Why Moodle?

Our department came to Moodle almost indirectly. Initially we were not actually looking for a VLE. We have a new requirement to provide electronic copies of all our printed course materials and considering our options of how to deliver this. We were also interested in giving students the ability to create blogs, as an alternative to written journals, and creating web forum for students to discuss the course and their work.

Unaware of VLEs, I started looking around for an intranet type system that would let us provide these facilities to students. I found a piece of software called Course Foum, a web based e-learning system discussed in this post. This was our first exposure to a VLE and we experimented with a demo of this software for a while, and started looking further into VLEs.

Around this time we spoke to our Information Services department about our ideas, since it was becoming apparent that a VLE would suit our needs and we were keen to implement one. It transpired that the IS department had independently been interested in VLEs for the Academy. They gave us a link to a Moodle test site that their counterparts at Glasgow University were experimenting with, and we started looking into the Moodle software.

The software is very robust and flexible, and free. The appearance of a Moodle system is very easy to customize to match your institution's website or whatever, course areas are easy to create and are very customizable. It is simple to add multimedia content, files and images and discussions, forums, quizzes and content created externally (java, flash, etc). There is also a great support community to be found on the Moodle.org site.

Based on this we decided to try the Moodle software and created demo system on an old PC in my office. This demo has proven Moodle's ability to fulfill our needs and more, and subsequently we have decided to adopt it for our VLE pilot system.