Saint Martin's University - Moodle Implementation 2008

Why Moodle?

Moodle is an effective teaching tool that supports collaboration, interaction, critical reflection, and exploration.
Moodle offers an intuitive and easy-to-learn interface.
Moodle gives us the opportunity to adopt a single full-featured course management system for the entire campus. Currently only online extension courses are licensed for WebCT and expanding this is not feasible. Main campus and extension faculty who teach in a traditional face-to-face setting only have access to IQ.Web's Course Manager, which is quite limited in functionality.
Moodle gives faculty greater autonomy to build and modify their courses than has been available in WebCT.
Moodle supports secure and anonymous online course evaluations, the results of which can be compiled into reports much more efficiently than our current paper forms.
Moodle can be integrated with PowerCampus, automating course creation and student enrollment (not possible with WebCT).
Moodle can be integrated with Saint Martin's network, so that faculty and students can use the same user name and password they use to check email and log on to a campus PC (not currently possible with WebCT or IQ.Web).
Moodle promises considerable cost savings for the university, both short-term and long-term.

See Irina's Gendelman's blog entry Moodle at SMU for additional discussion of Moodle and its benefits.

What will happen to IQ.Web?

IQ.Web will continue to be used by students for online registration, to track and/or pay tuition and fees, to view an unofficial transcript or request an official one, and to access the campus directory.
IQ.Web will continue to be used by faculty for advising (approving courses and reviewing students' schedules and transcripts), for viewing the campus directory, and, at least short-term, for submitting midterm and final grades.
Most of the IQ.Web Course Manager functions--course forum, grade book, and home page--will eventually be disabled. These course management functions will be provided through Moodle.

What will happen to WebCT?

We expect to have at least half of the Term V online courses taught on Moodle this summer and all online course migrated to Moodle by Term I 2008-2009.