Portable & Home hosted Learning Management Systems

The COVID-19 pandemic drove IT adoption in major sectors.

In the field of education, many educational institutions opted for online and blended learning.

Different approaches were used across the globe. While many educational institutions have eLearning platforms currently in use, those who did not embrace eLearning in the past were forced to try different tools including video conferencing tools or even the use of Cloud drive spaces to share educational contents.

The best approach for the education sector is to make use of a Learning Management System (LMS) as it provides several benefits not available by other tools.

When comparing LMSs it can be noted that not all of them are equal.

Some have more functionalities than others. Moodle is an Open Source LMS leading in the field. Unfortunately, the cost implication of getting a hosting provider to set a Moodle or the technical knowhow required is not within the reach of everybody.

For those willing to try, free Moodle hosting are available online but, the service is either too slow or it has some limitations like restrictions to install additional plugins customize same as expected.This short book discusses the approach to set up a Moodle on a Raspberry Pi in order to create a portable LMS. Raspberry Pi (RPI) is a credit card sized small computer that can operate on batteries.

RPI's are powerful enough to run a Moodle and provide Wi-Fi network connectivity for up to 30 users.The books start by exploring the portable LMS through Moodlebox followed by the extension of Moodle with the use of plugins.

Moodle has a plugin called 'Interactive Content -H5P'.

This plugin allows easy embedding of YouTube Video lesson on the Moodle platform.

The best part is that it allows the inclusion of questions on top of the videos for better interaction with the students.

A portable Moodle is practical to support education in remote areas where internet connectivity is low.

Another way Moodle on a Pi could be used is to open access of the Moodle to the internet.

This shall allow users to get access to the device via intranet.

These are a few of the topics covered in this short book of approximately 40 pages.

The information in the book are useful for educators who have never worked with Moodle and for educators searching for a cost-effective way to support a small cohort of learners via a Portable LMS.