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Moodle

From the website (moodle.org) "Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities. You can download and use it on any computer you have handy (including webhosts), yet it can scale from a single-teacher site to a 40,000-student University."

Why On-line learning?

On-line learning systems are an excellent solution for many training deliver requirements, but they are not the best choice in all cases.

On-line learning is good for:

Technical training which conveys detailed information and factual content.
Distance education where the students may be remote or otherwise unable to attend a normal classroom.
Ad-hoc delivery where the training materials need to be available at short notice to individual users.

On-line learning is less good for:

Teaching soft skills where direct teacher-student interaction is required.
Practical training where physical presence is required.

Why Moodle?

The best choice for an on-line learning environment will depend on the particular requirements of the organisation involved. I like Moodle for a number of technical and ideological reasons.

Open source	So not only is there zero cost of acquisition, there are many developers and supporters who can fix bugs and develop enhancements.
Fits with standard web infrastructure	Moodle uses the PHP scripting language and, by default, MySQL database engine. These are easily supported on the most popular web servers and can generally be supported on other web servers with appropriate configurations.
Flexible	There are many built-in content modules and delivery modes which can be combined to provide a rich learning experience for the end-user. Because Moodle is open source, there are many developers around the world who create and share custom content types if the standard elements are not enough.
Fits with corporate infrastructure	Moodle supports many authentication methods which, in many cases, will allow potential students to use the same usernames and passwords as they use for other systems.

Planning for Success

Before implementing Moodle (or any other on-line learning environment), you should carefully consider how different types of users will need to interact with the system and how the proposed system will support these requirements.

These questions are far from exhaustive, but give some idea of the planning requirements involved.

Students

How do I log in? Can I use the same username and password as I do for my other systems?
How do I find out about the courses available?
How can I see who else is online? If I can see them, can they see me? Which of my details are visible to other users?

Teachers

How do I see what students are enrolled in my courses? Can I remove people who shouldn't be enrolled?
How can I give students a mark for the course? What sort of things can I give marks on?
How can I interact with the students doing the course?

Content Creators

What sort of content can I use in a course?
Can I reuse courses or content from other places?
Can I show different content depending on how a student answers a question?

The importance and complexity of good content creation is often overlooked in planning for on-line learning. It's hard and it takes time, to pretend otherwise will lead to disappointment.

Administrators

What do I need to run Moodle? What web server? What other software?
Can I run Moodle on the same server as my other web site?
How do I manage who can do what with Moodle?
How do I backup the on-line learning data? What's included in the backup?
Where can I go for support?

Interested?

Dropbear Consulting has experience in planning, installing, configuring and supporting Moodle course management systems.

You might want to examine the white paper Beyond the Blackboard available from the resources page.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. – George Bernard Shaw