Glossary of common terms

Shibboleth is not only a kind of linguistic password that identifies one as a member of an 'in' group, it's also the name of a middleware project of Internet2.

The Shibboleth project is developing architectures, policy structures, practical technologies and an open source implementation (also called Shibboleth) to support inter-institutional sharing of (web) resources subject to access controls.

Some key concepts of Shibboleth are:

• Federated Administration
• Access Control Based on Attributes
• Active Management of Privacy
• Standards Based
• Framework for Multiple, Scaleable Trust and Policy Sets (Federations)
• Standard Attribute Value Vocabulary

Using Moodle with Shibboleth authentication has the following advantages (depending on the Shibboleth federation you are part of):

• Access to Moodle can be restricted very accurate (e.g. you allow only students from universities A, B and D to access your Moodle, but not students from universities C and E. Or you allow only medicine students.)
  
• User accounts are created automatically as soon as a user logs in the first time.
• The user profiles are set up automatically (e.g. the users firstname, surname and email address is inserted the first time a user logs in)
• The user profiles can automatically kept up-to date all the time
• So you don't have to care anymore for user management issues because this is basically handled by the Identity Provider of the Shibboleth user (e.g. the home university).
• Once Shibboleth users are authenticated, they can access other Shibboleth-enabled resources without loggin in another time. Due to this single sign-on mechanism, they e.g. can jump from one Moodle installation to another or the can access a Shibboleth-protected library or a web shop, always being authenticated.

Plans for the future concerning Moodle:

• Automatic course enrollment according to Shibboleth attributes.
  

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open-source web browser developed by The Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, Mozilla Corporation. Firefox is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD, illumos and Solaris operating systems.

(Entry edited by Helen Foster to update the information. Original entry 10 February 2004.)

Blended learning is a learning scenario where online and face-to-face activities are combined. Individual learning tasks may also combine in-class activities with online activities in rapid succession. Flexible classrooms with movable desks/chairs and wireless notebooks connected to the internet are ideal for blended learning. One variant of blended learning is when a teacher uses a full-time classroom setting and assigns online homework out-of-class. In a corporate context, blended learning involves a combination of instructor-led instruction, on-job training, self-study materials, and mentoring/coaching systems.

Fantastico is an automatic installer for open source scripts such as Moodle.

"Martinized" was originally a patented dry cleaning process by a North American firm. Now it refers to a similar process occurring when the moodle chief developer thoughtfully checks over code submitted for inclusion in the next updated version.

Moodle Docs is the Moodle Documentation wiki, where the Moodle community documents Moodle. There are separate wikis for each version of Moodle.