Elearnity is doing some background research on the use of Moodle and other open source learning platforms in the corporate arena, in particular as an alternative to a commercial LMS platform.
I know there are a number of separate entries in this forum versus specific LMS products, but I would like to hear from anyone who is:
a) actually using Moodle in a corporate environment
b) has evaluated Moodle for use in a corporate environment and adopted or rejected it
What are the strengths and weaknesses of Moodle for corporate use? What changes are needed to make Moodle better for corporate use? Are good and referenceable examples of large corporates (FTSE100/Fortune1000 equiv) adopting Moodle as their primary LMS?
Either post responses here, or email to me at davidw@elearnity.com.
We will post a summary of the research findings back into this forum.
Thanks in advance. DAVID
Come on guys, someone out there must be be using Moodle in a corporate context. I see great advocacy for schools going on. Is noone interested in learning beyond academia?
DAVID
DAVID
Thanks Tony. I've reposted the message there too.
Hi David,
Even though I frequently peruse the Moodle forums, I just came across your postvia your blog. I work for a medium sized corporation in the US. We have been using Moodle as the basis for our corporate university for the last 2+years. We selected Moodle as opposed to other proprietary options because of the flexibility it allowed. We are able to modify and develop customizations as needed (some of which we hope to share back with the Moodle community soon). I for one am looking forward to hearing about your findings.
Regards,
Skip
Even though I frequently peruse the Moodle forums, I just came across your postvia your blog. I work for a medium sized corporation in the US. We have been using Moodle as the basis for our corporate university for the last 2+years. We selected Moodle as opposed to other proprietary options because of the flexibility it allowed. We are able to modify and develop customizations as needed (some of which we hope to share back with the Moodle community soon). I for one am looking forward to hearing about your findings.
Regards,
Skip
I'd be interested in hearing more about this. What about department-specific courses and permissions? i.e. each department would have it's own administrator and users.
I've seen some posts that seemed to indicate you'd have to install a separate instance of Moodle for each dept. but that sounds like a bit of a kludge to me.
I've seen some posts that seemed to indicate you'd have to install a separate instance of Moodle for each dept. but that sounds like a bit of a kludge to me.
We too are beginning to use Moodle for our corporate training and clinical training.
We are a smaller company that needs to track licenses, certifications, and competencies.
We have successfully installed 1.8 and are trying out different ways in organizing the courses.
Currently we are basing them on department 'buckets'.
As soon as we get the process down (in writing) we will open up course development to a specific department that will have a designated administrator (with restrictive rights.)
My current responsibility is to see what Moodle can do for us on the clinical side. This includes tracking user activity, database of certifications, as well as creating elearning content.
Regards,
Carol
This is my first Moodle forum post. If there is relevant / helpful material elsewhere on this site, please feel free to point me that direction.
I've recently deployed Moodle 1.7.2 as a beta-server in my organization (rural hospital). After "playing" with that version I upgraded to 1.9. I'm interested to learn how other corporate Moodlers deploy it. Perhaps a separate forum just for corporate users of Moodle would be valuable?
We want to track employees attendance/performance on many competencies, as well as tracking attendance at some classroom events. So far we've setup categories loosely based on how various departments can be grouped together. Later I will divide into subcategories and add courses as we create / import them.
Does anyone have tips/pointers/advice to give to listening ears?
Thanks.
P.S. I've posted a little about this on my Learning & Technology blog here (http://techlearnology.blogspot.com/). Please feel free to comment.
I've recently deployed Moodle 1.7.2 as a beta-server in my organization (rural hospital). After "playing" with that version I upgraded to 1.9. I'm interested to learn how other corporate Moodlers deploy it. Perhaps a separate forum just for corporate users of Moodle would be valuable?
We want to track employees attendance/performance on many competencies, as well as tracking attendance at some classroom events. So far we've setup categories loosely based on how various departments can be grouped together. Later I will divide into subcategories and add courses as we create / import them.
Does anyone have tips/pointers/advice to give to listening ears?
Thanks.
P.S. I've posted a little about this on my Learning & Technology blog here (http://techlearnology.blogspot.com/). Please feel free to comment.
Richard & David,
Moodle is widely deployed in the corporate world today, at least in the US. There is little hesitancy on the part of even large corporations to use Moodle for business training. Companies like Bank of America, Subaru, Fox Networks, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, AirTran Airways, Harrah's Casino, BUNN and many more think Moodle is just fine. Often some customization is required for business processes like those Richard mentions, which are not required on the academic side. That's one of the great things about Moodle and open source, you can make it do whatever you require.
At the San Francisco MoodleMoot coming up in June participants will learn first hand how some corporations are using and have modified Moodle to meet their needs. There are sessions just for corporate. There were corporate sessions at a MoodleMoot 2 years ago in Savannah GA that was widely attended. Additionally, the HackFest Developers Conference on the day before the SF Moot (June 9th) will feature Martin and others discussing code and sharing custom developments. Moodle partners will likely showcase hacks done for corporate users.
Richard, Moodle has added outcomes and competencies in the past few releases. However, to get where you want to be say with learning tracks based on such information will require custom development. BTW, you might have missed Tony's post below pointing to the Business Uses course here at Moodle.org. This area allows business trainers to discuss their needs.
Moodle is widely deployed in the corporate world today, at least in the US. There is little hesitancy on the part of even large corporations to use Moodle for business training. Companies like Bank of America, Subaru, Fox Networks, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, AirTran Airways, Harrah's Casino, BUNN and many more think Moodle is just fine. Often some customization is required for business processes like those Richard mentions, which are not required on the academic side. That's one of the great things about Moodle and open source, you can make it do whatever you require.
At the San Francisco MoodleMoot coming up in June participants will learn first hand how some corporations are using and have modified Moodle to meet their needs. There are sessions just for corporate. There were corporate sessions at a MoodleMoot 2 years ago in Savannah GA that was widely attended. Additionally, the HackFest Developers Conference on the day before the SF Moot (June 9th) will feature Martin and others discussing code and sharing custom developments. Moodle partners will likely showcase hacks done for corporate users.
Richard, Moodle has added outcomes and competencies in the past few releases. However, to get where you want to be say with learning tracks based on such information will require custom development. BTW, you might have missed Tony's post below pointing to the Business Uses course here at Moodle.org. This area allows business trainers to discuss their needs.
Thank you for your reply. I think I enrolled in the Business Uses course last night. I look forward to browsing the information there as well as meeting the people who are accomplishing what I'd like to accomplish at my organization. Thank you very much! One thing I love about a good Open Source project is the community support. Moodle is a large enough project that it most likely has a deep and broad support community.
I've blogged about my Moodle journey here. Please feel free to comment there as well as here. Thank you so much!
I've blogged about my Moodle journey here. Please feel free to comment there as well as here. Thank you so much!
In your blog, you mention that you can display either all categories/subcategories or none. There is an optional parameter that you can set in the config.php file which controls the category depth, that is the number of levels of subcategories displayed. Of course, coding your own course navigation gives you even more control.
Wiki in Moodle is in transition with a new core module coming in Moodle 2. However, neither wiki nor blog are likely to ever be at par with TWiki or Wordpress. Your needs for these tools are clearly beyond what Moodle needs to support student activities.
Wiki in Moodle is in transition with a new core module coming in Moodle 2. However, neither wiki nor blog are likely to ever be at par with TWiki or Wordpress. Your needs for these tools are clearly beyond what Moodle needs to support student activities.
Thanks Robert for your helpfulness! I've never coded my own navigation - how would I start; where would I begin to learn about such things? I'm not afraid to roll up my sleeves on this, but I'm not a developer. I can keep my head above water with HTML, and am willing to learn more about CSS - if that's the kind of stuff you refer to. If its coding in new language to me such as Python, then it may go over my head very quickly.
I think I'll stick with using TWiki and Wordpress for now. I'm also investigating Drupal and Joomla for my organization. I've been watching Elgg with much interest but I hesitate to install it until a final stable 1.0 version is released.
Thank you!
I think I'll stick with using TWiki and Wordpress for now. I'm also investigating Drupal and Joomla for my organization. I've been watching Elgg with much interest but I hesitate to install it until a final stable 1.0 version is released.
Thank you!
For some of the category navigation that's been discussed, take a look at http://docs.moodle.org/en/Add/edit_course_categories - most of these concepts, and a few more, are documented here.
Thanks,
Matt
Thanks,
Matt
I think, for many organizations, Moodle presents too steep of a technical/learning hurdle for the Training function. Moodle seems to lack the really powerful or obvious tracking capabilites that an LMS such as Plateau or SumTotal have. Moodle has lots of learning 2.0 features - but Sr. Management is not interested in social learning, etc... They want skills and knowledge training with measurable results delivered and managed as effeciently and effectively as possible.
In addition, 21 CFR Part 11 compliance is critical in many organizations; to get Moodle to the point where it could be a compliant and validated system with audit trails and electronic signature capabilites would probably take quite a bit of time/effort/money. Most organizations are not in the business of developing LMS applications - they want to use them (so unless Moodle has a demonstrated capability; it is hard to justify the risk of trying to develop the capability that you need).
I am just learning about Moodle so I would be very greatful for any feedback or corrections...
Thank you,
Jim
Scorm? If electronic page turning and tracking of the same is required - wouldn't a scorm learning object uploaded into Moodle do the trick?
I have at least one customer using scorm (I believe) in conjunction with a certificate capability to allow users to be tracked thru the materials and to receive an award upon successful completion of the unit test.
Richard
I have at least one customer using scorm (I believe) in conjunction with a certificate capability to allow users to be tracked thru the materials and to receive an award upon successful completion of the unit test.
Richard
Yes, SCORM RLO's are used by corporations with Moodle precisely for that reason.
I was at MoodleMoot UK recently and caught a presentation from Aer Lingus - who are using Moodle to support their pilot training programs. All pilots have to regularly take part in compulsory (re)training programs due to passenger aviation regulations. Failure to do so results in the pilot being grounded. Aer Lingus moved from on-site training (which required all pilots to take 3 days out of flight duties) to online training via Moodle. Moodle provided the level of tracking required for Aer Lingus to be able to ensure that pilots completed their training by the due dates.
If Moodle can provide sufficient levels of tracking for a highly regulated professional training program for Pilots, it should manage for most other corporate environments. Whether it meets the 21 CFR 11 requirements of the US Food and Drugs Agency I could not say...
meanwhile, I recently found this on an Intel blog - in part a piece talking about what Moodle is, and ends with a brief note outlining Intel's adoption of Moodle.
http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2009/04/25/moodle-community-another-example-of-moores-law/
Tao ends with:
"I am a Moodler since 2009 and building a Moodle platform for Intel academic community. Currently, I am actively working on every details of the project. If you have any suggestion or comments that you want to share with the reader of this blog, you can add them here."
I was at MoodleMoot UK recently and caught a presentation from Aer Lingus - who are using Moodle to support their pilot training programs. All pilots have to regularly take part in compulsory (re)training programs due to passenger aviation regulations. Failure to do so results in the pilot being grounded. Aer Lingus moved from on-site training (which required all pilots to take 3 days out of flight duties) to online training via Moodle. Moodle provided the level of tracking required for Aer Lingus to be able to ensure that pilots completed their training by the due dates.
If Moodle can provide sufficient levels of tracking for a highly regulated professional training program for Pilots, it should manage for most other corporate environments. Whether it meets the 21 CFR 11 requirements of the US Food and Drugs Agency I could not say...
meanwhile, I recently found this on an Intel blog - in part a piece talking about what Moodle is, and ends with a brief note outlining Intel's adoption of Moodle.
http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2009/04/25/moodle-community-another-example-of-moores-law/
Tao ends with:
"I am a Moodler since 2009 and building a Moodle platform for Intel academic community. Currently, I am actively working on every details of the project. If you have any suggestion or comments that you want to share with the reader of this blog, you can add them here."
Thank you for sharing this success story Daniel. It is good to hear solid examples of Moodle working today in the corporate world.
to get Moodle to the point where it could be a compliant and validated system with audit trails and electronic signature capabilites would probably take quite a bit of time/effort/money.
It does indeed take time/effort/money to match the feature set of a commercial corporate system, but implementation costs for these is usually in the 100,000s, afaik? Generally, we can save folks lots of money even with customization
.
It does indeed take time/effort/money to match the feature set of a commercial corporate system, but implementation costs for these is usually in the 100,000s, afaik? Generally, we can save folks lots of money even with customization
We are interested in exploring the possibility of implementing Moodle at our institution. We are a large Farm Credit Corporation and would like to know how other cooperation's/businesses use Moodle relating to compliance training and other HR related Training. Additionally what other systems do you have that integrate with Moodle. Ceridian, People Soft, SuccessFactors, HIRS, etc.
Have a number of clients in the corporate world using Moodle to deliver HSE training with no problems....I work with the department ...not the Main Corporate area and the sites are for that dept. only thus avoiding IT/politics and allow the dept. full control without interference.
Have been using Moodle in a corporate environment for several years. Corporate learning needs are different from those of a educational institution.
- The need for training on a recurring basis to fulfill program requirements
- Refresher training needing to re-issue certificate and collect new performance data
- Generation of monthly student performance in online courses.
Writing this from the audience of ILT 2009 today in Wales. Jon Winter from S&B Automotive is currently speaking - his company uses Moodle for a wide range of courses it provides to the automotive industry (and other markets, including 'train the trainer')
More here:
http://moodle.rsc-wales.ac.uk/mod/book/view.php?id=3401&chapterid=279
Hi David:
We are using Moodle in a Corporate environment. Actually, we haven't opened it up completely to our customers, but we are very close. We have a number of beta testers at this time.
We were using a commericial LMS, and we found it to be unsatisfactory. I saw another company using Moodle, so I learned about it, and the decision was to go...
To see what we got go to http://learn.exlibrisgroup.com. Our objective is make it clean and simple. Access is via subscription, and once a person has a user they can access all lessons. We will use it also for blended-learning courses, but for the time being, it's main purpose is as a repository of recorded lessons.
Let me know if you need anything else.
Sam Kamin