A growing number of schools, universities and companies are using eLearning and course delivery through Moodle. This is enhancing learning experiences, providing a range of other benefits for organizations, teachers and students.
But what happens when the technology changes? Isn’t migrating from one e-Learning platform to another, like from Blackboard WebCT to Moodle, a big headache? Actually, it can be relatively painless, both for the IT specialists carrying it out and for the teachers or trainers who are going to have to use the systems.
One case study from the University of Alberta carrying out a migration from Blackboard Vista to Moodle, shows how it can work.
The campus had to make a move, since the Blackboard corporation announced it would stop supporting Blackboard Vista by 2013. They already had about 5,000 courses in the eClass and had about 2.5 years to make the switch.
Why did they decide to move to Moodle? Mainly, cost and convenience. According to the school:
Once the migration is complete, Moodle should be less expensive than Blackboard Learn, operationally.
Students at U of A were already used to using Moodle in a number of faculties:
Moodle is currently in use in Arts, Augustana, Campus Saint-Jean, Engineering, and Science.
Actually, U of A was following a trend common across the rest of the province (not to mention the rest of the country):
In Alberta, Athabasca University has been running Moodle for a number of years. The University of Lethbridge has selected Moodle. The University of Calgary is running Blackboard Learn 8, which will lose support in October 2012, and may upgrade to Learn 9. Several of the smaller institutions are selecting Moodle (for example, Grande Prairie Regional, Concordia, Kings, Keyano and NAIT). Mount Royal runs Blackboard Learn. MacEwan has formed a committee to review their situation. SAIT is adopting Desire2Learn.
Migration from Blackboard WebCT to Moodle can be implemented with a standard process to get the IT administrators on board and help teachers and learners hit the ground running with the system.
- Analysis of course materials, project facilitation, prioritization and course attribute mapping
- Installation and hosting of Migration Tools, documentation of detailed process
- Migration Training for administrators and staff including process walkthrough and testing
- Migration and rebuilding of courses in Moodle
- Quality Assurance
Lambda Solutions regularly helps schools, post-secondary institutions and private companies with Moodle integrations and migrations. Contact us and learn more about migrating your e-Learning system to Moodle
