Last week, Ciberimaginario took part in MoodleMoot’26, the annual conference of the Moodle community held at the University of Valladolid. Moodle is one of the most widely used educational platforms worldwide, employed by universities and other institutions to manage and organize e-learning courses.
Within the framework of the Upraise project, work is underway on the design of a learning platform. As project partners, Ciberimaginario is actively involved, contributing ideas and potential solutions for its development.
In this context, we are experimenting with the creation of environments based on recent versions of Moodle (4.5 and 5.0) and exploring the capabilities being introduced in upcoming releases. Specifically, we are integrating Ollama locally, which allows us to deploy artificial intelligence solutions. This approach enables the incorporation of features such as summary generation, automated explanations, and virtual assistants, among others.
Attending these sessions proved especially valuable, as it allowed us to learn first-hand about the latest developments in Moodle, as well as to analyze how artificial intelligence is progressively being integrated into this type of educational platform.
In this area, several solutions and plugins stand out. Among those that are open source and can be run locally on Ollama are:
| Plugin | Functionality | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Moodle AI Core | Summarize, Explain, Generate | Included in Moodle 5 |
| Tiny AI Prompt Generator | Guided pedagogical prompts | moodle.org |
| Exabis AI Chat Block | AI chat with course context | moodle.org |
| Mebis AI Manager | Multi-tenant AI management | GitHub |
On the other hand, there are also freemium alternatives that require a public server:
| Plugin | Trial | Cost Post-Trial |
|---|---|---|
| Raison AI | 1 assistant, 3 sources | Contact Sales |
| Alphabees | Free trial | €99/month |
Likewise, other tutoring and mentoring solutions available 24/7 include:
| Plugin | Functionality | Cost | Local |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moodle AI Core | Explain, Summarize | Free | ✅ Ollama |
| Exabis AI Chat | Chat contextual, gradebook | Free | ✅ Ollama |
| Tiny AI Prompt Generator | Pedagogical generation | Free | ✅ Ollama |
| Raison AI | Tutor 24/7, analytics | Freemium | ❌ External |
| Alphabees | Adaptive exercises | €99/month | ❌ External |
| GeniAI | Assistant ChatGPT | API key | ❌ External |
Mebis Suite (Bavaria) – Alternative to the Core
Finally, it is worth highlighting the Mebis suite (Bavaria) as an alternative to the AI integration approach being developed by Moodle. This suite offers its own ecosystem with tools such as centralized AI managers, educational chatbots, and integrations with content editors. However, it represents an alternative approach that may not be directly compatible with other AI integration initiatives within the Moodle ecosystem.
| Plugin | Function |
|---|---|
| local_ai_manager | Central manager |
| tiny_ai | Editor TinyMCE |
| block_ai_chat | Chatbot |
| block_ai_control | Teacher control |
⚠️ Note: Mebis is NOT compatible with Moodle 5’s AI Core. They are alternative systems.
