Top 6 Moodle plugins to increase productivity

Moodle is a popular e-learning platform that makes it possible to create personalised learning environments to provide teachers and students with better educational experiences. One of its strong points is the ability to extend its functionality via third-party plugins. In this article, you will find the best 6 Moodle plugins to increase your productivity.

What is a Moodle plugin?

Moodle is a modular e-learning system that can be equipped with additional functionality via the so-called plugins, e.g. software add-ons that enhance its standard capabilities.

Thousands of software developers and enthusiasts all over the world create and constantly update Moodle plugins that can be found in the official directory. At the moment, there are more than 1,600 plugins that allow users to adapt the platform for their niche educational needs.

If you are looking for some productivity plugins for your Moodle platform to take the educational process to the next level, have a look at the options below.

1. ONLYOFFICE Docs

One of the best ways to increase productivity is to enable online document editing and real-time collaboration within the Moodle platform by connecting it with ONLYOFFICE Docs, an open-source collaborative office suite.

The ONLYOFFICE Docs integration makes it possible to view and edit documents in various formats, including DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, TXT, CSV, etc. It also allows students and teachers to co-author documents online, using the Track Changes mode, comments and the built-in chat. The latest version of the plugin lets you create and fill out digital forms and comes with new interface languages.

Using the ONLYOFFICE integration app, you can also add and manage document activities added to the courses and define access permissions, view and edit attached files, protect your files using the available settings and security tools, and even customize the ONLYOFFICE Docs interface in Moodle.

Read this article or watch the video below to find out how to install and configure the ONLYOFFICE integration plugin and what you can do with the online editors within Moodle:

The official connector for ONLYOFFICE Docs is available on GitHub and in the Moodle plugins directory:

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2. BigBlueButton

BigBlueButton is another useful Moodle plugin that allows you to turn the platform into a communication hub with web conferencing features for online learning. It’s an open-source tool that makes it possible to engage remote students anywhere in the world.

With the BigBlueButton plugin, you can share slides of your presentation in real time (including whiteboards), make audio calls, have video conferences with dozens of users, exchange messages in the chat and send emojis. You can also record all of your video content for later playback.

During your online sessions, you are allowed to create multiple activity links within any Moodle course, restrict students from entering the session, create a custom welcome message, create events that appear in Moodle’s calendar, and also access and manage your video recordings.

3. Attendance

The Attendance plugin is one of the Moodle plugins that are exclusively designed for educators, not learners. It allows teachers and course managers to maintain an online record of students’ attendance, which completely relieves them of the necessity to have a paper-based attendance register.

This plugin is useful in hybrid learning environments where students are required to attend classes and lectures in addition to online activities. Teachers can track and optionally provide a grading system for the students’ attendance. When using the plugin, you can set the frequency of your classes or create specific sessions. Moreover, there is a set of different report options that you can choose from.

Another advantage is that you can configure your sessions in such a manner that your students can record their own attendance.

4. Scheduler

The Scheduler plugin is a Moodle module that helps educators to schedule appointments with their students by specifying available time slots. Students then can choose one of the slots within the Moodle platform and have a meeting with their teacher.

Using this plugin, you can record the outcome of your meetings for better productivity and optionally set up a grading system within the scheduler.

The plugin is flexible as it supports group scheduling. In other words, a time slot can be chosen by several students at a time. It’s also possible to schedule appointments for entire groups of students.

5. Global Chat

Global Chat allows you to exchange text messages with the Moodle platform without having to switch to third-party applications or open the Moodle activity chat in a separate window. This simple plugin shows a list of all online users that belong to all Moodle courses you are subscribed to.

Using this plugin, you can have online conversations with other users subscribed to the Moodle courses that you belong to. When you click Global Chat, you will see a chat window at the bottom of the page. While communicating in real time, you can switch between pages, and all of your conversations always remain active.

Global Chat allows students to communicate with each other, or it can be used to reach out to teachers to ask questions or discuss a topic in detail, for example. Teachers can use this tool to communicate with their students individually.

6. Completion Progress

The Completion Progress tool is one of those Moodle plugins that mainly students benefit from. In a nutshell, it’s a time management tool that visually shows all the activities/resources a student is supposed to deal with during the Moodle course.

When using this plugin, students can quickly see what they have to complete, which can help them to spend their time wisely. Their progress is marked with different colours so that they can easily understand what they are successful in and what falls behind.

For teachers, there is also a very useful option. The Overview page allows them to see the progress of all their students so that they can plan their classes in advance.

How to choose the best Moodle plugin to increase productivity?

Moodle plugins are a great way to increase overall productivity by adding the required functionality to the core platform. The only problem is that there is a countless number of ready-to-use plugins in the official directory, so choosing what you need can be challenging, especially if you are new to the Moodle universe.

We hope that our list can help you to make the right choice. By installing the plugins above, you can use the Moodle platform in a more efficient way and even become a better learner or educator.