Enterprise open source Toolkit

Moodle tackles e-learning muddle

Tags:
E-learning

Cath Everett ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 15 Feb 2007 16:08 GMT

...consider open-source during procurement. One of the deals involves developing Moodle courses for Bro Morgannwg NHS Trust, which is delivering content to the NHS Wales' Moodle site. The other is to provide courses for a not-for-profit organisation, the Waste and Resources Action Programme, which was set up to help deliver on the government's nationwide waste strategies.

The area in which Moodle is struggling most appears to be the corporate arena. The problem here is that, in general terms, the requirements of the academic market and its approach to learning are very different from those of the business world. The terminology varies too — while in education, such offerings tend to be called virtual learning environments, in the corporate space, they are referred to as learning management systems.

Chris Howard, director of research at analysts Bersin & Associates, explains the difference between the two worlds. "Education is very structured and collaborative. A subject-matter expert such as a professor takes you through the entire learning process and, in many instances, it's the focus of students' attention over long periods of time," he says.

In the corporate world, however, the emphasis is different. Although the collaborative, in-depth approach is appropriate in certain areas, such as management training or specialised technical education, in most cases it is more about obtaining information quickly before being tested to see if it has sunk in.

"Companies don't want people to sit there for hours when they could be working, so it's about going in, taking the test, and getting out. It's not about collaboration. It's very much about transaction capture and management and is much more about the data behind it than delivering and managing the instruction itself," Howard says.

Despite the hype, Moodle is unlikely to replace existing commercial systems on a wholesale basis or be adopted on an enterprise-wide level, although it may appear in certain departments and in certain contexts to augment and complement incumbent environments, adds Howard.

Another inhibitor to uptake is the fact that Moodle is an open-source environment. Although the number of Moodle service providers in the UK and elsewhere is rising steadily, there is still some reticence around open-source adoption in the corporate space. In Moodle's case, this is not only due to the system's look and feel, which is not the slick, branded interface that commercial organisations are used to, but also because of generalised perceptions around lack of available support.

Keith O'Loughlin, head of technology services at e-learning services company Intuition, elaborates: "The cost of the software may be minimal, but implementing and maintaining something like Moodle takes time and resources and while academics may have that, most corporates don't."

This is of particular relevance in a business area that is typically given low priority, is under-resourced and has very little ready access to IT expertise. To make matters worse, however, it is also currently difficult to integrate Moodle with existing HR suites, although Dougiamas says that the community is currently working on integration with best-of-breed repositories, portfolio systems, administrative systems and the like.

Dougiamas also points out that it was never his desire to take over the world anyway, and that he is happy to have made a positive impact on the education market: "Becoming a market leader has never been my ambition and still is not," he says. "My ambition is to help improve education in general by making the best free software that I possibly can. I'm fascinated with that idea and work daily with hundreds of developers and thousands of teachers who share and drive that vision."

Nonetheless, Aberdour does expect to see some take-up in the small to medium enterprise space over the year ahead. Few organisations have invested in learning management systems in this segment to date because of the high cost of leading commercial offerings, such as those provided by Saba and SumTotal, Aberdour says.

Because Moodle is modular, it is possible to switch functionality off and on and, as a result, one of Epic's clients is using it as a low-cost and simple course delivery system without exploiting any of the more complex collaboration features.

Kineo has likewise installed the software at about 18 commercial sites over the last year, predominantly in specific contexts such as to support sales academy training.

Howard concludes: "In education, it's clear that Moodle will remain popular, which could have a significant impact on companies that service that market in a commercial way. In the corporate market and that includes the public sector, which has similar dynamics, I see some reason for adoption in certain circumstances, but I don't see it dominating. Instead it will augment what is already there."