How to Create a Moodle LMS from Scratch?

Aug 31, 2022

10 min read

What is Learning Management System (LMS)?

An LMS (Learning Management System) is a web-based platform that supports efficient digital dissemination and analysis of learning experiences (including assessment) in various professional fields.

What are the goals of an LMS?

The goal of a Learning Management System (LMS) is to provide learners with tuition and progress opportunities in line with their personal development plans.

For companies, the goal of the learning platform looks like creating an enabling environment for the development of employee strengths, which will lead to the growth of the entire company, success and, ultimately, will increase profits.

These are quite large learning goals for all parties involved.

Is an LMS really actual now? Or is it just one more digitalization myth?

An ATD survey finds that 83% of organizations currently use an LMS.

According to a report by Markets and Markets, the size of the global LMS market is expected to grow to a whopping 25.7 billion by 2025! 

Still doubting the effectiveness of LMS? Let’s get straight to the point. Here is a hot case from SmartApp.

An Effective LMS Case from SmartApp

What are the original goals and objectives of the project?

An original goal is to develop an LMS with the landing page to increase skills in four categories:

  1. Digital Science
  2. Finance Acumen
  3. Interpersonal Skills
  4. Emotional Intelligence. 

Target audience:

  • Knowledge workers
  • Technology leaders
  • Managers with leadership skills
  • Diversity and inclusion teams

What are the underlying problems the Customer is trying to solve?

  • Scale learning
  • High quality of knowledge delivery
  • Self-paced education
  • Certification

What was the objective for MVP development?

  • MVP version of LMS platform with a landing page
  • Scalable solution for future growth
  • Address the needs of learners to build skills and competencies
  • Be cost effective 
  • Save time 
  • Stay current with modern skills
  • Ease of use with an intuitive platform

What solution did the SmartApp team propose?

  • Learning Management System (Technology – Moodle Course Management System)  and landing page (Technology – WordPress).
  • SDLC methodology Agile, Scrum framework.
  • Sprints length – 2 weeks (BE development, course template building).
  • 1 week (admin and student functionality development).
  • Duration – 15 weeks MVP, Total hours spent – 1 200.

What was unique about the project?

The client was eager to create a modern and easy-to-use learning platform, while relying heavily on the expertise of the team, as the solution had to remain very flexible, essentially without fixed business requirements.

Why Moodle?

Here is the list of the strong arguments:

  • Truly open source.
  • Years of the team’s experience and K Hours of live projects.
  • On this learning platform, even with native moodle functionality and minimal user pages design, a learner can be made feeling like a key figure in the process. All learning activities will be built around the learner.
  • Proven effectiveness combined with the broadest possibilities for the most diverse functionality.
  • Opportunities for integration and development. This platform will grow with you! It is quite possible that it will outgrow you one day (we can add artificial intelligence).

9 easy steps to the success of your learning platform with the SmartApp team

  1. Сhoose a web host (if necessary, we will help). Come up with a sharp name that will hook and shoot, register a domain.
  2. Decide on the list of roles in your platform and the expected result for each role. We will describe the necessary functionality and offer options for additional functions that will bring the greatest benefit to a user, based on our experience. During this time, our developer has already deployed Moodle on the dev and stage.
  3. Next, we will decide how the course will look like (course theme) or write a custom theme specifically for your needs.

    The wish of the client in our case was to simplify the creation of a course for the platform administrator as much as possible, since more than 200 courses are planned and here you need to think about administration time costs in advance. We have created a template for new courses. Click on one button and the сourse placeholder is ready! It remains only to fill the course with content. In order not to miss anything, we recorded a manual for the administrator, and later uploaded a training course with video tutorials to the client’s live platform.
  1. Build a logic tree for the course. It is very important to lead users in the right direction, while maintaining the freedom to move between training modules, in accordance with the mood and desire of each individual user during training hours. 
  2. Ensure quality absorption of knowledge. Moodle has the widest range for quizzes. In this project, we additionally implemented the possibility of a compliance training for medical workers. It was important to ensure and confirm to auditors that learners fully watch the video lessons, get the maximum passing grade, and only then receive a certificate.
  3. Create convenient and understandable navigation for users. The slogan of this project – let’s recalculate the number of clicks and remove all unnecessary ones! And it worked. 80 – 85% of the people living on the planet are visuals. Here’s what you should take care of, without putting it off indefinitely. The design possibilities for users’ pages in Moodle are endless. Just let us know your preferences.
  4. Student engagement. It won’t be enough to bring users to the platform. They should still feel like welcome guests. We have made сustome notifications for learners at all stages of the user journey. We play and learn. Nobody likes boring training. Let’s add elements of gamification – custom badges.
  5. Availability for users and saving time. Our platform should be easy to jump on. Add the landing page to your favorites. Log in to the platform in a couple of seconds on a pop-up through social networks.
  6. Reports. Confirm student progress at any time. With custom reports, this is always possible.

Wrap Up

That’s it! The project is ready, don’t stop learning. You may find this approach a bit simplistic, but it should be. You see the tip of the iceberg, the rest is our concern.

The Client’s feedback

I am very pleased with the work the team did and what they achieved in such a small window of time. Thanks for bringing my vision to life.

The team followed project management professional processes and methods that are consistent with industry best practices.

Project results and customer feedback: Image showing the interaction of positive customer feedback and project results
Customer Feedback

The project looks very modern, with an attractive design for users. These pages make you want to learn and stay longer on the platform! Keep learning!

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