Netskills helps Met to go open source

Published Thursday 26 August 2010

According to Simon, the informal, hands-on consultation workshop marks the start of a bigger project, as interest towards open source options is growing in higher and further education.

"It's great to see a big university leading the way with open source", Simon said. "There is a clear growing interest towards community-based VLE's, such as Moodle, especially given the current economic climate."

Manchester Metropolitan University is planning to migrate from their existing learning platform WebCT to Moodle over the next couple of months.

Simon said the consultation day was a success, giving those who had never used Moodle a chance to catch up with the main features and processes of the new system with a help of a 'friendly face'.

We went through a number of hands-on demos, looked at the admin tools behind Moodle and talked about several issues and differences between the two systems. Judging by the amount of questions, as well as the initial feedback, everyone seemed to find the day very useful.

Rod Cullen, Senior Lecturer in Learning and Teaching Technology at Manchester Metropolitan University, said the workshop was perfect for their purposes.

We were looking for a really flexible, informal workshop that allowed us to have a first look at the basic functionality and pedagogic opportunities offered by Moodle. We got exactly what we asked for, he said.

Simon adapted the afternoon session, as requested, to concentrate on specific areas of interest identified in the morning. It was incredibly useful to be able to pick the brains of a very experienced Moodle user in this way.

Netskills is planning a full workshop on Moodle in the near future. Contact enquiries@netskills.ac.uk for any enquiries.

Find out more: http://www.netskills.ac.uk/content/products/workshops/theme/elearning.html