Joomla

From the website (www.joomla.org) "Joomla is one of the world’s most popular open source CMS (content management systems). With millions of websites running on Joomla, the software is used by individuals, small & medium-sized businesses, and large organizations worldwide to easily create & build a variety of websites & web-enabled applications."

Why Content Management?

Because it makes life easy.

You get a whole bunch of stuff for 'free' (meaning no extra effort), such as automatically generated menus and  integrated content searching.

Why Joomla?

Open source, supported by my web hosting company, lots of add-on modules both free and commercial, lots of existing design templates for ideas and/or purchase.

There's more information about Joomla in the post Making the move to Joomla.

Moodle

From the website (moodle.org) "Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities. You can download and use it on any computer you have handy (including webhosts), yet it can scale from a single-teacher site to a 40,000-student University."

Why On-line learning?

On-line learning systems are an excellent solution for many training deliver requirements, but they are not the best choice in all cases.

On-line learning is good for:

  • Technical training which conveys detailed information and factual content.
  • Distance education where the students may be remote or otherwise unable to attend a normal classroom.
  • Ad-hoc delivery where the training materials need to be available at short notice to individual users.

On-line learning is less good for:

  • Teaching soft skills where direct teacher-student interaction is required.
  • Practical training where physical presence is required.

Why Moodle?

The best choice for an on-line learning environment will depend on the particular requirements of the organisation involved. I like Moodle for a number of technical and ideological reasons.

Open source So not only is there zero cost of acquisition, there are many developers and supporters who can fix bugs and develop enhancements.
Fits with standard web infrastructure Moodle uses the PHP scripting language and, by default, MySQL database engine. These are easily supported on the most popular web servers and can generally be supported on other web servers with appropriate configurations.
Flexible There are many built-in content modules and delivery modes which can be combined to provide a rich learning experience for the end-user. Because Moodle is open source, there are many developers around the world who create and share custom content types if the standard elements are not enough.
Fits with corporate infrastructure Moodle supports many authentication methods which, in many cases, will allow potential students to use the same usernames and passwords as they use for other systems.

Planning for Success

Before implementing Moodle (or any other on-line learning environment), you should carefully consider how different types of users will need to interact with the system and how the proposed system will support these requirements.

These questions are far from exhaustive, but give some idea of the planning requirements involved.

Students

  • How do I log in?  Can I use the same username and password as I do for my other systems?
  • How do I find out about the courses available?
  • How can I see who else is online?  If I can see them, can they see me?  Which of my details are visible to other users?

Teachers

  • How do I see what students are enrolled in my courses?  Can I remove people who shouldn't be enrolled?
  • How can I give students a mark for the course?  What sort of things can I give marks on?
  • How can I interact with the students doing the course?

Content Creators

  • What sort of content can I use in a course?
  • Can I reuse courses or content from other places?
  • Can I show different content depending on how a student answers a question?

The importance and complexity of good content creation is often overlooked in planning for on-line learning. It's hard and it takes time, to pretend otherwise will lead to disappointment.

Administrators

  • What do I need to run Moodle?  What web server?  What other software?
  • Can I run Moodle on the same server as my other web site?
  • How do I manage who can do what with Moodle?
  • How do I backup the on-line learning data?  What's included in the backup?
  • Where can I go for support?

Interested?

Dropbear Consulting has experience in planning, installing, configuring and supporting Moodle course management systems.

You might want to read this article too.

 

 

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Features Articles

Beyond the Blackboard

Considerations when designing or specifying an on‑line learning environment.

For many organisations, the provision of training to staff and customer represents a significant cost. As the processing power and network bandwidth available to desktop PCs increases, the performance and features of on‑line learning systems have improved to the point where the delivery of training via a computer has become a viable option.

While on‑line learning is not an appropriate solution for all training needs, it does provide an effective training delivery mechanism in the right circumstances.

This article discusses some of the issues involved in creating an on‑line learning environment, viewed from the perspective of the different interest groups involved. The information and concepts shown here are not definitive; you should carefully consider your own specific requirements before implementing any computer system.

Documentation

It might be the last thing you want to read, but not having a well documented IT infrastructure (servers and networks) can lead to surprising events like critical systems running on unsupported servers.

Documentation must not only be accurate at the time it was created it should also meet these additional criteria:

  • Available The people who need the information must be able to get at it.
  • Editable Any documentation in the IT industry is quickly out of date, so it is essential that information is able to be correctly updated as soon as a change is required. Ideally the client or end-user should be able to do this, rather than waiting on the 'approved editor'.
  • Current 'Out of date' is just a nice way of saying 'wrong'. The date on which the underlying information was updated should be shown on any reports either printed or viewed online.

A Taxonomy of Loss

The widespread commercial use of the internet has led to an increasing focus on systems security. Media driven hype and a lack of independent information can make the true level of threat to an organization difficult to determine. Adopting a structured approach to the analysis of computer system security risks and allows an organization to more effectively balance their operational requirements against the potential for loss, whether that loss involves physical equipment, information or reputation.

This article discusses the components of a computer system, the types of attack to which they are exposed, some typical defence mechanisms and some weaknesses in the standard defences. The information and concepts shown can form a starting point for the development of suitable security and operational strategies to assist organizations to obtain the maximum value from their investments in computer systems.

Network Security

External Network Scanning

One of the core mechanisms for protecting networks is to install a firewall to mediate traffic between systems on the internal network, publicly accessible systems is a DMZ (from the military term demilitarised zone) and the internet.

Open Source

You shouldn't be using open source software because it's cheaper (although it is), you should be using it because of its features and flexibility and the fact that it doesn't lock you in to restrictive license agreements.

Online surveys

How do you know what your customers want? Perhaps you should ask them.

Surveying your internal or external customers gives you hard information on which to base decisions about product development, marketing campaigns, resourcing or any other area where you organisation or department interacts with another group (which means in nearly everything you do).

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"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened."
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