your e-learning partner

A Modern University The University of the West of Scotland (UWS) is Scotland’s largest modern university with around 18,000 full and part-time students and over 800 academic staff. With campuses in Ayr, Dumfries, Hamilton and Paisley, the university is unique in its geographical coverage across the West of Scotland. UWS had used Blackboard Academic Suite - consisting of the learning system, content system, and community system – as its VLE and ePortfolio since 2000. In 2011 UWS undertook a strategic review of their VLE and took the decision not to renew the cur-rent license once it expired. A number of alternative VLEs and solutions were evaluated and considered after which it was decided that Moodle would best meet the UWS requirements.

Why Moodle? Moodle was chosen for a variety of reasons, including:

Better user experience Integration with web 2.0 sites Flickr, Youtube, Picassa et al Improved collaboration with other HE Institutions and Col-leges as Moodle is widely used No license limitations Compatibility with 3rd party commercial products (Turnitin, Campus Pack, Banner) Lower running costs, frees up finance for enhancing Univer-sity facilities Greater integration with existing systems

Engaging a Supplier Having decided on Moodle as the preferred VLE, the next step was to engage a supplier that could provide the content migration expertise, cost effectively and to a very high standard.

Enovation Solutions Ltd Ireland: The Friary, Bow Street, Dublin 7 Tel : +353 1 602 4784

France: 285, rue Nationale33240 Saint-André de Cubzac E-mail: info@enovation.ie

www.enovation.ie www.enovationsolutions.fr

your e-learning partner

“Enovation proved to be an expert and helpful partner on this pro-ject. At all times they worked closely with our team and were able to overcome any issues we encountered. We are delighted to have been able to meet our dead-lines and that the project has been so successful.”

David Ross, Director CAPD, UWS

This was a complicated migration project which required significant changes to the migration scripts as well as the creation of auto-mated processes for working with non-standard content types. We worked very well with the UWS team and this together with our proven expertise in migrating from Blackboard helped bring the pro-ject to a successful conclusion.” Gary Mahon, Sales Director, Enovation Solutions.

Why Enovation Solutions?

As you might expect, engaging a supplier involved a competitive

tendering process which identified a shortlist of suitable suppliers

in the UK and Ireland. Enovation Solutions was selected as the

technical partner based on their established track record with

Moodle and their expertise in similar migrations including Moth-

erwell College in Scotland. It was also felt Enovation had a meth-

odology that offered a pragmatic and clear migration process to

automate as much of the course conversion from Blackboard to

Moodle as possible within the timescales detailed in the Univer-

sity migration programme.

Migrating the Content In all there were some 1,300 modules to be migrated to Moodle. The course scope included some complex courses that utilised question types and resources that would not map easily to Moodle. The first step in the migration process involved a trial migration. The client identified representative courses which were migrated and then reviewed by the client. At this stage all mapping errors were identified and a fix applied to the migration script. The com-plexity of this migration meant that there were several iterations of run and fix during the trial period. After successful completion of this phase, the live migrations were planned and migrated in tranches to meet the UWS pro-gramme schedule and to allow for sufficient time for the aca-demic staff to test and tweak the migrated content.

Go Live UWS has successfully gone live with Moodle from September 2012.

Enovation Solutions Ltd Ireland: The Friary, Bow Street, Dublin 7 Tel : +353 1 602 4784

France: 285, rue Nationale33240 Saint-André de Cubzac E-mail: info@enovation.ie

www.enovation.ie www.enovationsolutions.fr