Common acronyms

An alphabetical list of common acronyms that you may encounter when reading about or discussing Moodle, with links to more information where appropriate. Some of these are purely technical, with software development, open source origins; some are creations of the e-learning community, and others are part of online culture.

A to E

• CMS - Course Management System (or more generally Content Management System), is the term for the category of software that Moodle belongs to. Some people prefer the terms Learning Management System or Community Management Systems to shift the focus from things to people, their interactions and aims.
• CSS - Cascading Style Sheets, used to control the way web pages look.
• CSV - Comma Separated Values, a simple text format for tabular data. Can be created and edited with Excel or, if done with care, any text editor.
• CVS - Concurrent Versioning System, a software tool that allows many people to collaborate on and access program code over the internet.

F to H

• FLOSS - Free, Libre and Open Source Software, an inclusive term that encompasses both Free Software and Open Source Software while emphasising that Free is intended to represent Freedom (Libre in Spanish) and not without cost (Gratis in Spanish).
• GNU - ????? and is the license under which this documentation is released
• GPL - General Public Licence, the software licence under which Moodle is made available. Its intention is to ensure that people who sell or distribute Moodle (or other GPL software) share any modifications.
• HTH - Hope that helps. Usually appears at the end of a post offering advice
• HTML - HyperText Markup Language, which is used to write web pages.

I to M

• IE - Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser
• IMHO - In My Humble Opinion, a polite yet brief way to indicate in text communication that the preceding or following statement is not a statement of fact but merely expressing an opinion.
• K-12 - Kindergarten through 12th grade, a North American term inclusive of both primary and secondary education, roughly encompassing students from age 4 to 18.
• LAMP - Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. This is a very common set up for Moodle and indeed most webservers
• MOODLE - Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment, though over time it has become common to treat Moodle as a simple name and verb e.g. "let's Moodle" or "I've been Moodling".

N to Z

• PHP - PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, a programming language used extensively in the creation of Moodle. That the P in PHP also stands for PHP is an obscure programmer in-joke.
• VLE - Virtual Learning Environment, a term popular in the UK which is roughly interchangeable with Course Management System, Learning Management System, Learning Platform or Online Learning Environment.