Moodle Case Study: The South East GP Training Programme

Posted by Joel Kerr on 07 Sep

Introduction

The South East Training Programme for General Practice, based in the city of Waterford, was established in 1991 to prepare doctors for working in General Practice. In February 2009 the Programme commenced online training with the view to enhancing the onsite training.

After a review of course management systems in use by universities and businesses, it was decided Moodle offered the best solutions. According to the research carried out by the South East GPTP(1), some of the benefits of Moodle included the ability to:

Create a course for GP trainees and control access to the course
Lay out the topics for a term and upload aims and objectives, documents, presentations, web links and multimedia
Engage in discussion forums with teachers and learners
Set and review assignments and receive submissions

Synergy Learning worked closely with the South East GPTP to implement the new Moodle site providing Moodle Hosting, Support and Training.

Results

Questionnaires carried out by the South East GPTP found trainee’s experience of Moodle was overwhelmingly positive:

84% of respondents believed that Moodle had brought positive changes to the training programme
95% respondents would recommend Moodle to colleagues in other GP training programmes

Respondents were asked to comment on their experience of Moodle. In all, 95% of respondents made comments. The most frequent topics raised in the comments were:

“ Easy to use, great communication tool, allows wide sharing of information and cuts down on paper waste.”

“Topics posted in plenty of time prior to meetings which allows for better preparation and planning. Better follow-up by particiapants in topics raised as documents can be uploaded within the week.”

“Immediacy of contact, promptness of reply and all the information in one place.”

“Has fitted in well with the running of meetings and also useful as a study tool”

“It has resulted in better communication between trainees and programme directors and facilitated better planning of day release. It has also made it easier to communicate with the programme administrator”

“Very positive, all GP training schemes should have one. Has facilitated communication and information-sharing, I think it has been of enormous benefit”

Conclusion

In conclusion, the authors of the Research Article comment:

“Moodle is easy to use [and] the online learning environment was rapidly adopted and maintained to facilitate teaching and learning.

“Moodle has been successfully implemented in the South East GPTP. The course management system has received widespread acceptance and participation from trainees, programme directors and trainers.

“Moodle repays the time and effort made by all parties in making it work. The members of the South East GPTP recommend the use of Moodle to augment general practice training.”

(The South East General Practice Training Programme is funded by the Health Service Executive.)

(1) O’Mahony, B. Rouse, M. Drennan, P. Farrel, J. Dowling, S. Brennan, D. (2009) ‘Training programme gets ‘in the Moodle’’ Forum, Journal of the Irish College of General Practitioners December. p33 – 34.

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