Taking a page from the demo courses, what I did was create my own demo page for the faculty I was introducing Moodle to. It was similar to the Moodle demo pages insofar as I tried to give examples of most of the features/options. But I think making the pages a bit like mock ups of actual courses offered in the department helped.
The university I teach at (adjunct) uses WebCT and the IT department has a regular series of workshops on it for faculty. But despite that, I've gotten a slew of folks to switch over to Moodle. It's probably because of what the unviersity does wrong in their training program:
- it's passive, requiring faculty to come to the IT department ot learning about it or how to use it ... getting faculty to use a new online resource involves a bit of evangelical nudging
- it's rigid -- faculty who want to take workshops all must start out in the most basic workshop and work there way up. This quickly alienated folks who were bored stiff by and abandoned the webct 101 stuff--the very early adopters they needed.
- it's curriculum centered instead of learner centered. I got the distinct impression that they could have a class of two people, with very specific learning interests, and they'd still plow through the same material.
There's also the big one... Moodle is just friendlier. The first time I ran Moodle I switched from WebCT mid semester, which you'd think would irk students to no end. Nope. They found it easier to use, despite the fact that many of them had prior experience using webct in other courses. The same is true of faculty who have used Moodle. The good word of mouth has led other faculty to try Moodle because students have asked for it and they hear other profs complimenting it.
And so I've been running a kind of wayward home for faculty who don't want to use WebCT. This semester it's also expanding to faculty at a nearby university who are escaping their campus use of Blackboard.
John