Case Study: Migration, support, maintenance, and hosting of a Moodle learning management system

AT A GLANCE

Specialist API support
Integration with the NCTJ’s assessment database – Creatio
Training workshop

THE CLIENT

The National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) is an industry charity, which helps to create a better society through diversity, quality, and trusted journalism.

They aim to provide a world-class education and training system, which develops current and future journalists for the demands of a fast-changing multimedia industry.

THE CHALLENGE

The NCTJ contacted SkillSet, seeking a supplier for the maintenance, support, and hosting of their Moodle learning management system (LMS).

Their existing Moodle site was hosted by another provider. It used an outdated version of Moodle, which meant that the site wasn’t providing the NCTJ with all the functionality that they required.

The NCTJ needed to move their LMS to a specialist supplier who could create an API to allow the LMS to interact with other applications.

Find out more about defining LMS requirements.

OUR APPROACH

SkillSet begins all projects with a kick-off meeting. This clarifies ways of working, roles and responsibilities, and reporting processes, and clarifies deliverables.

We took a back-up of NCTJ’s existing LMS. Our team used this to create a staging site on Linux within Amazon Web Services (AWS).

SkillSet is proud to be a Consulting Partner with AWS. This alliance allows us to provide our customers with guidance on security, resilience, performance and back-up, ensuring that their cloud environments meet their requirements exactly.

We then upgraded the staging site to the latest version of Moodle. We also updated all plug-ins and PHP. Our team then applied a new theme and configured this, based on the NCTJ website, to match the organisation’s branding.

The NCTJ signed off the staging site, paying particular attention to the functionality, theme, and dashboards. SkillSet then switched this over to live operation with minimal disruption.

The new Moodle site includes a widget that is visible on all pages, to allow end users to create support tickets directly from the site. SkillSet uses Freshdesk to manage these support tickets.

SkillSet integrated the site with the NCTJ’s assessment database – Creatio. This enables the automated creation of Moodle user accounts, and transfer of data and results. Using this, the NCTJ can provide learners with direct access to their results.

Finally, SkillSet provided a training workshop for NCTJ staff. This was held over two sessions, in which we worked through queries, customer feedback, and Moodle support.

THE RESULTS

The NCTJ site now links to their website and CRM system via APIs. This allows administrative staff to easily add users, publish exam results, and add relevant new content. In our recent customer satisfaction survey, NCTJ stated that the customised results area of the site has had a high-impact for their stakeholders.

OUR PARTNER’S FEEDBACK

“SkillSet were by far our preferred option. Both for known cost to host our Moodle platform/expected costs to develop our bespoke customisations, and also the engagement and knowledge demonstrated during the consultation. It has been a pleasure to work with SkillSet. Thanks to the SkillSet team for the work completed during this time, their knowledge and expertise.”

Andy Summers, NCTJ