Trade Skills 4U Case Study

Upgrade and rebranding of Moodle learning management system

Delivered for TRADE SKILLS 4U

AT A GLANCE

Upgrade of Trade Skills 4U’s Moodle LMS
Hosting
Training and ongoing support

THE CLIENT

Trade Skills 4U is a national electrical training company. They have centres in Gatwick, Central London and Warrington, where 1000s of new and experienced electricians have passed their qualifications.

THE CHALLENGE

Trade Skills 4U contacted SkillSet, having recently introduced blended learning into its main qualification packages. This included SCORM-based eLearning modules, which were hosted on an existing Moodle learning management system.

This system was using an outdated version of Moodle, which meant that the site wasn’t providing Trade Skills 4U with all of the functionality that was required. Also, it was not visually appealing and intuitive to use.

SkillSet was therefore engaged to update the LMS to the latest version of Moodle and apply new visual templates to match the Trade Skills 4U brand.

Trade Skills 4U asked SkillSet to move the Moodle site from their internal infrastructure to SkillSet’s. This allowed SkillSet to take full responsibility for hosting, monitoring and maintaining the site.

OUR APPROACH

The first step was to take a back-up of Trade Skills 4U’s existing Moodle LMS. This allowed our team to create a Linux-based staging site using Amazon Web Services (AWS).

SkillSet is proud to be a Consulting Partner with AWS. This alliance allows us to provide our customers with guidance on security, resilience, performance and back-up, ensuring that their cloud environment meets their requirements exactly.

Using the staging site, we then upgraded the system to the latest version of Moodle. We also updated all plug-ins and PHP on the staging site. At this point, Trade Skills 4U was invited to test the upgrade to ensure there were no functional errors.

Once the upgrade was in place, we then applied a new theme and configured this based on the Trade Skills 4U website to match the company’s branding.

SkillSet then configured the default dashboard to ensure that users have the required functionality at their fingertips and anything that is not required was hidden. We also set up tracking to allow students to track their progress through a particular course.

Trade Skills 4U signed off the staging site from a functionality, theme and dashboard perspective. We were then able to switch this over to the live site, with minimal disruption.

Finally, SkillSet provided support to Trade Skills 4U with a training workshop. This was held over two sessions, in which we worked through queries, customer feedback and general Moodle support.

THE RESULTS

Trade Skills 4U now has a robust, up-to-date Moodle, which allows the company to scale their business, continuing to add new courses and new clients.

The solution can be iteratively developed to support Trade Skills 4U’s requirements.

Since the initial implementation, SkillSet has worked with Trade Skills 4U’s clients and suppliers to create new integrations and new ways of working.

The SkillSet support team are ready to help when required and will continue to host, monitor, and maintain the site.

OUR PARTNER’S FEEDBACK

“Helpful and professional. I find SkillSet to be supportive and quick to respond.”

Adam Ormesher, Trade Skills 4U