Which VLE?

[skunk]

We have been using Moodle for years, hosted by our RBC. The school has decided to go for something different, for a variety of reasons.

 

What do you use, and what is great or terrible about it?

[Butters]

You'd be one of the few ever to have moved away from Moodle.

 

Which sector are you in and what's the reasons for moving away from Moodle?

[dhicks]

We have been using Moodle for years, hosted by our RBC.

 

My guess is that you'd be best off with a fresh install of Moodle, hosted by yourself.

[bossman]

+1 with what @dhicks recommends it works well and version 2 is so much better

[bart21]

Moodle is an exceptional VLE and you can do so much with it as it is open source.

 

If you host it yourself you will probarbly have a better experience with it

 

nick

[skunk]

My VLE Manifesto:

 

The VLE needs to cease to exist as a standalone system, teachers and students do not need to be aware of its existence. All they need to know is that there is an online system where communication and learning happens. This should be integrated with their emails, home directories, learning strands, notices, intranet, chat rooms and anything else the school uses. When they open Internet Explorer they should have everything they need for learning available at the first screen. It needs to be easy to use for teachers creating resources and managing their student's experiences. It needs to be accessible for staff as a file store, homework submission tool and come with a very shallow learning curve.

 

Why Moodle is not the above, for us:

 

The learning curve for Moodle is steep, especially for staff with no interest in IT. It is like Everest, unless you really know what you are doing you are not going to climb it. Resources are are hard to make and when they are made, difficult to get in the right places. Resources take a long time to write; teachers are stretched and will not use something new unless it actually saves them time. In my six or so years of using Moodle (hosted internally or externally) I have never saved time using it. And I know what I am doing. We do not have the internal resource to customise Moodle to the degree that would be needed to even make it useable within our environment. Integration with all our other communication systems is near impossible to achieve within the timeframe and at the level of integration we require.

 

Why something else:

 

We need something which is easy to use, saves staff time, benefits the student's learning and integrates with everything we run. Oh and cheap, cheap would be good too, but not likely.

[irsprint84]

Prob FROG but it costs a bomb

[hhaywood000]

I would go for SharePoint simply because of the integration you require. You could probably get away with SharePoint foundation so cost would be minimal.

[User3204]

Talk to someone at Core ECS CORE Education and Consulting Solutions (UK) Ltd - CORE ECS they do a whole sharepoint integration system, with plugins for email, moodle if you want it, SIMS LG, and their own Sharepointy VLE, which seems quite good.

 

We're looking at this at the moment, I think it may come down to the budget we get this year.

It's not cheap...

 

They offer ongoing support.

[pritchardavid]

I really like the look for Frog VLE, very expensive through, our school wouldnt pay it, big shame!

 

So it seems they want an eportflio system, and gusse what! Frog has that feature!

[bossman]

My daughters school bought Frog and she is quite IT literate yet hated the very essence of it.

 

No VLE is going to be teacher friendly as most teachers want the content to be already in place as they don't want to have to learn anything and so any VLE you put in place will be money wasted.

 

Your teachers need to be taught and guided by another teacher who is willing to push all the departments with the backing of the SLT and HT. Only teachers can produce the materials they need to use for lessons and so it should only be them that produce the content as trying to produce content by other means is bound to fail as it will not suit their individual needs.

 

Most people in a job have to constantly upgrade their skills except for teachers who seem to think it is their right to demand something that costs a fortune and then decide not to use it because they cannot be a***d to learn new skills.

 

Teachers are like every other person and must learn and adapt new skills or else they are not teaching to their full potential as the government has anounced today on the BBC, schools will be able to get rid of under performing teachers a lot easier than they used to.

[bossman]

So it seems they want an eportflio system, and gusse what! Frog has that feature!

 

So does Moodle if you integrate Open source e-portfolio and social networking software - Mahara ePortfolio System

 

works very well with moodle

[john]

We were shoved down from Moodle to Fronter by the LA and were now moving back to Moodle again, but going for a clean start and ditching the old one at the same time which was externally hosted to a nice new internally hosted Moodle.

 

I have used SharePoint before and thats a great tool so I would consider looking at that if you don't feel that you could move to Moodle 2.0 and use its integration features as it can do home folders, Email, Sims etc as others have shown on here so you could probably bring in some external support from say The Cutter Project who maybe able to help you make more of an in-house Moodle perhaps than you can of the CLEO Moodle you are using at present.

 

You can get some MS Office 2010 (and maybe 2007) add-ins to allow saving and working with Moodle as part of MS Office (they were posted on here a while ago) so they may also help improve the use of Moodle and simplify it?

 

After doing a bit of quick research though I don't think you will find anything other than Moodle that fits the cheap / low cost requirement, most commercial VLEs are very expensive

[skunk]

No VLE is going to be teacher friendly as most teachers want the content to be already in place as they don't want to have to learn anything and so any VLE you put in place will be money wasted.

 

This is true, but the content has to go somewhere and Moodle isn't working as a repository for us.

 

Most people in a job have to constantly upgrade their skills except for teachers who seem to think it is their right to demand something that costs a fortune and then decide not to use it because they cannot be a***d to learn new skills.

 

Unfortunately this is the reality we live with and there is little will to implement change. Even in schools which are highly motivated to use technology there is a heck of a lot of pushing, cajoling and pressure to even use the VLE in the first place.

 

Teachers are like every other person and must learn and adapt new skills or else they are not teaching to their full potential as the government has anounced today on the BBC, schools will be able to get rid of under performing teachers a lot easier than they used to.

 

There is no will within the teaching profession to punish poor teaching. Doesn't matter what the government say.

 

Thanks for the suggestions so far.

[ictstbenedicts]

Like you we are looking at changing our Moodle system, for similar reasons.

 

Had Frog in yesterday to show us their system and everyone were very impressed. We have looked at a different Moodle solution alongside Frog, but in terms of usability and functionality there is no competition.

 

As a non-teacher, I appreciate the problems teachers have getting to grips with Moodle. The interface is so unintuitive. It's a shame resource is not thrown at developing a decent graphical user interface for Moodle. It is so 1980's.

 

People love drag and drop and a visual interface, they are not going to go backwards to learn how to use an interface which hinders their creativity. The VLE must work for them, otherwise they will not use it. Whilst it is okay for us who are technically skilled and flexible because we have to use different interfaces to manage our IT systems, we have to accept that teachers skills are generally elsewhere and therefore the tools we supply should accommodate their skill-set.

 

The way I see it, Moodle only works where you have an organisational structured to permanently hand-hold staff in getting the most out of the VLE. To do this costs a lot of money, as at least one person has to be paid to do the job. Going out and getting an VLE which is user friendly as well as delivering what the teachers need be it at a cost is overall cheaper and more effective than the DIY approach. Basically, yo need to see and understand the bigger picture when choosing any IT system and a VLE is no different.

 

I await "incoming fire" for daring to knock Moodle and for supporting teachers ICT needs!

[skunk]

We had a demonstration of sharepointLMS earlier this week which looked good, would need to see it in action in a school to see usage uptake. I agree with you ictstbenedicts, the non IT literate teachers have to the target, if they can use it, then the interface has been cracked as far as useability is concerned.

 

Frog is prohibitavely expensive for us, which is a shame as it looks nice. For the price, the school would expect it to take the exams for the kids as well as teach them.

[edutech4schools]

I seem to always say this on these forums but have you looked at Google Apps for ED. The website part is sooo simple to use but very powerful. A teacher can create a word doc, upload it and then share it between the class without any knowledge of what's going on under the bonnet. Google are very good at making things simple to use. You can create a question-air in 2 mins and as people fill in the info you get a nice speadsheet with charts automatically created without ever needing to how it happens. And its FREE

[TechMonkey]

I await "incoming fire" for daring to knock Moodle and for supporting teachers ICT needs!

 

Seems an odd statement, as if only you are doing this. Damn me for spending about 10 hours this week Moodling for my own selfish ends. Ohh wait, no that was to support teachers ICT needs.

 

Staff here don't have an issue with the Moodle interface once we've gone through it. There are some eccentricities, as with any software, but once explained they get them, to varying degrees depending on IT literacy, will and stubbornness. The biggest issue is for them to evaluate how they will use Moodle & how they work now. The departments we have the most problems with are those that do their own thing, not only from other departments but from each other in that one department. They now understand that although there is a whole heap of work at the moment it will be easier in the months and years to come. Any VLE will force departments to do this unless they are allowed to just do their own thing and then you end up with a mess that students, parents and staff alike will avoid.

 

As for drag and drop, it may be easier and more visually pleasing but it causes it's own issues and isn't conducive to a web interface. We had a drag and drop set-up previously and it ended up being a drag and forget system. Departments accumulated tons of resources and work sheets that they no longer knew they had, would redesign a course and duplicate these resources and then have another re-jig and forget where things where. There would be folders from teachers that no longer taught but had to be kept as they had some good resources. The folder will have a last accessed date of when that teacher left.

 

If by "an organisational structured to permanently hand-hold staff" you mean have some technical support then I agree. I wouldn't recommend Moodle to a Primary unless they had someone that was in charge or came in to help. If you mean SMT that push projects forward then I agree otherwise it would be left to rot except fro one or 2 staff. If you mean have support staff that do everything then I'd agree but say you are doing it wrong, need to take a stronger stand and get some training done, painful at first but gets easier.

 

Unless you buy in something like Frog that is managed externally & has a huge team supporting it behind the scenes, which you pay for, then any VLE will need support and staff will need help.

 

As for the OP question, we have seen Kaleidos, had Uniservity and now have Moodle. Kaleidos is pretty but I would say expensive & I have issues with how easy it is to adjust for staff. Uniservity has an odd look and can get confusing very quickly. Moodle needs some one to care for it, can look pretty with work and has so many ways to configure it that staff et bewildered so have a school plan that they can default to. All of them will need SMT to push it through.

[zag]

Sharepoint will do what you want in a simple way. Most of our staff don't even know they are using it as its our internet start page.

 

There is virtually no learning curve either as its just like using Microsoft office.

 

Sure it doesn't have all the extra "e-learning" stuff that you get with moodle but you really need to ask yourself if a VLE actually needs that type of thing. Personally I've seen entire courses run from sharepoint with no problem at all.

Edited May 27, 2011 by zag

[ictstbenedicts]

A VLE lives or dies through it's content, if it is difficult to create inspirational content, then you end up either with VLE which is essentially a filing system, with a sprinkling of excellent content created by the ICT teacher who loves dabbling with the system.

 

I agree that for a VLE to work it needs SMT support, and needs a team of teachers to plan and develop how it is going to be used by the school. The implementation of a VLE should not be work of an individual. This makes no difference whether it's Moodle or Frog or any other system for that matter.

 

Frog is at a system level managed externally, so is our current Moodle system. This does not make Moodle easy to use, just gives my department one less service to support at a technical level. One of our options was to change vendors and get Moodle hosted on site, this would then give us MIS integration and AD integration. Frog is hosted on site.

 

The issue for the teacher is not about system management, it is about how easy it is for them to create content in that system, without having to understand HTML or appreciating how the system works. One of our teaches compared Moodle to a PC and Frog to an Apple computer (personally I do not agree, but I understand their point).

 

At then end of the day, IT don't have to use the system (just support it) therefore any VLE system has to be attractive enough to the end user to get the majority to want to use it with a gentle nudge. If not, enthusiasm drops and the VLE essentially dies in the school.

[Butters]

^^Externally hosted Moodles can have MIS/AD integration if your provider has the knowledge.

[TheCrust]

My daughters school bought Frog and she is quite IT literate yet hated the very essence of it.

 

She's not the only one. I'm about at that point at the moment myself.

 

If you look to be going down the Frog route, my advice to you after the week I have had is to ensure your SLT know what they are signing themselves up for, what they can expect to get and what they have to give in return - and that they look far beyond the "oooooooh. Pretty. It does eportfolios too!" interface.

Edited May 27, 2011 by TheCrust
Typo - D'oh!

[skunk]

We are looking at content provided by external providers. Staff are not expected to write text books so we are working on the thinking that they should not have to write the majority of the resources for the VLE. Of course, they have to see the VLE as an alternative to the text books as we are not a rich school.

[frogdude]

The VLE needs to cease to exist as a standalone system, teachers and students do not need to be aware of its existence. All they need to know is that there is an online system where communication and learning happens. This should be integrated with their emails, home directories, learning strands, notices, intranet, chat rooms and anything else the school uses. When they open Internet Explorer they should have everything they need for learning available at the first screen. It needs to be easy to use for teachers creating resources and managing their student's experiences. It needs to be accessible for staff as a file store, homework submission tool and come with a very shallow learning curve.

 

All that and more in Frog, and yes it costs more than some VLE's but you get a team of people constantly building new features, widgets and content for you to include on your pages. Besides, when you look at the TCO over 5 years Frog actually works out cheaper than running something like Moodle, where you have to employ someone to look after it, update it etc.

 

Give them a call and get a demo sorted out, afterall you can always say no if you don't want it after the demo. Plus they will be able to show you the features you enquired about in a live environment

[A_Teacher_Of_Computing]

We have FROG and I cannot recommend it, the system is very very poorly designed and an absolute pain to maintain. Send a PM if you want further details.

 

Sharepoint would be a far better option.