Birmingham City Council: Aqua Main Page

Moodle

Using Moodle to develop a VLE solution interfaced with AQUA SQL

Birmingham is part of a project group looking at 'Incorporating Learning Platforms' within the Adult Education Service. As part of phase 2 of this project funded by NIACE (November 2005 - February 2007), we have chosen Moodle as our preferred solution.

This choice is based on the following:

Moodle is an open source product, which enables us to create our own interface with AQUA, without relying on third-party suppliers to provide a product, which may be extremely expensive and may not be as flexible as required.
Moodle has a growing reputation in Adult Education and Further Education and is the most popular VLE in this sector.
Moodle has been taken up by the Open University, who will continue to develop it.
It has met all of our requirements and also has a lot of functionality planned in the next two releases.

Providing a fully managed learning environment

Interfacing AQUA SQL with Moodle enables our customers to have a fully managed learning environment, which is controlled from within their MIS. This curriculum-planning tool ensures minimum maintenance tasks, allowing tutors to concentrate on content creation and communicating with their learners. Additional benefits include:

Automatic creation of courses available on Moodle. If the course is on AQUA, it is available on Moodle, any learners enrolled on AQUA have automatic access to course content for their specific courses. Tutor has access to content on courses for which they have responsibility.
Course content can be based on Course Templates created in AQUA and uses a shared resources repository without requiring tutor intervention for every class - not just for those with e-literate or keen tutors.
Automatic links with Course Finder allow guest access if enquiring about a course, or full access once enrolment has been made. (This can be via AQUA or online via Course Finder).
Automation of emails and standard letters to inform learners of their log-on details.
Creation of a personalised learning environment with e-Portfolio for the Learner.
Personalised desktops for either Tutor or Learner.
Capture attendance, self assessment, quizzes, poll information, etc.
Provide on-line access to relevant AQUA Course information e.g. Registers, Participation, etc.

We are looking at using a federated, independent E- Repository to facilitate the management, assembly and sharing of content and e-portfolios. The federated nature provides an opportunity for sharing and scaling and the independence from a VLE will allow use unrestricted by the client tool and the enabling of a learners e-portfolio to be accessed throughout their lifelong learning experience.

AQUA MLE module is an interface between AQUA and the Moodle Virtual Learning Environment to create a Managed Learning Environment. This has great benefits in enabling AQUA to manage and control tasks automatically in real time, greatly reducing the administration required to run the VLE. The AQUA MLE will enable automatic course creation in the VLE, allocation of tutor and enrolled learners, start and end dates and the cloning of subject based content if held in an external repository.

* This version requires AQUA SQL (SQL Server backend only) and currently only integrates with the Moodle (http:/www.moodle.org) open source VLE. Integration with proprietary VLEs will require consultation with the vendor responsible and will be on request only.