With hundreds of Moodle plugins to choose from, where do you begin? To make the decision a little bit easier, we’ve compiled a list of the Top 10 Moodle Plugins of 2015! This list was completely influenced by the Moodle community - these were the most downloaded plugins by Moodle users in the last year.
Looking for a more extensive list? Check out our Moodle and Totara Plugins Guide!
1. Essential Moodle Theme
By far the Essential Moodle Theme plugin is the most popular given the sheer amount of downloads. The newest version of Essential aims to make your Moodle site look anything but a Moodle course list and instead serves as a simple and clean company homepage. Better yet, Essential is completely responsive so users can access your site with optimal readability from any device!
2. Aardvark
Youth and adults alike are becoming accustomed to visually pleasing websites with minimal text and lots of imagery. Aardvark allows you to create a Moodle themed site that does exactly this. With boxed stories, headliners and images, your students or employees will be more likely to consume the content you provide them with.
3. Certificate
Reward your students for their success in your course. With the Certificate plugin you can create PDF certificates/diplomas for students taking courses in Moodle. The certificates are completely customizable allowing you to add borders, watermarks, seals and even show grade information.
4. Progress Bar
Progress Bar is a time-management tool for students that visually shows what activities or resources a student is supposed to interact with in a course. Teachers select which pre-existing activities/resources to include in the Progress Bar and when they should be completed/viewed. Can you say teacher and student organization and communication bliss?!
5. BigBlueButton
With this standalone plugin, Moodle can integrate with BigBlueButton’s platform, allowing you to deliver instructor led, real time web conferencing sessions. This allows you to share slides, audio, video, chat, desktops, and a virtual whiteboard. It also provides recordings of all sessions, so they can be watched again at a later date.
6. HotPot
HotPot provides teachers and administrators with the ability to upload Hot Potatoe and TexToy quizzes in Moodle. Teachers simply create the quiz on their computer and then upload it into the Moodle Course. What teachers and administers love the most about HotPot is the reports that become available once a student(s) has completed the questions. Who wouldn't love automatic statistical trend analysis on student responses so you can get a better idea of whats being understood and whats not?
7. Questionnaire
Wanting feedback from your student's or employees? Questionnaire allows you to easily create and administer survey's in Moodle. Questionnaire is also a great tool for administering quizzes and tests because it provides you with fields for long and short answer questions in addition to multiple choice.
8. Collapsed Topics
The Collapsed Topics Module allows users to avoid ‘the scroll of death’ when a course has many topics, sub-topics and weeks. Make your courses seem less daunting as students can view course schedules week by week as opposed to an entire year.
9. PoodLL
With the PoodLL filter you can place widgets into HTML areas, making it possible to use them in Moodle. The PoodLL Filter is the core PoodLL plugin for Moodle, meaning that is a pre-requisite plugin for most other PoodLL plugins, including Repository, Online Assignments, and Recording Question Types.
10. Configurable Reports
This plugin is a Moodle custom reports builder and is very useful to extract additional information about courses, users, etc. Configurable Reports can be created without SQL knowledge, making it a useful tool for Moodle admin and teachers.