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16 Top Moodle Experts Building Better eLearning

moodle experts - 16 Top Moodle Experts Building Better eLearning

Moodle has become the backbone of online learning for countless institutions worldwide — and behind its success stands a passionate community of developers, educators, and innovators.

From core maintainers and plugin pioneers to accessibility advocates and mobile visionaries, these experts have helped shape Moodle into the flexible, powerful platform it is today. Below is a curated list of 20 of the most influential Moodle contributors globally — individuals whose code, leadership, and community engagement continue to improve online education for millions.

  1. Gavin Henrick
  2. Tim Hunt
  3. Martin Dougiamas
  4. Dan Poltawski
  5. Damyon Wiese
  6. Justin Hunt
  7. Dan Marsden
  8. Andrew Nicols
  9. Juan Leyva
  10. David Mudrák
  11. Julian Ridden
  12. Bas Brands
  13. Gareth J. Barnard
  14. Matteo Scaramuccia
  15. Mark Nelson
  16. Brendan Heywood

Now, let’s delve into their remarkable journeys and contributions:

Gavin Henrick

YouTube Video

Nationality: Irish

Gavin is a prominent Moodle consultant, author, and entrepreneur in the Moodle community. He co-authored Moodle 2.0 for Business and other guides, sharing best practices for using Moodle in organizations.

Over the years, Gavin ran a popular Moodle blog and was a frequent MoodleMoot speaker, helping administrators and educators extend Moodle’s functionality. In 2019 he co-founded Brickfield Education Labs, a Moodle-certified company focused on accessibility solutions for Moodle. As CEO (and an active developer) at Brickfield, Gavin leads a team building tools to improve course accessibility and inclusion. He remains an influential voice in the community, advocating for making Moodle courses better for all learners. Gavin’s unique blend of technical knowledge and communication skills has helped countless Moodle users succeed.

Tim Hunt

A good quiz engine should give insights, not just scores.

Nationality: British

Tim has been the maintainer of Moodle’s quiz and question bank for over a decade, guiding its development with an educator’s perspective.

Since 2006, he has co-led enhancements to Moodle’s assessment capabilities. Tim’s work at The Open University (one of Moodle’s largest implementations) has produced powerful features like question behaviors, quiz statistics, and integrations (e.g. Safe Exam Browser). He is a frequent conference speaker and forum contributor, sharing best practices for online assessment. Under Tim’s stewardship, the Moodle quiz engine has become extremely robust and flexible, supporting millions of students. His passion for effective e-learning assessment is evident in every improvement he contributes.

Martin Dougiamas

Martin Dougiamas - 16 Top Moodle Experts Building Better eLearning

Nationality: Australian

Martin is the original creator of Moodle and led its growth into the world’s most widely used open-source learning platform.

Over two decades as CEO, he guided Moodle’s global community and development, even contributing much of the early code (which still runs today). Martin champions open education and recently stepped into a new role heading the Moodle Research Lab to explore next-gen technologies like AI and AR. His vision and leadership have earned him multiple accolades (including an honorary doctorate), and he continues to drive innovation in online learning.

Dan Poltawski

Nationality: British

Dan was a core Moodle developer and integration lead at Moodle HQ, responsible for reviewing and merging contributions into the core software.

During his tenure, he handled hundreds of patches, ensuring consistency and quality across releases. Dan spearheaded the introduction of continuous integration and testing processes in Moodle, greatly improving release reliability. He also contributed code to various components and helped coordinate community contributors. After Moodle HQ, Dan moved on to architect systems for a tech company, but he remains respected in the Moodle community for his years of core work. His behind-the-scenes efforts as an integrator resulted in smoother, more stable Moodle releases for users worldwide.

Damyon Wiese

Damyon Wiese - 16 Top Moodle Experts Building Better eLearning

Nationality: Australian

Damyon is a software engineer who led development of major Moodle features while at Moodle HQ. As a Development Manager, he oversaw new feature implementation and was himself the primary developer for Moodle’s Atto text editor and the Boost theme.

Damyon’s work spans from improving the assignment grading interface to integrating Office 365 and Google Drive into Moodle. Known for his clean code and forward-looking approach, he helped establish Moodle’s use of modern web frameworks. After a decade at Moodle HQ, Damyon moved to the edtech industry (Echo360) but his contributions – including a more user-friendly UX and robust front-end architecture – continue to enrich Moodle for millions of users.

Justin Hunt

Language learning is about expression — Moodle should support that natively.

Nationality: New Zealander

Justin is best known as “the Poodll guy,” the developer behind the Poodll suite of Moodle plugins for language learning. A former teacher turned developer, he created Poodll to enable audio/video recording and interactive content in Moodle, now widely used in classrooms for speaking and listening practice.

Justin remains an active coder as the director of Poodll, continually enhancing his open-source plugins and also offering a cloud service for them. He is a respected community contributor who shares development tips and runs training for aspiring Moodle developers (he teaches the MoodleBites Developer courses). Justin’s work exemplifies how one developer’s innovation can extend Moodle’s capabilities and benefit educators globally.

Dan Marsden

Nationality: New Zealander

Dan has been part of the Moodle community since 2004 and is renowned as a global SCORM expert. He maintained Moodle’s SCORM module for over a decade, implementing countless fixes and improvements for this e-learning content standard.

Dan also created the widely used Attendance module and contributed to plagiarism plugins and advanced grading features. Formerly a Moodle HQ core contributor, he now leads a development team at Catalyst IT, managing community contributions and plugin development. Dan is one of only two curators of the official Moodle Plugins directory, ensuring plugin quality and security. In 2023 he advocated moving beyond SCORM to newer standards (reflecting his forward-thinking approach). Dan’s consistent community leadership and technical contributions have earned him great respect across the Moodle world.

Andrew Nicols

Andrew Nicols - 16 Top Moodle Experts Building Better eLearning

Nationality: British

Andrew has been a Moodle HQ developer for over 10 years and is recognized for contributing major features and modernizing Moodle’s codebase.

After moving from the UK to Perth to join Moodle HQ, he implemented the Activity Chooser (which streamlined adding activities) and became the component lead for Moodle’s JavaScript, improving the platform’s frontend practices. Andrew also spearheaded Moodle’s Forum enhancements and co-developed the User tour feature to onboard users. He is known for his thorough code reviews and mentoring of community contributors. With over 10,000 git commits to Moodle’s core, Andrew’s work spans from backend APIs to user experience improvements. He exemplifies Moodle’s open-source spirit by engaging with the community and ensuring that contributions align with Moodle’s mission.

Juan Leyva

Nationality: Spanish

Juan is the original creator of the official Moodle Mobile app, launched over 10 years ago.

He started as a community contributor developing the app, then joined Moodle HQ to lead the Mobile team and later became Product Manager for mobile projects. Juan also developed popular plugins like Configurable Reports, giving admins powerful custom reporting capabilities in Moodle. He has remained based in Spain while working globally – at one point representing Moodle HQ in Europe – and recently co-founded a Moodle Partner company. Juan’s work has been transformative in extending Moodle beyond the desktop, and he continues to shape Moodle’s mobile strategy, ensuring learners can access education on any device.

David Mudrák

Nationality: Czech

David is a respected Moodle core developer who made major contributions during Moodle 2.0’s development and beyond.

He led the Workshop module rewrite for Moodle 2.x, creating a powerful peer assessment activity. David also designed Moodle’s advanced grading architecture (rubrics and grading guides) and developed the AMOS translation tool that manages Moodle’s multilingual strings. He implemented core features like automatic update notifications and the initial version of Moodle’s plugin installer, greatly improving ease of use for admins. David’s work at Moodle HQ combined his background in teaching and computer science – he ensured pedagogical needs were met with solid engineering. After leaving Moodle HQ, he remains active in open-source (currently at JetBrains) but is fondly remembered for the breadth and quality of his Moodle contributions.

Julian Ridden

Julian Ridden - 16 Top Moodle Experts Building Better eLearning

Nationality: Australian

Julian, known by his handle “Moodleman,” was a prominent Moodle community figure especially in the 2000s. He created the once-ubiquitous Essential theme for Moodle, which introduced responsive design and highly customizable options and became the most downloaded theme of its time.

Julian’s innovative theme work (and earlier themes like “Aardvark” and “Rocket”) influenced Moodle’s move toward Bootstrap-based designs. As a blogger and Moodle trainer, he demystified Moodle for many educators and admins. Julian worked at a Moodle Partner and later in other edtech roles, but he continued advocating for open-source learning. His community contributions earned him a loyal following – Moodle enthusiasts still recall his lively MoodleMoot presentations and helpful tutorials. Julian’s influence is seen in Moodle’s user-friendly themes and the vibrant community spirit he fostered.

Bas Brands

Nationality: Dutch

Bas is a front-end specialist who revolutionized Moodle’s theming. He co-created the first Moodle Bootstrap theme (with David Scotson and others) in 2011, which modernized Moodle’s look-and-feel and became the foundation for all later themes.

A freelancer and Moodle partner developer, Bas authored numerous popular themes such as Elegance, Shoelace, and contributed to Moodle’s core Boost theme. He also developed plugins like the LinkedIn authentication and various course formats, focusing on improving user experience. Bas has presented internationally on designing user-friendly Moodle sites. His work significantly enhanced Moodle’s appeal by making it easier for institutions to customize and creating a more modern, responsive interface. Bas’s innovative theming solutions have left a permanent mark on Moodle’s UI.

Gareth J. Barnard

Gareth J. Barnard - 16 Top Moodle Experts Building Better eLearning

Nationality: British

Gareth is one of the most productive contributors to Moodle’s plugin ecosystem, best known for maintaining and evolving the Essential theme after Julian Ridden.

As Essential’s manager, he supported thousands of sites and kept the theme compatible with new Moodle versions. Gareth has authored or maintained over a dozen plugins, including popular course formats (Collapsed Topics, Grid format) and administration tools. A former teacher, he got into Moodle development to solve real-world problems – a fact reflected in his practical plugin designs. The community regards Gareth as an insightful developer who is generous with support: he often helps users in forums and documents his plugins thoroughly. In 2017, an interview introduced him as “one of the most experienced and insightful Moodle developers” due to his extensive work on themes and plugins. His contributions greatly extend Moodle’s flexibility for site administrators.

Matteo Scaramuccia

Nationality: Italian

Matteo is an independent Moodle developer well-known in the forums for his detailed technical help and numerous patches submitted to Moodle core. He has contributed fixes and improvements across many areas of Moodle – from the Data Management API to LDAP integration – often volunteering solutions for community-reported issues.

Matteo played a key role in Moodle’s GDPR compliance efforts, providing code and guidance to ensure Moodle met new privacy requirements in 2018. He also maintains niche plugins (like a Twitter cards plugin for Moodle) and has been an advocate for performance tuning in Moodle (e.g., using X-Sendfile for efficient file delivery). Moodle’s developer credits list shows Matteo among the worldwide contributors. His mantra that “everyone is a beginner once and no one is an expert at everything” reflects his helpful attitude. Matteo’s consistent, behind-the-scenes contributions exemplify the collaborative Moodle community spirit.

Mark Nelson

Mark Nelson - 16 Top Moodle Experts Building Better eLearning

Nationality: Australian

Mark is the developer of the hugely popular Certificate and Custom Certificate plugins for Moodle, which allow educators to award PDF certificates to students.

His Certificate module has consistently ranked among the top 10 most downloaded Moodle plugins. Mark worked at Moodle HQ as a developer, where he contributed to areas like assignment and quiz improvements, but he’s best known in the community for his certificate solutions. He originally created the certificate as a contributed module and later improved it into the Custom Certificate with a drag-and-drop design interface. Mark also authored the Moodle Plugin Skeleton tool to help other developers, and co-wrote a Moodle administration book. He has since moved to the Moodle Workplace team, applying his expertise to corporate LMS features. Mark’s work significantly extends Moodle by enabling official documentation of learning – a critical need for many institutions.

Brendan Heywood

Nationality: Australian

Brendan is a long-time Moodle developer who has contributed significant features and plugins, especially in the areas of integrations and usability.

At Catalyst IT, he was the lead developer of Moodle’s Global Search functionality, integrating Solr/Elasticsearch so that users can search across all course content (a feature added to Moodle core in 3.1 under his guidance). He also created the Clean URLs plugin (making Moodle links friendlier) and the widely used SAML2 authentication plugin for single sign-on. Brendan’s projects often fill important gaps – for example, his Moodle bot tool that scans for broken links. As a Moodle HQ contributor, he has over 15 years of experience and is passionate about open source. Brendan’s innovative work (and blog posts sharing tips) have made advanced integrations accessible to Moodle admins worldwide.

Wrap Up

These legends represent exceptional talent, making them extremely challenging to headhunt. However, there are thousands of other highly skilled IT professionals available to hire with our help. Contact us, and we will be happy to discuss your hiring needs.

Note: We’ve dedicated significant time and effort to creating and verifying this curated list of top talent. However, if you believe a correction or addition is needed, feel free to reach out. We’ll gladly review and update the page.

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