January 22, 2024, I completed the Teaching Basics class on the Moodle Academy website. I was surprised on how good this self-paced class was. This was an important first step for me because I have been wanting to use a Learning Management System in my training at work.

There are a lot of LMS’s out there and most are very expensive. How does one get any experience when your employer doesn’t use one? I subscribed to Moodle Cloud a couple of years ago in order to get some experience. For a standard plan of $120 a year I was able to explore using an LMS. Most LMS’s cost thousands of dollars and you have to subscribe to them to access their support/training materials. So, for about $10 a month I got probably the cheapest hands-on experience on a LMS that you could buy. Some LMS’s provide a limited free trial but you really can’t learn from scratch easily that way. Moodle also provides free training through their Moodle Academy with four introductory courses that will get you started. All the training is free but if you want the certificate at the end of their free courses you have to spend about $22 (20 Euros) each. The Moodle Teaching Basics Certificate that I received was one of these four basic classes. These basic classes are different than the Moodle Educator Certificate which at my last lookup is around $600 for six classes. These four basic classes will get you started with Moodle and prep you for taking the Moodle Educator Certificate program later on.

So, I am happy on my start with Moodle and my LinkedIn page has been updated. I have a lot more to learn but Moodle has lowered the barrier for me and anyone else who wants to get involved in using an LMS. Moodle is also a great LMS for organizations to at least start with. There are many LMS’s that have more/”better” features but they have a hard time competing with the cost of their LMS and the support/training that is available with Moodle. At the very least, if my company decides to go with another LMS I have been exposed to the basic concepts and features common to most LMS’s. Thank you, Moodle!