single forum boards for each subject you make them about, with the usual 'bare bones' features. No one uses them from what I can tell, and my current university has as far as I know, never used the forum feature in their entire history of using the software.

Blogs are worse. They're not even really blogs to much of a degree, and they make the vBulletin Blog look fantastic in comparison (as in, version ONE looks fantastic in comparison). Some blogs for example only let you edit/use ONE entry. That's not a blog, that's more a notes field. I don't think RSS and sidebars and stuff even enter the picture here, it's basically like a one post (or one topic) forum, and you don't even get comments...

Wikis aren't much either. Don't know the features, but... every teacher I've seen try and use them has had their hopes dashed dramatically as the sheer lameness means no student in their right mind ever edits or adds pages (aka, they have a single welcome page half the time), and the teacher/professor/lecturer usually abandons them shortly afterwards.

.

This is what a Moodle Blog looks like...

This guy says it quite well, and gives a scary example of a default form:

Tim's blog: The geeks don't really matter

The editor itself is quite scary though for security reasons, you can edit HTML in it. As in, when I was writing a blog back in one college, I could literally mess around with the page element positioning because it didn't filter HTML until the editor was reloaded. Oh the fun I had with pasting random things in the sidebar and footer. And complaining about the bad HTML it uses.

Images in general are poor. Smilies are definitely amateurish, making vB 4's look quite good in comparison (yes, that's possible). See:

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Happy looks disturbing. The clown looks weird. The angry smiley looks 'mildly peeved off' Cool looks... average, and funniest of all, the bearded smiley is apparently called 'Martin'. Who the hell is Martin? Never mind, I don't care, and it's probably an injoke.

Apparently, my FTP program is still uploading files. Yeah, not a good sign.

So the images suck like hell, the blogs, forums and wikis are so bad it's horrible to the point they make Internet Brands and their vB 4 add ons look like the top notch professional quality brilliance they are, and there are bugs and security errors galore. Fair point, places I know using the software have problems with the software near daily...

But what features does the software actually have then? Well, I'll get a bit of a list of what it's meant to do, and how well it actually does the job.

It's got chat, forums, blogs, wikis, quizzes, lessons and surveys. Forums, blogs and wikis are useless. No idea about chat rooms. Quizzes, lessons and surveys need proper testing.

On the minor positive, from what I can see, you can use blocks like Drupal and vBulletin do for content and sidebar sections. I plan to test these if I can get a demo site up using the software.

Theming seems like it's going to be a pain (most sites using it don't even bother much apart from a logo), and uses a system similar to Media Wiki. Worst of all software in one? Possibly yes.

 

i had no idea how much space it takes up.....although i suppose there is plenty of space on college computers, cause there has to be for all the students to be able to save their work and stuff on it

i cant actually think of a use for it unless it is for a school or college to use, so what do you plan to use it for after downloading it?

 

Essay/work submission? It's okay, although it's prone to glitches from what I can see, like work being visible and accessible to the submitter but not to the teacher who wants to mark it. I've had that problem before in college.

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On the bright news, some features look interesting. The workshop features look okay, and the IP lookup shows a little globe/map with icons locating where each IP comes from.

Profile wise, it seems fairly okay. Standard forums for webpages, IM addresses, etc. You do have to enter your first and last name, which works as your username with this software though, so it seems like you can tell exactly what audience the software was meant for.

FTP program is STILL uploading files...

The resource feature is pretty much like a redirect forum in vBulletin or Invision Power Board. Nothing more, but at least that works the way it's supposed to, heh.

Multi choice modules are interesting. I think they're meant for multiple choice quizzes/tests online, but they work well for tutorial sign ups and what not. Or they would, if they were a bit more clear, because you simply see numbers as the labels.

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Example of a Moodle Forum.

I tried out some quizzes, and they're like mad libs style, and multiple choice. Now, I don't like multiple choice much in academia, agree?

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Some examples of features. God knows what the last thing is meant to be, I've never seen anyone use it.

There's a bog standard member list in the forum style under 'Participants', although it's fairly non useful except for seeing how many people only login once a month or so.

There's also a calendar, which gets used as much as it does for an internet forum. God knows why every software has this stuff so far.

More information coming soon if I can get a demo installed for myself. Pictures are from the demo on their official website, logged in as 'Student' (who they've not so helpfully named 'Sam Student')

 

I plan to test it to see if it's as hard to administrate as it is to use meaningfully. And because I know someone who runs a school, who wanted to know whether it's useful.

 

Okay, with their default .htaccess thing set up, I've been through the 20 odd stage install process. It's not pretty in the least. Way too many easily consolidated pages, and some of the database pages are so damn long that most non techies would have a heart attack looking at them.

But here's the final install page (I hope it's the final one anyway):

http://dsultimate.net/MoodleFinalInstall.png

It's nearly a megabyte in size for the screen picture. It's like freaking Havenworks or something... Or Time Cube in length.

It was about 20 pages long, and nearly crashed Word for some reason when copying and pasting it. Which is odd, since my Mario and Philosophy BOOK, at 150 + pages and over 170 000 words works and displays fine.

Let's see what happens next.

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Okay, site is finally up. Looks barren, but ah well. If this crashes, who cares, it's a demo, and it's on the same server as a vBulletin forum, topsite, Media Wiki wiki, oekaki, shoutbox, arcade, gallery, video list and whatever else I host there.

 

Okay, I've been playing around with the software a bit now... and while I still think it's mediocre, it does have potential in some sense possibly even as a generic Content Management System. However, it has a metric ton of bugs and sloppy mistakes still, to the point you wonder how this stuff got into a final product.

For instance, the banner doesn't link to the home page of the site. Not a good idea, at least useability wise.

Secondly, some text overlaps and what not, which messes up setting pages quite a bit.

There are problems saving some setting changes, so it's hard to sometimes tell what got changed.

And spelling mistakes. Like this bad example:

Changes images in the /moodle/theme/formal_withe directory. But the theme is called 'formal white', and the actual directory is /moodle/theme/formal_white.

But I'm going to test all the features out.

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