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Posts Tagged ‘VLE’

Snow School Today

Posted by Joel Kerr on 23 Dec

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I don’t know what it is like in the rest of the world but the UK and Ireland have been heavily disrupted by the recent bad weather. As a result the majority of schools have been closed or had to close for some length of time. As always this inspires a flurry of blog posts venting anger and astonishment that in the age of the Virtual Learning Environment schools aren’t better prepared for such an eventuality.

This guy (click here) in particular has pre-empted the excuses a school might give for not continuing operations via their VLE and although it is interesting to read his responses they do seem a bit idealistic.

So what do you think? Should schools be at a stage where they can use their VLE to continue operations even when the building is closed?

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Moodle for Schools

Posted by Joel Kerr on 26 Nov

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As we get closer to BETT 2011 I thought I would do a bit of research into reasons why schools and universities would chose Moodle over the competition.

There have been a number of reports recently of organisations moving from Blackboard to Moodle with a variety of reasons being given, the most consistent being the huge saving that comes with eliminating the annual license fee. I read a report from Vasaar College who estimated a saving of $50,000 annually by switching from the commercial Blackboard to the Open Source Moodle.

But the huge money saving was not the only reason for Vasaars decision to switch VLE, as explained by various members of their team…

Jeffrey Schneider, an Associate Professor commented on the different reasons the faculty where drawn to Moodle.

“A sizable majority of [the faculty] were dissatisfied with Blackboard—it seemed really limited and didn’t offer the same kind of metaphor for learning. It was very teacher directed and felt more fake and artificial. Moodle is a much more attractive, flexible interface.”

Associate Professor Rachel Friedman, who uses elearning in her classes, pointed out what she considers to be the advantage of Moodle:

“The automatic layout of the semester week-by-week, for example, allows for an “interactive” syllabus—not a frozen document, but something that evolves in response to what is actually happening in the classroom.”

Steve Taylor, a member of Vasaar’s Moodle Support team tells it from a technician’s point of view:

“Technologically speaking, Moodle is easier to maintain than Blackboard because it is an open-source software—a program whose code is accessible to those running the site.

“This means that if there’s a little bug, or if we want a function to behave differently or if someone has created a great new function, we can modify the program. We’ve made lots of modifications and while that has called for some work on our part, it’s resulted in a system that better meets the users’ needs,”

Another school that recently made the move from Blackboard to Moodle is the North Shore Senior High School. Again their district viewed Blackboard as being a, “huge investment that was putting a hole in their tight overall budget.”

A report by the school’s newsletter described Moodle as being:

“a stronger [version] of Blackboard which includes more advanced features that allow teachers to become more involved in a student’s academic future”

Some of the specific advantages of Moodle outlined by North Shore include:

“it promotes frequent feedback to students. Students are sent email notices when an instructor has posted grades, added feedback to an assignment, and an assignment can be updated.”

“The grade book tool in Moodle lets you add feedback in addition to a grade or score. Built-in blog and wiki tools in Moodle provide new communication options for group work and journals.”

“Moodle students can access all of the course resources from the course front page.”

Over all North Shore concluded that as well as saving money, Moodle provided a site that was much more personalised and flexible.

Introducing Moodle 2.0

Another topic that is sure to be a hot one at BETT 2011 is the release of Moodle 2.0. With the release of Moodle 2.0 comes a whole host of new and improved features that continues to set Moodle apart from the competition.

The Open University, who operate one of the world’s largest VLE’s, has recently reviewed their options in the light of the advances made with the various software options.

Having looked at the functionality offered by current and future editions of Moodle, Blackboard, Desire2Learn and Sakai it was concluded that the new Moodle 2.0 was best suited to the Open Universities requirements.

A current consideration for organisations using Moodle will be how to introduce Moodle 2.0 as efficiently as possible. Ross McKenzie, Strategic Development Manager at the Open University, explains how they plan to execute the transition to Moodle 2.0:

“The first student-ready release of our new OUVLE will come online in June 2011, with a follow-up release in September 2011. We’re planning to run the new OUVLE alongside the existing Moodle-1.9-based OUVLE for at least 12 months, and we’ll be gradually moving students over to the new OUVLE during that period.”

It is inevitable that with Moodle 2.0 being such a major release a lot of Moodle users will want a transitional period for introducing Moodle 2.0 so as to cause as little disruption to their operations as possible.

We have factored this into our Moodle 2.0 upgrade packages, offering a number of ‘Test Options’ that give Moodlers the chance to play around with a Moodle course, test site or duplicate site. This means you can acquaint yourself with all the new features that come with Moodle 2.0 before introducing it fully.

For more information on our various ‘Route to Moodle 2.0′ options click here

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Moodle has the Answer

Posted by Joel Kerr on 26 May

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The Chancellor has announced The Department of Education will have to make savings of £670m. Although school budgets will be protected until 2011, George Osbourne has made it clear that schools are now expected to become more efficient.

Schools are increasingly finding cost cutting solutions through the innovative use of technology. The VLE offers many alternatives to traditional teaching practices that can save vital budget.

The Guardian recently reported on Sawtry Community College’s aims to save up to 20% of the school’s budget over the next year, basing the bulk of their savings on technology. One solution is the innovative use of their VLE – their science department are saving £1000 a quarter on paper, laser cartridges and running costs by scanning resources into their VLE rather than laser printing and photocopying.

In the same report the Guardian referenced the Carbon Trust, a government funded, not-for-profit company, who’s research found ICT to be one area where UK schools could definitely cut costs.

The big decision facing schools is which VLE to go with, and with cost cutting being at the forefront of every decision makers mind surely Moodle is the obvious choice.

I recently wrote a blog post on the University of North Carolina’s study into the best VLE for them. At the time they where using Blackboard, but found, “the University would realise a cost savings of 52% in year 2011-2012 by switching to Moodle as the standard University Learning Management System.”

Schools and Universities could make huge savings by switching to Open Source Software. Both Moodle and commercial platforms require budget for hosting, support, training and content. The difference is with Moodle there is no licence fee to pay. By choosing Moodle schools can eliminate the cost of the annual licence fee, which when all things considered is an unnecessary cost.

Moodle is highly customisable, can be themed to suit a school’s branding and comes with a lot of standard features that are not available in commercial platforms. Not only that but there is an international team of enthusiastic Moodle experts on hand to assist meaning a lot of the necessary costs can be brought inhouse.

As budgets tighten and efficiency becomes even more important schools that need to cut costs without making any of the sacrifices could do a whole lot worse than look to Moodle.

For more information on our services click on one of the following links Moodle Hosting, Moodle Training, Moodle Support, Moodle Themes and Moodle Development.

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