A ‘COMPETENT’ CMS: Moodle, a widely-used open source course management system, has released Moodle 3.1, an update that introduces full support for competency-based education, an educational model in which students earn credit after mastering skills, abilities and knowledge required for an area of study, regardless of time spent in class.
With the update, administrators can build links of competencies—“competency frameworks”—and add them to specific course activities. They can create learning paths associated with those competencies and assign them to individual students or full cohorts. Students who wish to submit evidence of prior learning, to show they have already mastered certain competencies, can do so with the Moodle update.
The 3.1 release also includes other changes and features:
- Updated assignment grading interface
- Global search function
- Assignment file conversion
- Activity sharing between Moodle sites
- In-line editing
- In-page confirmations
- Ability to pin forum discussions
- File system repository search function
- Ability to bulk download files in zipped folders for offline use
