Reflections to date on Moodle and plans for Moodle 2

So, we're half way through the academic year with Moodle 1.9+ and so far things have gone reasonably well (touch wood).

General Reflections
At the start of SEM1, we had a few initial hiccups with load balancing which resulted in the server falling over a few times in the first week. Gareth and Jim identified the problem as being a result of low memory on the server and once this was increased, the system has been much more stable.

Electronic assignment submission has also gone well towards the end of semester 1, with only one major problem so far. This involved the Business School and one of janet Astley's modules. The problem was caused by an update from Toodle to Moodle, which meant that any assignment submissions made during a specific window of time on the date of the update, were affected and could not re-submit. We were alerted to this quite quickly and Jim managed to implement a manual workaround for those students affected, whereby they had to visit him in the ICT rooms. For those students affected, this was a stressful and negative experience, which I hope doesn't affect the module evaluation, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

We're now switching our thoughts to Moodle 2.0, which was released a couple of months ago and which so far has had 1 major update, with 80+ bug fixes. This should give us more flexibility with using central repositories and added functionality, such as conditional release of content, which many have asked for. We're involving Lewis Carr, from Leeds City College in the redevelopment of a theme - http://moodle.leedscitycollege.ac.uk.

Capacity and testing
One of the main problems we have had so far is our capacity to test Toodle updates, before they are released to Moodle. Testing is a time-consuming task, which needs to be done comprehensively and thoroughly in order to ensure continuity of service and performance from the dev to the live environment. On a few occasions, some fixes we have asked for have been tested, but when released, have had impact on other areas within Moodle. More thorough testing would have identified these issues before release. If we expand as a team in the future, it might be an idea to incorporate 'testing' into the job role.

Evaluation
Towards the end of semester 2, I will be conducting an evaluation of Moodle from staff and student perspectives. Both staff and students will be given a questionnaire to complete to ascertain satisfaction levels and identify areas for future development. Students will also be asked their views in focus groups, with the help of Katie Knowles and Joe Piddington. This will help inform our developments over the summer period of Moodle 2.0 and will allow us to implement the feedback, where appropriate.