At MoodleMoot Global 2025 in Edinburgh, Catalyst IT was honoured to receive the Moodle Partner Community Contributor of the Year Award. While Catalyst accepted the award, this achievement belongs to the global Moodle community, particularly the Quiz and Question Bank project team, whose dedication has transformed digital assessment in Moodle for educators and learners worldwide.
Why this award matters
The Community Award recognises outstanding contributions to Moodle that are openly shared, collaborative in spirit, and impactful for users everywhere. For Catalyst IT, it reflects our long-standing belief that open source thrives when we contribute not just code, but time, expertise, and advocacy across the ecosystem.
In 2024, Catalyst IT was the largest contributor to Moodle core outside Moodle HQ. But this award highlights a particular piece of work: our role in the community-led Quiz and Question Bank project, one of the most significant collaborative initiatives in Moodle’s history.
The Quiz and Question Bank Project
The Moodle Quiz is widely recognised as one of the most feature-rich assessment tools in any LMS. Yet the community knew it could be even more powerful, with reusable questions, improved analytics, and a better user experience.
Beginning in 2020, a group of community leaders, Antonia Bonaccorso (ETH Zürich), Luca Bösch (Bern University of Applied Science), Thomas Körner (Canton of Zürich), and Tim Hunt (Open University UK), convened institutions and volunteers to make it happen. Catalyst developers from across our global offices joined forces with this group, led in Europe by Mark Johnson, to deliver enhancements for Moodle 4 and beyond.
The result?
- 124 bugs fixed
- 43 improvements implemented
- 23 new features introduced
- Over 12,000 lines of new code for Moodle 5.0
Beyond the numbers, the improvements enable lecturers to gain insights into student performance across modules, simplify the process of creating and reusing questions, and make the quiz interface more intuitive. Institutions like Dublin City University have already spoken about how this collaborative model makes innovation more sustainable and accessible.
DCU intentionally does not employ Moodle developers; instead, we work with Catalyst IT when we want to develop improvements to Moodle. However, we did not have the funds to implement all of these improvements to the quiz ourselves, so the fact that we could contribute a small piece towards this project was of great importance to us. This community-based approach is a much more attractive and sustainable option for us.
Dr Rob Lowney, Teaching Enhancement Unit, Dublin City University
A community-wide achievement
This project exemplifies the values of openness, respect, and innovation that sit at the heart of Moodle. Over 23 institutions contributed some funding, others with development or testing time, all united by a shared vision to improve assessment for millions of learners.
As Brett Dalton, Head of Educational Solutions at Moodle HQ, put it:
The Quiz and Question Bank in Moodle Project is a historic community-led project… thanks to the unwavering dedication of its coordinators, the generosity of 23 institutions, and the technical prowess of engineers at both Catalyst AU and Catalyst EU.
We’re proud that Catalyst played a role in this milestone, but above all, we’re proud of the community. This award belongs as much to the project leaders and institutions as it does to us.
Looking ahead
As universities begin upgrading to Moodle 5.0 and beyond, the benefits of this project will be felt on a global scale. And for Catalyst IT, it sets a template for how we want to continue working: collaborative, open, and focused on meaningful impact.
We’d like to extend our congratulations and gratitude to everyone who contributed, especially Antonia, Luca, Tim, and Thomas, whose leadership and vision made this possible.
Together, we’ve shown what can be achieved when the Moodle community unites around a shared goal.
