Help! We just got a Moodle LMS and I don't know where to start! (Part 1 of 2)

 The site looks super official. You log in. Some menus beckon: Home, Dashboard, Courses. As training manager, this is your new responsibility. Your knees would buckle if you weren’t sitting down. Where to start! Where to actually Start!

You are definitely not alone. We’ve come to understand this moment all too well. The excitement has faded, and you have to give a very real date for when the first course will go live, having no real way of answering the question. 

Moodle is powerful. That is both its strength and its greatest challenge. It can do almost anything. Roles, permissions, badges, competencies, course categories, reports – the list is long and inspirational. Not at this moment, though. Your list is short, and your fuse is even shorter. It’s simple: TELL ME WHERE TO START! 

Trying to understand all of Moodle before launching your first course is a bit like trying to understand South African culture from the Ethiopian Air magazine on your way to Johannesburg. You’ll get the highlights for sure. You won’t get the potholes, parliament (in a tent) or the people!  

Moodle doesn’t require mastery on day one. We suggest picking one type of course (the easiest one) and tackling it first. 

• Staff onboarding
• Compliance training
• Blended learning support or training
• A short internal course

Next step, build one course. Add the content. Enable completion tracking. Enrol a small tester group – a friend, a potential user, and, if you’re brave, Critical Carl to balance it all out. Learn from their feedback and make improvements. Then, and only then, send it to a superior to review.

Your goal is most definitely not perfection in the first round. Hopes of perfection only delay progress. ‘Good enough’ should be your goal at this point. Your course doesn’t need advanced automation or layered settings to be useful. It needs structure, relevant materials, and a clear pathway through the content so users can give it a spin and see if your structure holds.

Think of it like moving into a new house. You unpack what you need to live. Renovations come later. You just need to live in each room first, then the renovations can start, and perfection is eventually somewhere on the horizon.

Alternatively, you could enrol in Limina’s EUM training pathways. We launched the Educators Using Moodle (EUM) Level 1 and 2 to help you in moments like these. The EUM 1 and 2 are jam-packed with hands-on, practical learning between layers of learning theory to help it all make logical sense. As you learn, you’re developing the competencies needed to eventually get to the certified Moodle Educator Qualification or MEQ, and each micro-lesson in EUM 1 and 2 gets you closer to entry into MEQ. 

In Part 2 of this short series (to be published in April), we’ll look a little deeper into the Educators Using Moodle pathway.

By Chantal Tarling