Tag: Moodle

Case Study

South Lakeland District Council Case Study

Post author By user
Post date November 1, 2021

Development of a Moodle learning management system and GDPR eLearning course

Delivered for SOUTH LAKELAND DISTRICT COUNCIL

AT A GLANCE

Moodle learning management system including single sign-on and iTrent integration
Tailored GDPR eLearning course

THE CLIENT

South Lakeland District Council (SLDC) is the local authority for the District of South Lakeland, which is one of England’s largest shire districts, covering an area of 155,000 hectares with a resident population of over 103,000.

The council has over 400 members of staff, providing services used by all residents in the district.

This project resulted from SkillSet winning a tender published by SLDC for a cloud-based learning management system (LMS). The primary use for the LMS was to provide a blended learning and development platform for the council.

THE CHALLENGE

The council required a solution that was SCORM compliant and would work with the Articulate authoring tool that the council uses for in-house eLearning development. SkillSet also use Articulate for most of our eLearning development, so we were well placed to advise the council in this area.

SLDC also wanted the ability to track and report on the learner journey and on test results.

The council also needed the solution to integrate with their internally hosted HR system – iTrent.

OUR APPROACH

SkillSet proposed a Moodle-based solution for the council’s LMS. Moodle has a clear and easy-to-follow structure, with a course catalogue shown on the user’s dashboard as well as a powerful search function to provide easy access to the courses.

Another of the council’s requirements was a single sign-on ability. Moodle can support a range of authentication types and SkillSet has implemented single sign-on for many customers. In this case, we used the SAML2 (Security Assertion Markup Language) plugin, which allows integration with Active Directory. Using Active Directory in this way, the learner provides the same logon and password as they do to log into their PCs, minimising authentication issues.

Moodle also provides progress tracking, so the last page that the learner visited is recorded for all SCORM- based activities. The next time that the learner opens that activity, they will be asked if they want to continue from the last page. This tracking also allows learners to check their personal progress of completed courses and chapters within courses.

We also provided a one-day, comprehensive training course for the system administrators, as well as an introductory eLearning course and downloadable documentation for end users.

When the learning management system had been implemented, the council asked SkillSet to develop an eLearning module covering the fundamentals of GDPR.

SkillSet tailored its existing eLearning material, including branding with the SLDC logo and colour scheme, and two customer-specific scenarios illustrating key points of GDPR. This meant that learners would better relate to the content. We also included a short knowledge check at the end of the course.

This GDPR eLearning course was published as a SCORM pack and then made available on the Moodle LMS. SLDC were assigned a perpetual license to use and amend the module as they see fit.

THE RESULTS

SkillSet continues to host, maintain and support the SLDC Moodle system. We have recently upgraded the system to the latest version and provided further administrator training to ensure SLDC are getting the most out of the platform.

The council have been very happy with the service provided by SkillSet, extending the contract beyond the initial tender agreement. They have provided us with the following feedback:

OUR PARTNER’S FEEDBACK

“Jemma Greener has been brilliant. Incredibly helpful, knowledgeable and supportive. Many thanks! I was also kept well informed when the LMS was upgraded, even when there was a problem, which was greatly appreciated. Customer support is excellent.”

DAWN BRADLEY, South Lakeland District Council

Tags Learning Management System, Moodle, Public Sector

Case Study

Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service Case Study

Post author By user
Post date October 26, 2020

Provision of a key training platform

Delivered for ROYAL BERKSHIRE FIRE SERVICE

AT A GLANCE

Delivery of a Moodle learning management system
Training on eLearning content creation
Custom plug-in development

THE CLIENT

Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service (RBFRS) provides prevention, protection, and response services across the County of Berkshire. Twelve whole time and four on-call fire stations cover 486 square miles, from Langley in the East, to Lambourn in the West. It serves a diverse cultural population of 863,000, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The authority offers a wide range of services to help keep communities safe, including safety and protection advice to residents and businesses. They also enforce fire safety legislation and help to reduce fire risk in buildings.

THE CHALLENGE

On behalf of RBFRS, Royal Berkshire Fire Authority issued an invitation to tender for a platform to build and host eLearning courses, as well as provide reporting on these courses.

Staff members at all levels of the Service need to complete various courses to undertake their roles. The system also needed to track user progress in order to complete personal development plans, ensuring that staff meet fire service standards.

The system needed to understand complex organisational structures and provide reports on user progress.

OUR APPROACH

SkillSet won the tender with a solution based on the Moodle open-source learning management system (LMS). Moodle supports numerous ways of creating engaging course content within the system itself, using activities. These include (but are not limited to):

Lessons.
Assignments.
File attachments.
Video.
Quizzes.

Moodle also supports eLearning content compliant with SCORM, AICC, and Tin Can. It also integrates with RBFB’s active directory for authentication purposes.

SkillSet used role-based groupings to map qualifications, training and the learning standards of the fire and rescue service. This allowed us to create learning plans and assign competencies to them, allowing reporting and tracking of users’ progress.

SkillSet also partnered with RBFRS to advise them on eLearning content creation. The tool we jointly selected for this task was Articulate 360. This is a license-based eLearning tool, which can be used to create engaging and interactive content. We created a course template and provided training for the relevant staff so that they could design and build content themselves.

SkillSet used our experience in content creation to work with the authority to ensure their content is displayed to learners in the most effective way. We also helped to ensure that the content supports a variety of learning styles and engages the learner.

THE RESULTS

SkillSet continues to maintain and support the Moodle learning management system for the fire service. Most recently we built a custom plug-in to integrate the LMS with the RBFRS’s HR System, allowing them to map their organisational structure to the Moodle LMS.

Tags Learning Management System, Moodle, Public Sector

Case Study

Welsh Government Case Study

Post author By user
Post date October 26, 2020

LMS migration from Totara to Moodle

Delivered for the WELSH GOVERNMENT

AT A GLANCE

Migration from Totara 2.9 to Moodle 3.5
Customised approach with bespoke plugins and APIs

THE CLIENT

Business Wales, part of the Welsh Government, provides business skills training to those in Wales who either have or, are thinking of starting, their own business. They provide this service through their site – BOSS (Business Online Support Service) – https://boss.businesswales.gov.wales.

THE CHALLENGE

SkillSet originally provided both the eLearning content and the learning management system for the BOSS site. For a few years, SkillSet supported the Totara site and developed several additional plugins and enhancements.

Those enhancements included:

Funding assistance requests
Simple administration user search tool with easy access to key admin functions
Integration with Sign-on Cymru, an Azure AD B2C solution with a common core data store intended to be used by many Business Wales services

The number and complexity of the integrations increased over time as they might over any significant project lifecycle. The rate of development of interesting new features in Moodle was increasing, while Totara didn’t seem to be offering as many new developments appropriate for the Welsh Government. Therefore, the Totara site was beginning to look outdated compared to what a Moodle platform could offer.

Another issue for the Welsh Government was the cost of the system: the cost for a Totara site with over 20,000 user accounts and growing is significant when it is just one of many platforms that organisations like Business Wales and Farming Connect provide. Whereas, Moodle, being open source carries no license costs.

It was at this time that the decision was made to migrate to Moodle 3.5. There was no standard upgrade path from Totara 2.9 to Moodle 3.5, which meant we had to come up with a custom plan to perform this migration.

OUR APPROACH

SkillSet analysed what was currently being used in the Totara feature set, and then divided this functionality into three categories:

What stays the same and therefore can be copied across
What needs some small modifications or adjustments
What needs to be created from scratch

We then went through the development process, building each of these categories into repeatable tasks that could be run against a known-state backup, so that we gradually created an automatic build script that took a current backup of Totara BOSS and turned it into a Moodle BOSS with as little human interaction as possible.

Once we had completed this phase, we were then able to run the scripted process, which took around 30-40 minutes to build a new Moodle version of the BOSS site in Azure, from the current Totara site.

The third category (what needs to be created from scratch) there was a clear need to focus on the end user experience. This is what initially lead to the development of the funding request system, which drastically simplified the process for users to request support for face-to-face training. This led us to decide that the out-of-the-box Moodle learning plan and competency-based functionality would be too complicated and that we needed to create a bespoke layout to present the development plans and records in a much more straightforward manner.

THE RESULTS

SkillSet were able to migrate the BOSS site from Totara to Moodle and hand over the site for UAT testing within a matter of a couple of hours.

The Welsh Government was very pleased with the result, and we have been awarded the follow-on contract extension to continue to provide support and development for BOSS. As part of this ongoing support, we are currently looking at developing several new functionalities, including new API changes, and a combination of face-to-face and third-party webinar services.

Tags ELearning, Learning Management System, Moodle, Public Sector