What is a MoodleMoot?
A MoodleMoot is a chance to learn what is happening in the world of Moodle and to meet the people doing it. MoodleMoot Estonia in April did an excellent job on both counts. Tickets were €200 and I have jokingly said that I ate that value in delicious food during the intervals. I know we are supposed to treat conference food as secondary, but it really was spectacular.
Tallinn, the capital of Estonia is a beautiful medieval city close to the sea, it is clean, affordable, has good public transport and people speak excellent English. My main takeaway from the event is that in much of Europe the open source is the default assumption in selecting technology. Historically price was often the first consideration, but privacy, security, data sovereignty have become more important.
Taltech University
Before the first day of the conference I went on an organised visit to TalTech the Technical University of Estonia. The highlight of that visit was being allowed to control industrial Robots. I have seen them many times on video but it is quite eerie to actually take control of one and to be reminded of their capabilities and that they are clearly going to be a part of everyday life.
Welcoming my new robot overlord
The theme of the event was “Creativity and Collaboration in the Age of AI” and I was delighted that there was both optimism and caution in the coverage of AI.
Keynote from Marie Achour
I will concentrate on the keynote on the first day from Marie Achour, Chief Product Officer at Moodle HQ. She is closer to the decision making than just about anyone so is a good indication of the likely future direction of all things Moodle. She gave credit to the importance of contributions from the community and a summary of the new features of Moodle 5.2 including the first elements of the Blind marking project, for which Catalyst-EU who I work for were contributors. She gave some hard data on the amount of code committed to core Moodle from the community, illustrating that the idea of “the community” is not just lip service, it is real functionality. Disclaimer…. I contributed a small amount of code to the 5.2 release.
She headlined three areas of focus for Moodle, ease of use, ease of upgrade and the all encompassing improving learning outcomes. I liked her quote from user feedback.
“Moodle’s a bit too hard to use. It is so rich in functionality that that richness has an offset that makes it a little harder than it should be once in a while.” Nobody ever said that Moodle was lacking in features but the complexity can be overwhelming so I was pleased to see that is a priority.
Ease of upgrading is an odd thing because so few people see it or get to feel the benefit. There have been significant changes since Moodle 5.1 and 5.2 which promise good things in the future both for ease of upgrade and making it easier to keep a site secure (very topical in the week I am writing this)
A headline for the improving learning part of the presentation was that AI is important but it must remain optional. Because many places where Moodle is used without access to AI, and even without Internet access, Moodle AI should stay optional. I have a personal interest in this as I am a fan of MoodleBox, which is Moodle on a Raspberry PI which has very low power requirements and is widely used in places with no internet. For me It is essential that it works without access to AI and Moodle HQ takes the same view.
Marie then went on to explain the “AI, your way” as a founding principle. Each Moodle installation gets to select what external AI/LLM service they want to use including the possibility of a self hosted system so no data ever leaves your own network. They have been recording how educators actually use Moodle and that will inform changes to use AI to save time and there is a plan to add features that will use AI to create course content.
The rest of the Moot
I follow Moodle development very closely and I came away from the keynote feeling optimistic. Issues that have been spoken about for a very long time are being addressed in an incremental and professional way. Apart from Marie’s presentation I particularly enjoyed Heikki Willneus talking about his academic research into the use of AI in education particularly how there is no clear evidence how AI affects learning outcomes. I was more interested in the idea that AI can reduce teacher workload, though I am always suspicious it will result in teachers being given more work to do. On day two Adam Jenkins (who came from Japan for the event) gave a very engaging presentation on the importance of keeping your moodle version up to date, for security as much as features.
There were over 200 attendees, 31 presenters and I have only touched on a few of them. There was enough to keep me thinking for many, many months If you are in that part of the world (or just like that part of the world) there is a MoodleMoot Nordic happening in September (primary language English) which you can read about here
https://www.moodlemootnordic.com
And for something sooner, Catalyst-EU are holding a Moodle Community day on 16 June 2026
https://landing.catalyst-eu.net/CatalystMoodleCommunityDay_Programme
I would like to thank the organisers, Moodle Partners #Vextur, for allowing me to present at MoodleMoot Estonia and I will post about that at a later date.