Dan: 
Every business has had a moment when the organization needs to move fast. A new regulation drops, your workforce dynamic shifts overnight, or a new piece of technology arrives faster than anyone anticipated. You look at your learning platform to pivot and you hit a wall. Maybe your data is trapped behind a vendor's paywall, or maybe your L&D team tells you that a simple change would require rebuilding the entire system from scratch.

For many businesses, that's a moment of significant operational friction, but more importantly, it's the moment where organizational growth just stops.

Shalimar:
Today on the Moodle podcast, we're talking about designing for change, why implementing adaptable modular technology isn't just an IT preference, it's a forward-thinking business strategy. We're gonna dig into how building an open learning ecosystem protects your budget, your data sovereignty, and honestly, your sanity when the unexpected happens.

Dan:
I'm Dan.

Shalimar: 

And I'm Shalimar, very much present and accounted for. We've got excellent company today, two people who see this challenge from two different angles.

Dan:

So, uh, Setara, Jess, very welcome, very warm welcome to you both. Uh, over to you. Tell us a little bit who you are in your own words and what you do.

Jess:
Hi, everyone. I'm Jess Bryant, coming to you from beautiful Montana. I am the global head of professional services at Moodle. I got my start with technology and education as a high school science teacher, but really kind of found my, my niche in the LMS world. So after running a Moodle site for Montana K-12 teachers for a while, I was lucky enough to find my way into working directly with Moodle.

Now I run a team of learning designers and solution architects that work with clients on, on all things front end configuration, processes, course building, training, all really with the goal of maximizing their Moodle setup to meet their needs both as admins and for their learners.

Fantastic. Welcome. Setara?

Setara:

Hi. I'm Setara Singh, and I'm the senior product manager for Moodle Marketplace at Moodle HQ. I joined Moodle about four, just over four years ago, and I actually got my start in, um, the tech world on the user experience side. I started as a user experience designer, then moved over into research, and that's actually the role I was in when I joined Moodle, which was great for getting to learn a lot about our users and our ecosystem.

I moved into this role as the PM for Marketplace a couple of years ago, and I have the honor of leading the product team behind the delivery of Moodle Marketplace, uh, which we launched last month. And, uh, this is the team that will continue to look after Marketplace, um, and continue to see it evolve and improve now that it's live.

Dan:
Many business leaders view an LMS, uh, just as a software or a compliance checkbox, but I wanna challenge us a little bit to think, think bigger than that. Think about a learning ecosystem. And so from your perspective, why is kind of a core platform that connects to other systems and is enhanced by this network of integrations a, a, a smarter business strategy than just a single platform?

Setara:
I think you actually touched on a key point in your intro, Dan, when you talked about the need to move fast, the need to adapt constantly to changing requirements. What you get from a platform that can be customized and extended is flexibility. Platforms that try to do everything out of the box, they may seem really attractive on the surface, but they really don't hold up well over time for all the reasons that you mentioned.

You know, organizations are unique. Their requirements are unique. Um, no single team, no matter how good they are, is gonna be able to think of or solve for every sort of use case, every industry quirk or regulation or regional requirement. If you rely on one system to meet all of your needs, it's really quite limiting.

But if you can plug into other tools, you can customize the system and the experience to meet your specific needs, and that's probably more of a business call than just a technical one. If you lock yourself into one system, you're basically limiting your ability to adapt beyond what that one system offers, whereas if you've got something that's more open and extensible, it sort of becomes like a living, breathing thing that can evolve as the landscape changes around you.

With this, you're also spreading risk around as well by distributing where that innovation and problem-solving comes from. I guess the question isn't just, does this LMS check my boxes today, but more, can this actually grow with me over time, not knowing exactly where my needs might be five years or even one year down the road?

Shalimar:
Yeah, I've, I've seen that, um, myself, and, and it makes sense. Like, early on with leaders being overwhelmed, they might focus on pre-configured systems because it's quick and easy and it works at first. But then you're 12 months down the road and you hit your stride, you scale up, and you completely smash right into the ceiling of that software.

That's the exact moment you realize you need a real alternative. That's where it seems like Moodle Marketplace could really help. Tell us a bit about this thing that's been dominating your life for the last year, Moodle Marketplace.

Setara:
Yeah. It, it has been dominating my life, uh, so to speak. I don't expect that to change anytime soon. We've got a lot of really interesting and exciting things planned that we can't wait to share with the community. But yeah, Moodle Marketplace is really the evolution of what used to be the Moodle plugins directory.

So we've got our core platform, which is built and supported by Moodle, and it comes with a lot of really robust functionality out of the box, but then we have this really large community of talented developers developing plugins and integrations that complement and extend Moodle's core capabilities. Marketplace is a centralized place, a centralized platform where you can find thousands of these plug-ins and integrations that you can then use to customize your Moodle and really make it your own.

And we built Marketplace to better support the discovery of all of these great solutions, and also support the developers behind the tools that make Moodle so flexible. And it's really an incredible thing. You've got a global developer community working on solving a really wide variety of problems. They may be industry specific or region specific, which means there's a lot more ground that can be covered than any one team might be able to manage on their own.

And Marketplace is the platform that brings all of these tools together in one place.

Shalimar: 
Beautiful. Setara's really painted us a vision here. But Jess, you're the one who actually has to make it work on any given Tuesday morning. Let's get practical. When a system isn't modular, what kind of admin overhead or manual workarounds are tough on learning design teams?

Jess:
Overhead can get brutal pretty fast. It can kind of get out, out of hand, uh, for people as they layer on more initiatives. "Oh, let's do this, let's do that." So it's really important to kind of take a breather as an administrator of a system, an LMS technology, any of it, and think about what it is you're trying to do.

Keep in mind flexibility and future-proofing. And I've seen a lot of people come to us from other LMSs, whether it's homegrown, different system, even a Moodle system they haven't managed well, and they've taken very highly skilled teams and turned them into copy/paste admins, where they're really having to do all of this manual work and being very reactive versus proactive in leveling up their use of their technology.

So I'm gonna highlight a few examples of what that, what that admin overhead can look like. So, uh, imagine you have a rigid LMS or any kind of technology system that doesn't allow you to categorize your learners, your users, let alone trigger anything off of that information. Instead of your team spending time making great learning experiences, you actually become a human-powered swivel chair integration, where you're looking one screen at a report and then manually enrolling 300 people in anothers, on another screen, and you just go back and forth and waste all of this time.

Not only does that become very tedious, it can cause a lot of burnout on your team, and you take your highly skilled team and you're causing a lot of, um, it's a lot demoralization or demotivating people on your team from being creative and innovative and passionate about their work.

Or imagine you have, uh, some people on your team spending their entire Friday sorting through course completion records, determining who, who needs to be reset for their annual training, who's overdue, and then in another system, even more time emailing those people, when there can be so many automations built in if you have the right technology tools paired and integrated together.

Another common one I see is people managing enrollment applications via email, and then someone else manually goes into the system and adds those, but forgets someone because they forgot to check their email, and it just creates this burden for the person running it and for the users, and frustration on that end.

So really kind of what we try and do, uh, on our team is to take those high-level strategies and goals and pair it with the right technology. Not the best shiny tool necessarily, but what's the right tech tool for the job that you're trying to achieve? And then it really, with those right plug-and-play tools, you have time for improvements, tackling new initiatives, all sorts of things.

Dan:
And I, you know, you see the research that it's constantly a lack of resources that's cited as kind of the biggest barrier to, to, to delivering high-quality training. And so when you get stuck in a rigid system, it becomes very, very challenging if you, if you haven't got that ability to kind of flex and, and, and build around a modular setup.

So, so Setara, back to you. workforce skills are shifting rapidly. Um, lots and lots of technological advances that we all, uh, hear about every single day. How does the Moodle Marketplace help keep that kind of growth to be an additive thing rather than forcing leaders to constantly have to switch and change every, uh, they change their entire tech stack every few years?

Setara:
I think this is where a lot of leaders could get caught. Um, like you said, skills are changing really fast. Technology is moving even faster. My head spins just thinking about how fast it's moving, and I think a lot of people are feeling that way. The instinct may be to think, "Okay, I'm gonna replace what I've got with something newer to solve this new set of problems," which can be disruptive and expensive, especially if you're doing it every few years, and that's pretty generous even when we think about how fast things are changing today.

But that's exactly the sort of trap that a modular setup will help you avoid. If your core platform is designed to be extended rather than replaced, growth does become additive. Like you said, you're not ripping everything out. You're layering new capability on top of what's already working. So when a skills gap opens up or your workforce needs to adapt to a new technology, you don't really need a new system entirely to face into that challenge.

You can look for something that's already out there to solve the problem that you can bring into your current setup. And more often than not, because of that global developer community that we talked about, the chances are there will be something out there that can solve the problem that you're looking to solve.

And that does add up over time. Instead of going through this painful and expensive transition every couple of years, you've got a platform that scales and just keeps getting more and more capable. And the Marketplace is one of those places where you can go and find these solutions to solve those problems.

Shalimar:
And AI is probably the best example right now of decision-makers to adapt quickly, right?

Setara:
Yeah.

Shalimar:
How will Moodle Marketplace make it simpler for decision-makers to adapt their tech stacks to include new technology?

Setara:
AI is a really good example of this. It's probably one of the clearest examples of how quickly technology is outpacing people's ability to keep up, and that need to adapt quickly, like you said, is, is so clear. No one wants to be stuck waiting a year for that one big AI feature to land.

So this is where having an open extensible platform really pays off. Instead of waiting for one release, you've got developers across the community that are already experimenting and building and putting out new plug-ins and integrations that can bring AI capabilities into your Moodle sites. You can already find AI tools on the Marketplace for all sorts of things like content creation, quiz generation, grading, games, analytics, AI assistance.

I'm sure we'll continue to see new and exciting applications for AI in the future that, um, are gonna meet a variety of needs that we may not have even identified yet. Again, we come back to this idea of flexibility rather than relying on one tool to provide the right sort of perfect mix of AI capabilities that you're looking for. You can look at what's already out there and find specifically what's relevant to you, and then bring that in to your system.

Jess:
Yeah, I wanna echo that. I've gotten a lot of good feedback from, from clients and people that I've worked with that really appreciate the options available versus being stuck in one path to go and search and find something that's made from different perspectives and different developers, different community members to be able to then find the right match for them.

I think it works very well.

Shalimar:
I wanna talk about something that comes up a lot around the water cooler, and that's the concept of tool fatigue, where employees are logging in to, like, five plus systems just to do one piece of training. How does a modular system let you build an elegant building block path for the learner without fracturing their experience?

Jess:
Is it weird that I like this question? I read it, like, when I was thinking about this question, I was I just got excited about this question and this problem, and these are the kind of challenges I think that are really important to address head-on with people. So regardless where, of where you came from and how you ended up with a number of different systems, this could be due to a restrictive LMS or just natural expansion over time and you just had to add to your tech stack based on the scenario you were in, your learners really, and your users, shouldn't be left with the burden of jumping between systems and having to remember logins along the way.

You want them to spend their time and their mental efforts on the learning, the content, the tasks, whatever it may be, and not how to find those things. That puts a lot of cognitive load on people, and you lose them very quickly in that, in that tool fatigue and having to jump around.

Really, the fastest way to kill a learner's motivation is to make them reset their password just to watch a five-minute compliance video. Like, you've instantly set them up for frustration and not, not engagement in whatever that content may be. So if you have a modular system, those plugins and integrations and those tools talk to each other seamlessly in the background, and the learner doesn't know any different.

They just log in to one dashboard. Maybe they purchase a course, watch a video, engage in some content, search for a document, but really all of that has been connected in the background, and they have no idea that they interacted with three different tools because we've connected them, you've built it properly, and the complexity stays with the tech and the simplicity is given to the learner in their journey navigating through those things.

Dan:
Yeah.

And when, when you need a, a specific new feature, like an advanced analytics dashboard, let's say, or an offline mode for remote workers, how does having access to an open ecosystem like the Moodle marketplace change the game for you?

Jess:
Oh, immensely. I'm gonna steal a few metaphors from an article our marketing team put out, uh, that was titled The Best Learning Homes Are Never Finished. If you think about some kind of closed system but you need a new feature, so maybe this closed system has worked great for you for years, but then all of a sudden, like Dan said, you have a new thing you need to add, but in a closed system, if we think about this like a house, the LMS might say, "Well, you can only have this one couch and end table in your living room.

You can rearrange them, but you can only have these one," so you can't add any more. So if you need more space, sorry, people are gonna have to sit on the floor or they're gonna have to wait before they can come into your system, and it creates this very restrictive environment, stress on the people running the system, like we've talked about before.

But with an open, more modular system with features created by the community, plugins on the marketplace, a lot of things likely already exist you can bring in or at least will lessen the burden of this new initiative, new dashboard, whatever it may be. So if we go back to our house analogy, this is like the LMS saying, "Okay.

Well, we have four couches, three end tables you can pick from. Oh, you need a reading chair too? Great. We have a couple of those. Pick the one that works best for you." You can take the various tools, you don't have to use them all, pick the ones, plug 'em in, rearrange 'em a little bit so that it works for you.

Um, so it's a lot like, yeah, redecorating your house, maybe building an addition, but not necessarily having to move to a new house just to solve the new need that pops up.

Shalimar:
Love it. Don't list it. That's what I'm getting from this.

Jess:
Yes, very much.

Dan:
If an organization wants to transition from being part of a reactive ecosystem to being an evolution-ready one, where, where do they even begin? What's the first step?

Jess:
My best first step would be to audit the pain points.

Mm-hmm.

Take a breath, step back, and look at your people running your systems, looking at the users of those systems. Where are the manual workarounds that take them the most time? Are they lots of spreadsheet merging? Is there manual clicking? Are people abandoning the adoption of a tool because it's too, too different?

So those are really kind of the, the cracks in your system. So you have to find those first. Think about the ones you wanna tackle, then start to look for the technology that meets those needs or the, the plugins from the marketplace, whatever it may be, and think about that shift in how you approach technology and adopt that...

It's kind of like a growth mindset, but a never-finished mindset, that embrace that it's not gonna be perfect. You're not gonna get it perfect today and have it be a static system. You have to know that you can know and understand, That you can build a good foundation, but it, it's gonna change in the future, so helping pick your technology that will grow, grow with you.

Shalimar:
I do love the metaphors of building the house. But what do we say to the challenge that, okay, well, Moodle is so big, it's so open, it's so modular. How do we avoid the risk of turning this house into the Winchester Mystery House, where you've got doors leading to nowhere, staircases that go into, you know, walls and things like that?

I, there's a, I think, a danger, right? That it's too open and customizable. I... Jess, do you have any practical tips for finding the balance between the beauty of something that's constantly evolving and, like, enough is enough maybe?

Jess:
Yeah, I think it's a, it's a similar approach to auditing your pain points of once a year pausing, look, let's look at all the tools we've added to this and those pieces. We don't do this thing over here anymore. This bedroom isn't being used. So let's, let's shut this down.

Let's think about phasing this piece out. How can we clean up, especially on upgrades, this is a great time to analyze what you've got, what plugins, what tools are in use, and clean house a little bit. Spring cleaning, there we go, this can be our analogy, is to initiate some kind of schedule for spring cleaning and, and take a pause as a team to analyze what you have, what's still needed for your, for your next fiscal year coming up.

Dan:
For someone who's never heard of the Moodle Marketplace, can you tell us exactly what it is, who it's for, what people can do on the marketplace, and, and, and I guess also, you know, it's constantly evolving, right? So any insider info as to, as to what the future of the marketplace might look like?

The Moodle Marketplace is the new home for all Moodle compatible plugins and integrations built by the Moodle developer community. We've got almost 2,000 Moodle compatible solutions, meaning that they work with supported Moodle versions.

Shalimar:
So our last session that we did with Dries, uh, the founder of Drupal, we did spend a little time talking about ways that we can keep our developer communities engaged, and a big part of that conversation was how we compensate people, um, for their time and, and their talent that they've...

So that's one of the things that excites me most about the marketplace is that for so long, Moodle contributors have just been like, "Well, there it is," and we love that. Like, give it to people free, we love that. It's a revolution. But also, you know, people have been doing this for 20 years, and they deserve to get a little bit of support for all the support that they've given the community, and that's one of the things that excites me about...

Maybe give us a little on that.

Setara:
Yeah, it's a, it's a good point, and that's one of the goals of the marketplace. When we were doing research with the community, um, obviously there were a lot of really great things about the plugins directory. Um, it served the community for 15 years plus. But one thing that we heard over and over again was this challenge with finding something really great on the plugins directory and having it not being maintained.

Obviously, no one has an obligation to maintain something indefinitely. People stop maintaining plugins for all kinds of reasons, but it does cause problems for organizations who are relying on these tools in their day-to-day, and it, it's a continuity issue. So one of the goals of the marketplace is to, you know, first give Moodle plugin developers a platform to showcase their work and share the things that they've designed with other people who could get use out of them.

But also by enabling them to sell directly on the platform, we're hoping to help support the ongoing maintenance and, and continuity of lot of these plugins that people rely on all the time. And like you said, a lot of the, you know, developers that we have in the community are really generous with their time.

You know, they're volunteering really to maintain a lot of these plugins, but they can't do it forever. Um, and sometimes they need a little support to, to keep, to keep things going, and yeah, one of the goals of the marketplace is to kind of encourage more innovation and creativity to bring more developers to Moodle and support the vitality or uh, what's the word I'm looking for?

Shalimar:
Sustainability.

Setara:
Yeah, the sustainability

Yeah,

of the ecosystem.

Dan:
collective, collective innovation I think increases, right?

Setara: 
Yeah, yeah.

Dan:
Um, so Setara, you mentioned that the Moodle Marketplace is a kind of the, the latest iteration of the, um, Moodle plugin directory or replacing the Moodle plugin directory. Explain why that was important. Why, why was this transition important, and what does that allow us to do in, in future with the platform?

Setara:
So with the marketplace, one of the major goals was to take all of those features and functionality that people have loved about the plugins directory, but move it onto a new platform that's scalable and flexible, that actually makes it possible for us to introduce all the improvements and new functionality that people have been asking for and that we really, uh, wanna be able to deliver with this new vision of the marketplace that really, really wasn't possible on the old platform, um, on the plugins directory.

So with this launch, um, it really is just the beginning. We have a lot of things that are planned for the marketplace, like I mentioned before. We've got a dedicated team looking after it. Some of the things that you can look forward to that we've already begun working on is an improved and secure security reporting process.

We've got updates to our marketplace API to better support, uh, the needs of both plugin providers or plugin developers and the people who are downloading plugins from the marketplace. Other things that we have planned are ratings and reviews, the ability for people who have downloaded plugins from the marketplace to be able to leave reviews, um, and this is one way to help the community sort of help each other make more informed decisions and, uh, show some love for the developers on the platform.

Shalimar:
Yeah, if there's one big takeaway for me, it's that the organizations navigating change most effectively are the ones that have made deliberate choices early on about how their learning ecosystem is structured, governed, and connected.

Dan:
Yeah, I think that's right. I think building a modular system means that you aren't kind of guessing what the future looks like. You're just ensuring that you are in a position where you're flexible enough to, to adjust because right now, uh, we know that none of us can guess what the future holds so we've just gotta be prepared to, to, to roll with it and, uh, and handle whatever life throws at us in, in future.

That's important for any business, but I think more, more than ever right now.

Shalimar: 
Yeah, and if you wanna test your own setup, we've put together a practical guide called Design for Change, with a worksheet to map your learning ecosystem. You'll find the download link in our show notes.

Dan:
And to everyone listening, thank you very much for spending your time with us. Uh, again, we will catch you on the next, uh, Moodle Podcast. Thank you very much, Jess and Setara.

Jess:
Thank you.

Setara:
Thank you.