MoodleMoot Global Conference Notes

July is typically the busiest month for LMS user conferences, and we've already shared notes from Anthology Together in Orlando (for Blackboard Learn), InstructureCon Online (for Canvas), and D2L Fusion in Boston (for Brightspace). Today we're going to add notes from MoodleMoot Global in Barcelona (for Moodle).

Dealing With The Obvious Issue

Let's admit it - Moodle wins for best conference location among the major providers. Nothing against Mickey Mouse or Paul Revere, but Barcelona is a great city to visit, and for Moodle it provides a nice global location outside of the US, which is appropriate given the location of most Moodle institutions. It turned out that the city was having one of its first major festivals in three years, La Mercè, in honor of the patron saint of Barcelona, and there was a wonderful yet busy atmosphere in the city . . .

even if they have some crazy customs there.

Past the Inflection Point

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the first release of Moodle as an open source LMS, it is worth noting up front that the company (Moodle HQ controls the open source project and is a for-profit B corp) appears to be past the inflection point I described in the late 2010s and in a period of growth. The inflection point came with several large Certified Moodle Partners (the major funding source for Moodle), such as RemoteLearner and eventually Blackboard, either leaving the program or being pushed out. In 2021 Moodle HQ forced eCreators and eThink to leave the Certified Moodle Partner program after their acquisition by LTG (who also bought the former Moodlerooms, now named Open LMS, from Blackboard). Declining adoption by academic institutions and the removal of a significant portion of the Moodle revenue stream.At MoodleMoot Global 2022, the company announced that they have grown in size, with 178 employees now in 23 companies, with further plans for another ~60 employees. The company still runs on a shoestring budget compared to its commercial competitors Instructure, D2L, and Anthology, but it has moved past the inflection point and is growing.In a similar vein, the conference itself is also growing and becoming THE MoodleMoot - historically there have been many regional conferences but no central one. In the first conference in 2019 there were 350 attendees, and this year there were more than 800.

Moodle HQ also claimed a win for increasing from 100 million to 330 million registered site users over the past five years.

Choosing Metrics

While these growth numbers are important and speak to Moodle's sustainability and impact, I question the choice of metrics, at least in the academic community that is the origin of Moodle and the topic of our analysis. In higher education, as we have often covered, Moodle has by far the largest installed base globally, but its growth from a competitive, institutional-decision perspective is stagnant and even falling in North America, Europe, Latin America, and Oceania. Combining all higher ed data in LISTedTECH's data set, the trend is clear.

I suspect most of the growth in registered users comes from the the increasing usage as a corporate LMS (and with the apparent success of Moodle Workplace), from simply more schools taking the LMS seriously and choosing to register their systems, and from dramatically increasing the number of users reported per school.

My top goal for the conference was to get a sense if the trend in institutional adoptions is likely to change - that is a key focus of our analysis. Is Moodle taking the institutional decision issue, which comes down to competition with other systems, more seriously than before?

I believe that the LMS has become necessary infrastructure for educational institutions, and the primary metric in measuring impact should be on institutional decision-making. Focusing on registered users does show a stunning global impact, but it can also hide the decline in adoption and future usage.

Intuitive Design

Along these lines, Moodle 4 should play a major role. As described in a 2020 blog post:

On a direct level, the Moodle 4 release is an improvement, but it is not a sign of change in competitiveness, at least by itself. Perhaps most telling, Moodle 4's intuitive design was just not a big factor at the conference. Moodle HQ spend time in keynotes and sessions extolling the Open EdTech initiative, and there were plenty of sessions showing individual uses of Moodle (e.g., one professor developing an e-Portfolio tool using the LMS), but the supposed centerpiece of design got no special focus other than some banners.

Looking at a demo of Moodle 4, I got the same impression. Nice design elements and improved look-and-feel, but nothing that changes the overall positioning against Canvas, Brightspace, or Learn. Some improved workflows and quicker yet cleaner presentation, but still a lot of pull-down menus and vertical scrolling. Keep in mind that competitively I'm focusing not on Moodle 4 vs 3; I'm focusing on Moodle 4 vs other systems that are all improving their designs and feature sets.

I suspect I'll do a public blog post later this week going into more detail on this subject.

On an indirect level, however, I did see signs of future change, and there are two worth mentioning.

One is the hiring of a few key executives that seem to recognize Moodle's challenges and the need to focus more on the institutional decision-making process. Marie Achour is the new head of product, and speaking to her was a breath of fresh air. No historical baggage or defensiveness, yet a keen understanding of the Moodle challenges and opportunities, and a desire to make improvements. Jonathan Moore is the head of Moodle US, and he showed a good understanding of where Moodle is competitive and where it is not. There are others, but the point is that I was more impressed with the changes to the Moodle HQ and Moodle US organizations than I was with the Moodle release. This should not be overlooked, as D2L had similar dynamics 5 - 7 years ago with their executive team helping to lead to fundamental changes to the LMS product line and its competitiveness.

Another indirect sign of change is Moodle Workplace, which I described in early 2019.

What I saw at the conference is a system that has real improvements in enterprise-class designs, and a system that could impact educational markets. The Moodle Workplace tools such as Dynamic Rules are well-designed and could easily apply to higher education contexts in a way that better improves usability than the changes in Moodle 4. Yes, the two are intertwined, but the point is that like the executive changes, Moodle Workplace intuitive design functionality could represent a material change in competitiveness in the future.

Overall

MoodleMoot Global was a successful conference that represents the Moodle LMS improvements in sustainability and its growth that includes corporate learning clients.I have described Moodle's success before not just in terms of numbers but in terms of creating and enabling real eLearning options globally in a way that would not have been possible otherwise. Unfortunately, I did not see direct signs that the decline in institutional adoption rates will change, even though I did see elements in place that could change this perspective in the future.