By Cameron Wyenberg
A big motivator in why I do some things is because I want to see if I can. I found myself with a sudden tingle in my brain that really wanted to see how difficult it might be to host my own version of an LMS. Was it even possible? How much upfront work would it take? Is it a valuable pursuit? In many ways, it was little adventure I could go that I could easily turn back from if it turned out to be too difficult. And if it wasn't too difficult, I suddenly found myself with an LMS I could design, explore, and play with.
Side question-and-answer: Why Moodle? I have some experience with it in the past (along with various other LMS's like Canvas, Populi, BlackBoard, Brightspace) so that helped, but also it is one of the more popular free and open source LMS's available. That comes with its own difficulties, but I was not going to spend too much time sorting through the available options when Moodle was right there.
I am relatively successful at accomplishing this task, which is why there is a button you could use to go check it out. But, I will be a little honest, I found some help from others in making it happen (specificaally this person but there are other similar Moodle packages available). And it took a good week or two of poking at it before it was fully up and running. And don't be surprised if you are thinking of doing something similar. It is quite a complex system that can handle a full deployment at a school, so we're not talking about some small program that runs on your computer for fun. And to be even more honest, I'm not sure how long I will actually keep this thing up.
As I've noted elsewhere, I have a love for learning/education, and a big part of that right now (as of May 26, 2026) is the use of LMS's. So having a space where I can continue to hone my abilities felt important. I didn't want to rely on being part of an educational institute, or a L&D team to maintain access to an LMS. While Moodle might not be the fanciest LMS, there is a lot of similarity between different LMS's, and having experience with one can help me transition into another LMS in the future.
Having my own self-hosted LMS also allows me to do some contract work since I am able to design learning experiences within Moodle that can then be transfered through a SCORM file (this was another reason why I chose Moodle). In my experience, these transfers are never one-to-one, but having most of the structure there already does help eliminate some of the work.
In my previous work as a Instructional Designer, I often found myself creating small experiments on the side, or even thinking through some designs that I wanted to try implementing sometime. And well, sometime is now, I guess. Having this instance of Moodle allows me to have a little playground to try things out, manipulate ideas and designs, and to sometimes get as silly as I can. It is a place to work/play (as the Anarres would say). Maybe I will make something ugly, or confusing, or weird; or maybe I'll stumble upon something good. But I do know that having these ideas stuck in my head means they never get fully explored. I need to put them down on "paper", to be able to look at them differently, to return to them at a later time, and to poke at them.