Setting up the Moodle Mobile app
The Moodle Mobile app allows learners to:
- Select or capture an image and record audio or video from your mobile device and upload it into Moodle
- View their fellow course participants and associated contact information
- Use Moodle messaging if it is enabled
- Access to push notifications
The app will continue to evolve over time so new features will continually be added. Things to look out for include:
- Calendar sync
- Offline course browsing
- Offline posting in forums
- Offline grading
In order for the Moodle Mobile app to work there is one setup task that you must perform as a system administrator. That is to enable web services for mobile devices. Web services are simply a communication method that allows one software application to talk to another using a standard language, and they need to be enabled in the Moodle platform so that it can talk to the Moodle Mobile app.
Carry out the following steps in order to set up the Moodle Mobile app:
- On the ADMINISTRATION block, navigate to Site administration | Plugins | Web services | Mobile.
- Select the checkbox labeled Enable web services for mobile devices, and then click on Save changes.
- You will see a Changes saved notification towards the top of the screen, and you can then navigate away from this page.
That's it. Your Moodle is now ready to work with mobile apps.
Note
Is Moodle Mobile an HTML5 app or a native app?
This is a confusing point for a lot of people. Moodle Mobile is a HTML5 web app, not a native app. There is a difference between the two types of app.
HTML5 web apps require an Internet connection, are hosted online instead of on the device, have limited use of hardware features such as the camera, and can cache data that can be useful for certain offline tasks (for example, the Google Docs HTML5 app allows offline document storage).
Native apps are fully accessible offline, can make full use of all hardware features, and generally have better performance. However, this is offset by the significant increase in development costs in maintaining multiple versions for different device types, such as Apple, Android, and BlackBerry.
Moodle Mobile is a HTML5 web app. It requires an Internet connection to perform optimally, but it performs some offline tasks; for example, if you upload a photo then this will be saved on the device cache and only uploaded to Moodle once an Internet connection is established.