Mountainmoot 2025 Sessions

2025 Sessions!

We are VERY excited about this year's lineup. We have sessions from top notch presenters all over the US and abroad. During each breakout session we have at least 4 different options to choose from, so you will find something that interests you. We have a few sessions that are penciled in currently and waiting on information. Please note that this is an early schedule and subject to change.

There is a pre-workshop welcome informal gathering on Tuesday evening that will be from 4:00 - 6:30pm at Hokkaido with free light appetizers and drinks. This open to all attendees.

• 2025 MOODLE CONFERENCE SITE (coming soon)

Wednesday Morning Pre-Moot Workshops: 9:00 a.m. – Noon

WORKSHOP Moodle Gov/Business Moodle K-12 Higher Ed	Newdle: Moodle for New Users TBA Everything you need to get up and running as a teacher with Moodle. This will cover the basics of course management, activity creation, and user management. We will also discuss how to set up and use a variety of Moodle core features such as assignment, forum, book, quiz, and lesson. Time permitting, we will explore some easy to create, but highly effective H5P content types. This session is perfect for beginners!
WORKSHOP K-12 Higher Ed EdTech Gov/Business	AI in the Classroom: Unlocking Time-Saving Tools for Teachers Shaundel Krumheuer - Tech Integration Specialist - Billings Senior High Educators juggle a myriad of tasks, let’s explore ways we can integrate AI to work smarter and not harder to streamline administrative work, personalize learning experiences, and provide actionable insights into student progress. From automating routine grading to creating customized learning materials to generating real-time feedback, discover how AI can free up valuable time so that you can focus on what matters most: engaging with your students. We’ll explore specific tools, such as Brisk, MagicSchool, and the AI features of Canva (but leave the door open to other tools that emerge this spring!). Get ready to unlock a world of time-saving possibilities and bring a new level of innovation to your classroom!
WORKSHOP Moodle K-12 Higher Ed Gov/Business	In the Driver’s Seat: Moodle Product Innovation Jess Bryant and Heather Robinson - Moodle Take the wheel and join us for this activity based session to help gather and rank ideas for Moodle product development. As part of Moodle’s desire to evolve, the Experience Design and Product teams are eager for your feedback and want to make your journey as an Moodle admin or teacher easier. Let’s collaborate to identify some bumps in the road we all experience as Moodle users and admins.

Wednesday Afternoon Pre-Moot Workshops: 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

WORKSHOP Moodle Gov/Business Moodle K-12 Higher Ed	The Engaging Power of H5p Kimberly Minckler - Online Training Specialist at Child Care Resources Kick off your MountainMoot experience with an engaging pre-moot training that dives into the creative world of H5P! This session will showcase how H5P's user-friendly plug-in integrates seamlessly with Moodle, empowering educators to design interactive, customizable content—no coding experience required. We’ll explore some of the more innovative H5P content types and guide participants through a hands-on workshop where you’ll have the chance to build your own engaging activities. Whether you're looking to enhance student interaction or revamp existing course material, this session offers practical tools you can start using immediately. Come ready to create, collaborate, and get inspired!
WORKSHOP Moodle K-12 Higher Ed EdTech Gov/Business	CANVA You Even Stand the Possibilities?! Shaundel Krumheuer - Tech Integration Specialist - Billings Senior High Canva is great for creating posters and fliers, but there is so. much. more. to this amazing tool! Graphics make content more visually appealing, easier to understand, and more memorable, ultimately leading to increased attention, retention, and interaction. Let's explore how you can use Canva to enhance everything from communications to decor, organize and share events and schedules, and easily zhuzh up your classroom materials, social media posts, and more! Bring your device and let's create! *** Participants are asked to bring their own laptops or tablets, project ideas, and plenty of questions. ***
WORKSHOP Higher Ed EdTech Gov/Business	Harnessing the Power of AI to Innovate Your Learning and Tech Landscape Emma and Amy - Moodlers at Large, Various Attendees will see some of the positive and practical ways to use AI in their everyday work. What's our plan? We'll make it fun, like only we can :) More coming Soon..

Wednesday Evening, Opening Moot Party: 5:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

Lower Brewhouse Restaurant

Food, Drinks and Conversation Open to all attendees Join us right across from the Carroll campus at the lower brewhouse for the annual opening night party sponsored by OpenLMS! A great way to open the moot and meet old friends as well as make new ones. Moot bucks, free food and drinks and great conversation ... what more do you need.

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Thursday Kickoff & Information - 8:15 a.m. – 8:30 a.m.

Opening Intro and Welcome

Official Kick off to the 15th Annual Moot Dan Case & Rachel Martin Some quick opening remarks, information about the schedule, socials, moot money and more. Takes place in the Northeast corner of the library.

Breakout Session 1 (45 min)- 8:45 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.

Session 1A	Moodle Fundamentals for Teachers Ryan Hazen - Moodle Everything you need to get up and running as a teacher with Moodle. This will cover the basics of course management, activity creation, and user management. We will also discuss how to set up and use a variety of Moodle core features such as assignment, forum, book, quiz, and lesson.
Session 1B	Creating Accessible Word Documents Kara Conger - Brickfield Education Labs Learn the basics of making Word documents accessible to everyone. This workshop covers essential tips like using clear file names and titles, setting the right language, adding page numbers, using proper heading styles, choosing readable fonts, ensuring colour contrast, writing descriptive links, and adding alt text to images.
Session 1C	Enhancing Online Collaboration: Group Activities Developed with ChatGPT for Moodle Randy Stamm - Educational Consultant This session explores innovative strategies for designing engaging group activities in the online classroom using ChatGPT. Learn how AI can assist in developing activity guidelines, suggesting digital tools for collaboration, and streamlining content delivery within the Moodle Learning Environment. Discover practical prompt engineering techniques to refine the creation process, ensuring well-structured and interactive group experiences.
Session 1D	Getting dangerous with the database! Emma Richardson - This session will show you some of the benefits of direct database manipulation! This session is not for the faint of heart but will show you some best practices for starting to mess around in the Moodle database without too much fear of crashing your site!
Session 1E	Building Better Moodle Trainings: Lessons & Processes for Asynchronous Success Shane Sletten - Augsberg University In the era of AI, extracting the students experience and exploring activities that create opportunities for authentic connection is a challenging teaching obligation. This session offers a few tips, ideas, and benefits of creating authentic assessments.

Breakout Session 2 (45 min)- 10:00 a.m. – 10:45 a.m.

Session 2A	Embracing Intersec - Understanding Diverse Needs in Learning and Development Amy Tessitore - Moodle In this session we will explore and understand the importance of intersectionality and disability within the world of teaching and learning and learning and development. In today's diverse educational landscapes, understanding and addressing the multifaceted aspects of disability is paramount for fostering inclusive environments and facilitating equitable learning experiences.
Session 2B	Grades beyond points: 'Ungrading' experiences and methods in Canvas Rebecca Kranitz - University of Montana This session reviews how to implement learning-focused courses with Canvas using current research and practice in ungrading theories and techniques. This includes using assessment techniques within Canvas LMS constraints, emphasizing designing grading schemes to align course goals and outcomes. Examples and experiences are shared from current freshman math courses with ungrading elements in Canvas.
Session 2C	So I taught a class about AI Rachel Martin - Carroll College Session information coming soon.
Session 2D	Design for Every Beautiful Mind: A Focus on Neurodivergence and Online Learning Carli Cockrell - Moodle You've heard of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), but have you heard of Cognitive Accessibility (COGA)? Learn how course designers can use COGA to support the neurodiversity of all online learners. Regardless of your online learning platform, the insights you will gain will help you to apply the 8 COGA guidelines for inclusive design that may not be well-portrayed by simply following WCAG.
Session 2E	Using Video Content to Enhance Learning Inside the LMS Rollin Guyden - Columbia Theological Seminary In today’s digital learning environment, students expect engaging, accessible, and interactive content. This session explores how integrating video into your Learning Management System (LMS) can enhance student engagement, improve knowledge retention, and streamline content delivery. We will discuss the benefits of video for reducing cognitive overload, ensuring accessibility across devices, and enabling personalized learning experiences. Additionally, we’ll highlight best practices for securely managing and delivering video content within Moodle using Panopto, a platform that offers seamless integration, video creation tools, and powerful analytics to track student engagement. Attendees will leave with actionable strategies for using video assignments, instructor feedback videos, and interactive learning modules to create a more dynamic and effective online learning environment. Join us to discover how video can transform your LMS into a more engaging and impactful educational space!

Breakout Session 3 (45 min)- 11:15 a.m. – 12:00 a.m.

Session 3A	Become an Information Architect in 45 Short Minutes! Hannah Killian - Open LMS This session offers a practical guide to starting at the beginning with building a knowledge base for your organization. It includes a brief intro to information architecture, hands-on activities to get you thinking about what’s needed to reduce anxiety and start organizing your information, as well as practical guides to getting buy-in from stakeholders, the benefits of communally sharing information, and resources for helping you along your information architecture journey.
Session 3B	What If There Is No Classroom?: Strategies for delivering quality training to un-herdable cats. Bill Ryan - Dick Anderson Construction In the construction industry everyone involved is in constant motion in multiple locations- all at the same time. This presentation will share strategies for delivering quality training to employees and tools used in Moodle to communicate, set and achieve standards, track progress, and build transcripts for nearly 500 employee learners.
Session 3C	Brains and Bots: Scaling Teacher Training Development with Human AI Kim Carroll and Sara Davila Description coming soon.
Session 3D	From Learnbook to Open LMS in Ten Weeks: Lessons from 200 Real-World Migrations Sam Scarpine - Open LMS Sunsetting a legacy platform is rarely simple, especially when 200 institutions are counting on you to preserve courses, user data, and hard-won trust. In this session, Sam will share the ten-week migration process that allowed a successful transition with no data or peace of mind loss. You’ll see exactly how we leverage the Vault tool for “lift and shift” and dodge common pitfalls like deprecated plugins and SSO snafus. Expect candid “war” stories, dashboards you can copy, and client-facing scripts you can steal.
Session 3E	Integrating Virtual Cyber Labs with Moodle Nuria Pacheco - Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute In this session we will introduce a plugin developed at Carnegie Mellon University that integrates cyber training labs with Moodle. TopoMojo, the platform used in the President’s Cup Cybersecurity Competition hosted by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is an open-source lab builder and player also developed by Carnegie Mellon University. Our plugin allows labs hosted on the TopoMojo platform to be added to courses as Moodle activities. The labs contain an integrated quiz functionality that enables performance-based skills assessment to be tracked within Moodle. This session will discuss how standard Moodle questions were embedded into the lab activity. Both a question type and a question behavior plugin were used to pull randomly generated questions and answers from TopoMojo during the student’s attempt. Additionally, we will discuss how assessment using a combination of quizzes and hands-on labs can build a larger picture of a student’s work role readiness by utilizing Moodle competency frameworks and the NICE Framework.

Special Session - 1:15 p.m. – 1:45 p.m.

Surprise coming soon

Special Session! Northeast corner of the library Announcement on this will be coming soon.

Breakout Session 4 (45 min)- 2:15 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Session 4A	From Forums to Plugins: Comparative Analysis of Group Evaluation Tools Q Peiffer and Kerri Brown Parker - NC State University A common challenge in group work is evaluating the contributions of each group member. At our institution, instructors regularly search for ways to evaluate the team effort in a project's final grade. To address this issue, we have explored various solutions, including Discussion Forums, Moodle Workshop, and the Peer Work plugin. In this session, we will compare the pros and cons of each tool and provide scenarios on how to implement them in a course.
Session 4B	Creating Accessible PDFs Kara Conger - Brickfield Education Labs Get practical guidance on making your PDFs more accessible. We’ll look at how to structure documents with tags and headings, set titles and language, add visible page numbers, choose accessible fonts and colours, write useful link text, and include alt text for all visuals.
Session 4C	A Collaborative Presentation: Building Together Erin Butts - Carroll College Got great ideas for online learning? Bring them! This session shifts the script — the presenter wants to learn from you. Participants are invited to contribute to innovative ideas for using Moodle tools to create dynamic and engaging online learning environments. Your insights will help inform better practices and enhance the effectiveness of virtual classrooms.
Session 4D	Pulling Moodle up by it's Bootstrap and other advanced CSS Ted Ward and Corey Kalynuk - Moodle Join us as we dive into the fascinating world of Moodle site development. In this session, we’re going to explore the essentials of advanced CSS and basic JavaScript—two fundamental tools that work hand-in-hand to create dynamic, visually captivating Moodle sites. We'll uncover how advanced CSS techniques can elevate your styling, helping you craft layouts and designs that are not only professional but responsive and adaptable. Then, we'll shift gears to basic JavaScript, learning how to breathe life into your Moodle site by adding interactivity and functionality. Whether you're polishing your Moodle development skills or just starting your journey, this presentation aims to provide you with the building blocks to bring your ideas to life. So, let's pull up our bootstraps and unlock the potential of CSS and JavaScript together!
Session 4E	Human-Driven AI: The ALWAYS Approach for Success Tanna Kincaid - University of Montana Explore an infographic focused on keeping AI human-powered. Learn a simple five-step process to preserve human intelligence in the use of AI. This session is designed to address the critical need for maintaining human intelligence, critical thinking, and ethical standards in the use of AI applications by educators and students. Participants will explore the common challenges of poor AI use, such as the risk of over-reliance on AI, potential biases, and the erosion of critical thinking skills. This session aims to provide practical solutions to these issues by emphasizing the importance of human oversight throughout AI use. By the end of this session, participants will have a clear understanding of how to keep AI human-powered, equipped with strategies to ensure that AI applications in education are ethical, thoughtful, and supportive of human intelligence and critical thinking. Participants will leave with access to a copy of the infographic that can be used or adapted.

Breakout Session 5 (45 min)- 3:30 p.m. – 4:15 p.m.

Session 5A	Engaging Minds Online: Time-Saving, Research-Based Online Teaching Ryan Hazen - Moodle This session will delve into four key principles – Be Present, Be Engaging, Be Consistent, and Be Social – and demonstrate how the LMS can help you save time while improving your online presence. We will delve into the research behind why these principles drive effective online pedagogy and instructor efficiency.
Session 5B	Agents in the LMS: A look at the state of the art AI tools for students Joe Thibault - Cursive Technologies “Agents are coming” was what we said in 2024. In 2025, they’re here. During this session we’ll take a look at the state of the art for AI agents and other student facing tools as they interface with your courses and learning management system (relevant to any LMS). We’ll cover a variety of tool categories including agents, extensions, plugins, and applications and their positive and negative impacts for learning.
Session 5C	Moodle: An Instructional Designer’s (Instructor’s) Playground Rollin Guyden - Columbia Theological Seminary Step into the dynamic world of Moodle, where creativity meets functionality, and instructional designers unlock endless possibilities to craft transformative learning experiences. Dive into Moodle’s rich ecosystem of customizable themes, plugins, and activity modules that let you shape courses to fit any pedagogical approach. This presentation will explore how Moodle’s open-source platform serves as a vibrant sandbox for innovation, empowering designers to build, experiment, and refine courses that captivate learners and drive meaningful outcomes.
Session 5D	Scalable Design Strategies for University-Wide Online Learning Eric Solano-Uscanga - Moodle Designing quality online learning at scale doesn't have to be overwhelming! In this session, we'll explore practical strategies for supporting faculty and students across an entire institution using Moodle. From creating and sharing training materials through a centralized repository (built with the Database activity!) to developing course templates that align with both classroom and administrative needs, we’ll look at ways to streamline design and promote consistency. We'll also dive into tips for building effective self-paced courses using tools like restrictions, activity completion, and self-enrolment. Whether you're supporting a handful of instructors or a whole university, this session will offer ideas you can implement right away.

Thursday Evening, Big Moot Money Bash Party: 5:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.

The Trinity Lounge and Trinity Lawn Carroll College

Food, Games, Prizes and all around good time! MountainMoot Mootineers An evening of games, food, drinks and thousands of dollars in free prizes. A local taproom will be catering this event with local brews and more. A live DJ with some "name that tune" contests and a chance to win more free moot bucks that you can use during the silent auction and the live auction. This event is always a lot of fun.

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Friday Breakout Session 6 (45 min)- 9:00 a.m. – 9:45 a.m.

Session 6A	Creating Interactive Courses with Ease using Brightspace and H5P Dante Bolkovic - D2L We all know creating dynamic, interactive courses can be time-consuming, often requiring support from designers or developers to make your vision a reality. But it doesn’t have to be that way. With the power of Brightspace and H5P, higher ed instructors can access smart tools, customizable templates, and 50+ interactive content types to build engaging learning experiences—no coding required. It’s time to boost engagement and improve learner outcomes. Join us to see how your faculty and course creators can save time, spark interaction, and deliver high-impact courses that truly connect with students.
Session 6B	Auracast, Access and Accessibility: The new Bluetooth Standard Dan Case - Carroll College This coming Bluetooth audio technology will be soon changing the way we hear audio from the classroom, church, airports, movie theatre's and even our own backyards. Find out what Auracast is, what it does and see it in action with shipping products. This will open a new world to both the hearing impaired as well as regular everyday life.
Session 6C	Artificial Intelligence and Learning Development Mandie Carter - Grad Student Discuss how artificial intelligence (AI) has affected learning development in recent years. Explore ways that AI learning can streamline learning content development including AI generated voice over, outline generation, multilingual delivery, video editing, etc. Examine the ethical considerations of using artificial intelligence during learning content development. Investigate how to properly integrate artificial intelligence in your learning development cycle.
Session 6D	Yours, Mine & Ours: Facilitating Cross-Course Projects Hart Wilson - Southern Oregon University “My directing students need to work with my colleague’s design crew students to create videos together. How can we manage their joint projects in Moodle?” This query led to an elegant, seamless solution involving a new, shared course; meta course enrollments; group choice; groupings; and links with restricted access. Step-by-step instructions will be provided for making it easy to accommodate instructors looking to blend their classes or for corporate trainers to combine work teams for special projects.

Friday Breakout Session 7 (45 Min) - 10:15 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.

Session 7A	Time Compression Course Design and AI Rachel Martin - Carroll College Really cool description of this engaging session coming soon...
Session 7B	Moodle Gradebook: Experiences Supporting a Unique & Highly Customizable Moodle Tool Ethan Walgran - NC State University Effectively supporting the Moodle gradebook is a constantly moving target. The customizable nature of the Gradebook and the variations among grading practices across differing universities and individual colleges makes the training and supporting of Moodle gradebook, for both new and long term faculty, a complex endeavor. This presentation will highlight some of the common practices members of the Digital Education and Learning Technology Applications (DELTA) LearnTech HelpDesk staff at NC State utilize to help support faculty with their specific Gradebook needs. We will discuss how the interactions and feedback obtained during instructional consultations have impacted administrative changes to our Moodle instances to better accommodate general faculty needs. We will also highlight some of the resources our team, along with DELTA’s Instructional Training Team have developed to further address the broader needs of our faculty. Our hope is that this presentation will lend to a broader discussion and sharing of ideas and best practices among all those who attend.
Session 7C	Tired of Crickets? Fostering Online Community and Collaboration in an Online Environment Lara Ismael - Open LMS This session will address the challenges and opportunities of building a strong sense of community in online learning environments. We’ll explore pedagogical approaches for designing effective discussion forums, group projects, peer review activities, and other interactive elements that promote student engagement and connection.
Session 7D	Moodle Workplace Tour Ryan Hazen - Moodle Moodle Workplace sets the standard for a single modern LMS platform, capable of serving the needs of users across all sectors. This session is a synthesis of insights after working on dozens of Moodle Workplace implementations since it was released. Not surprisingly, features developed for corporate and compliance learning have profound potential in higher education and K12 settings. Come see how programs, certifications, organizational structure, multitenancy, and custom reports can take your Moodle and turn it into a motivational and analytics powerhouse.

Friday Breakout Session 8 (45 Min) - 11:15 a.m. – Noon

Session 8A	AI for educators-Work Smarter, Not Harder! Keri Zimmer and Kathryn Fortin Teaching comes with a lot of busywork—grading, lesson planning, and endless emails. In this session, we’ll explore easy ways AI can help lighten the load, from automating tasks to personalizing learning. You’ll walk away with practical tools you can start using right away. AI isn’t here to replace teachers—it’s here to make our jobs easier!
Session 8B	10 Tips for Online Course Design Tanna Kincaid - University of Montana This session introduces 10 practical strategies across five essential areas of online course design to help ensure your course meets quality standards and supports all learners. Whether you're building a new course or refining an existing one, you’ll find actionable ideas—some Canvas-specific—that can be implemented right away. Topics include organizing course content with intuitive layouts and consistent navigation; aligning learning outcomes and scaffolding instruction with the help of AI tools; designing universally accessible and engaging materials; promoting substantive interaction through increased instructor presence and peer collaboration; and streamlining feedback and grading practices with rubrics and personalization.
Session 8C	Designing with UDL for Multi-generational Students Heidi Guercio - LSU This session will discuss some of the UDL principles that support design for multigenerational audiences. Incorporating UDL through Moodle activity choices and considerations. This session will be discussion-based and thus interactive in nature. We will share and discuss Moodle tools, their uses, and unconventional ways to engage students online and in the classroom. Can't wait to hear from the people "in the arena!"~ T. Roosevelt
Session 8D	Moodle Gradebook Essentials for Everyone Ryan Hazen - Moodle Moodle Gradebook is a powerful, flexible, accurate grade management system. With its natural aggregation system, teachers can leverage sum-of-points, percentage-category, and other grading strategies independently or simultaneously. We will break down the inner workings of gradebook using arithmetic and explain how to customize its calculations to meet the needs of teachers using several common grading strategies as well as a few uncommon ones suggested by attendees.