Contact Us
Contact Us

16 Top Moodle Experts Building Better eLearning

moodle experts 1 - 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. Koen Roggemans
  3. Sam Suresh
  4. Mary Cooch
  5. Damyon Wiese
  6. Justin Hunt
  7. Mike Churchward
  8. Alex Büchner
  9. Joseph Thibault
  10. Richard Wyles
  11. Julian Ridden
  12. Bas Brands
  13. Gareth J. Barnard
  14. Sam Marshall
  15. Lewis Carr
  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.

Koen Roggemans

Nationality: Belgian

Koen is a guardian of Moodle’s global reach through his leadership in Moodle translations. Since 2004, he has been coordinating Moodle’s worldwide translation efforts as the official Moodle Translation Coordinator.

Koen’s role involves mentoring new translators, managing language pack setups, and handling technical issues in the translation portal. Thanks to the work of Koen and the volunteer translators he supports, Moodle is available in over 100 languages – greatly lowering the barrier to access for non-English speaking educators and learners. Koen also maintains the Translation Credits page and is deeply involved in ensuring each Moodle release’s new strings get translated properly. He is a fixture at MoodleMoots and on forums when topics of multilingual usage arise, often providing guidance on UTF-8 issues or how to create a new language pack.

Sam Suresh

Sam Suresh - 16 Top Moodle Experts Building Better eLearning

Nationality: Malaysian

Sam is an EdTech innovator and Moodle expert known for his leadership in Southeast Asia’s Moodle community. He is the founder of ModernLMS, which became Malaysia’s first official Moodle Partner.

With a deep passion for open-source technologies, Sam has been a long-time contributor to various projects – he initially gained prominence in the WordPress community as a lead organizer and even served as a Program Manager for the global WordPress project. In the Moodle sphere, Sam helped localize and promote Moodle in Malaysia and neighboring countries, organizing MoodleMoot Malaysia events and providing training to institutions transitioning to Moodle. He’s an active developer of plugins and has contributed to the core in areas like Report Builder enhancements.

Mary Cooch

Nationality: British

Mary is an educator who has had a tremendous impact on the Moodle community through teaching, blogging, and documentation. A former languages teacher in the UK, Mary began using Moodle in the mid-2000s and quickly started sharing her knowledge with others.

She authored Moodle for Teaching 7-14 Year Olds in 2010, one of the first books to guide teachers in using Moodle for younger students. Mary became an active Moodle trainer and blogger. In 2013, she joined Moodle HQ as the Documentation and Community Educator – in this role, for over a decade now, she has produced official video tutorials for each Moodle release, run Moodle Academy webinars, and overseen programs like the Moodle Educator Certification. Mary is also an indefatigable helper on Moodle forums, where she has answered thousands of questions from newcomers.

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.

Mike Churchward

Nationality: Canadian

Mike is a long-time open-source advocate and Moodle developer who has contributed extensively through projects and plugins. He is the Executive Director of the POET group – an alliance of Moodle vendors and users who collaborate to improve Moodle’s code and maintain high-quality plugins.

Mike’s Moodle journey began over a decade ago when he founded a Moodle services company called OpenKnowledge. He has developed or maintained many plugins; one notable example is the Questionnaire module, which allows creation of custom surveys in Moodle courses. Mike also led efforts to integrate Microsoft’s services with Moodle, heading development on the Office 365 plugin suite when he worked at Remote-Learner. Additionally, he was a key participant in the Moodle Users Association, helping guide community-funded development projects.

Alex Büchner

Alex Buchner - 16 Top Moodle Experts Building Better eLearning

Nationality: German

Dr. Alex Büchner is a Moodle expert at the intersection of open-source software and business. He co-founded Synergy Learning, the UK’s largest Moodle Partner company, and has been its technical lead for many years.

Alex holds a Ph.D. in computer science and has been working with Moodle since the mid-2000s, specializing in large-scale implementations and customizations for organizations. He is perhaps best known globally as the author of the acclaimed Moodle Administration guide – a comprehensive book that has helped countless administrators configure and optimize their Moodle sites. Beyond the book, Alex has contributed code and has been a speaker at numerous MoodleMoots and open-source conferences. His company Synergy Learning also became a Platinum Totara Partner, reflecting his involvement in the Moodle-derived Totara project for corporate learning.

Joseph Thibault

Nationality: American

Joseph is known for his influential writing and evangelism in the Moodle and EdTech space. He is the creator and former editor of MoodleNews.com, a popular community-driven site that shared Moodle tips, plugin news, and interviews.

Joseph started MoodleNews while working at a startup providing Moodle hosting for teachers, realizing there was “too much happening with Moodle” not to share. Under his leadership, MoodleNews became a central hub where Moodlers could learn about new developments and best practices. After that, Joseph continued his EdTech career – he served as an Executive Director at StraighterLine and more recently founded Cursive – an edtech startup focusing on improving student writing in Moodle and other LMSs. Joseph’s broad perspective – from blogging to startup innovation – has made him a respected voice on how open-source LMS technology evolves.

Richard Wyles

Nationality: New Zealander

Richard is a pioneer of open-source LMS adoption in government and enterprises, best known as the co-founder and longtime CEO of Totara Learning Solutions. Totara is an open-source LMS forked from Moodle in 2010 with a focus on workplace learning, and under Richard’s leadership it grew into a global platform used by major corporations and governments.

Richard played an instrumental role in founding Totara in 2010 and has led the company since its start-up phase. Prior to Totara, he was heavily involved in the New Zealand e-learning community – he led a government-funded consortium of 20 universities that contributed to Moodle’s early development and helped establish the Mahara e-portfolio project. Richard also co-founded Flexible Learning Network in 2006 to further open-source solutions in education. A passionate advocate for open technology, Richard has written and spoken frequently on how open-source can drive innovation in learning and training.

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.

Sam Marshall

Nationality: British

Sam is a key developer at the Open University (OU) who has been responsible for many powerful Moodle enhancements used at scale. Along with Tim Hunt and others at OU, Sam has co-developed features that often later make their way into Moodle core or are shared as plugins.

Notably, Sam was the original developer of OU Blog and OU Wiki, enhanced activity modules that provide improved blogging and wiki experiences for students – these are available as contributed plugins and widely used by other universities. He also led the development of ForumNG, an alternative forum activity with a better interface and features, which influenced Moodle’s own Forum improvements. Sam has contributed to core Moodle code as well, particularly in the areas of logging, search infrastructure, and scalability improvements.

Lewis Carr

Lewis Carr - 16 Top Moodle Experts Building Better eLearning

Nationality: British

Lewis is an e-learning strategist and longtime Moodler known for his innovative approach to Moodle design and usability. He has been “doing funky things with Moodle since 2004”, initially as a college IT manager and later as founder of his own e-learning company, AdaptiVLE.

In the Moodle community, Lewis gained recognition through his blog where he showcased creative customizations – for instance, making Moodle look and behave like popular social networks or streaming sites to improve learner engagement. He was an early adopter of responsive design in Moodle and often pushed the limits of theming without modifying core code. Lewis also served as an editor-in-chief of Dirty Word, an e-learning magazine, where he highlighted trends and edtech tools. He has presented at MoodleMoots, sharing tips on transforming Moodle’s interface with simple tweaks.

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.

Ready to get started?