Open Source
Pcast — Podcasting for Moodle™
A Moodle™ activity module for publishing and subscribing to course podcasts — audio and video episodes with moderation, ratings, tagging and a standards-compliant iTunes/RSS feed. Ldesign Media reviewed it end to end, hardened its security and privacy handling against the Moodle™ standards, and co-maintains it for current Moodle™ and PHP.
Case Studies
Pcast turns a Moodle™ course into a podcast channel. Teachers, and optionally students, post audio or video episodes that can be moderated before they go live, then rated, commented on and tagged. Every activity publishes a standards-compliant RSS feed with iTunes tags, keywords, categories and channel art, so learners can subscribe in Apple Podcasts or any podcast client. Episodes are searchable through Moodle™'s global search, count towards activity completion, and every action is recorded through the events API.
The module was originally created by Stephen Bourget, with QA and bug-fixing by Jillaine Beeckman, for Goffstown School District in New Hampshire, USA. Ldesign Media adopted the plugin and now co-maintains it for current Moodle™ and PHP, with the original authors and their copyright fully credited.
Our work focused on correctness, security and standards-compliance rather than new features or a redesign. We reviewed the whole plugin against the Moodle™ coding standards, added a continuous-integration pipeline, and verified it on a clean Moodle™ 5.x site running PHP 8.4 and PostgreSQL. The review paid particular attention to access control, the GDPR privacy layer, backup and restore, and the RSS/iTunes feed.
The review surfaced a number of real issues, which we filed as public tickets and fixed in reviewed, independently-verified batches: access control on episode actions is now correctly scoped to its own activity and context; the Privacy API correctly exports and erases each user's own listening data; backup and restore now preserve every setting, file area and view counter; and the RSS feed stays valid XML for every iTunes category. Each fix ships with a regression test, and the full unit-test suite runs green in CI on current Moodle™ and PHP. The result is a dependable, standards-compliant podcasting module that installs cleanly and behaves predictably on the latest Moodle™ releases.
Key Features
- Publish audio or video podcast episodes inside a Moodle™ course, with optional moderation before release
- Standards-compliant RSS feed with iTunes tags, keywords, categories and channel art — subscribe in Apple Podcasts or any client
- Episodes support rating, commenting and Moodle™ tagging, and are indexed by global search
- Activity completion, including display on the My overview / Timeline block
- Access control scoped correctly to each activity and context; all actions logged via the events API
- Implements the Moodle™ Privacy API (GDPR): each user's own listening data is exported and erased
- Reviewed against the Moodle™ coding standards, covered by CI, and verified on Moodle™ 5.x with PHP 8.4
Related Projects
Ready to Start Your Project?
Whether you need a custom plugin, system integration, or complete learning platform, we're here to help bring your vision to life.
Start a Conversation
