Learning friction describes the hidden obstacles that slow down, confuse, or discourage learners in digital learning environments. In Moodle systems, learning friction often goes unnoticed — until completion rates drop, support requests rise, and teaching quality silently suffers.
Friction Radar is an open-source Moodle plugin that helps institutions identify and reduce learning friction before it becomes a structural problem.
In complex Moodle installations, learning friction emerges from many sources: overloaded course structures, inconsistent navigation, unclear workflows, or administrative settings that unintentionally block learning progress. These issues are rarely visible in standard analytics — but they shape the daily experience of learners and teachers alike.
Friction Radar focuses explicitly on learning friction, not performance surveillance. The plugin analyzes aggregated interaction patterns and structural signals to reveal where learners struggle, hesitate, or disengage.
Why learning friction matters for teaching staff
Learning friction does not only affect students. It directly impacts teachers by:
• increasing clarification effort
• generating repetitive support questions
• reducing effective teaching time
• masking didactic problems as “user issues”
Without visibility into learning friction, teaching staff are forced to compensate manually — through emails, explanations, and workaround instructions. This is inefficient, exhausting, and avoidable.
What Friction Radar provides
• Insights into learning friction hotspots across courses
• Early indicators of problematic course structures
• Evidence-based arguments for targeted course improvements
• A shared factual basis for discussions with Moodle administrators
Instead of anecdotal complaints, Friction Radar enables data-informed conversations between teachers, instructional designers, and administrators.
Built for academic environments
Friction Radar is designed for universities, colleges, and large educational institutions where Moodle plays a central role. All analyses are privacy-aware, aggregated, and compliant with open-source and academic standards.
The plugin does not evaluate individuals. It evaluates systems.
For teachers and instructional designers
If you regularly experience learner confusion, repeated questions, or unexplained drop-offs, learning friction is already present — even if it is not yet measurable.
Friction Radar gives you the language, data, and clarity needed to argue for structural improvements. Installing it is not a technical luxury. It is a pedagogical necessity.
Status:
Currently in active development. Public documentation and first release coming soon.
License:
GPL-3.0 (Open Source)
Developed by Aeternum Modulae — focused on ethical analytics, sustainable Moodle architectures, and real-world teaching practice.
Friction Radar is available in the Moodle Plugins directory:
https://moodle.org/plugins/coursereport_frictionradar
The VCS is available here:
https://github.com/AeternumModulae/moodle-coursereport_frictionradar