Bloomsbury Colleges move to Moodle

Move from Blackboard means significant cost-savings for the consortium of five Bloomsbury Colleges

London, UK - 9 August 2011: ULCC, the largest provider of managed and supported virtual learning environments for the UK education sector, today announced The Bloomsbury Colleges’ move from Blackboard to its Hosted Moodle service.

Why Moodle?

Approaching the expiration of its Blackboard licence meant that, earlier this year, the Bloomsbury Learning Environment (BLE) Steering Group commissioned a pedagogical comparison between Blackboard and Moodle. Overwhelming support from staff and students meant that the Bloomsbury Heads of Colleges voted in favour of moving to Moodle earlier this month.

“In addition to the pedagogical and technical advantages we will gain by moving to Moodle, this switch will also mean significant cost savings for the consortium,” said Dr Mandy Bentham, Chair of BLE. “The decision to host Moodle with ULCC came naturally, due to its experience in supporting similar moves for other HE institutions.”

The move

The move from Blackboard will see early adopter courses being delivered on Moodle this September, with the institution-wide move completed in time for the 2012/13 academic year.

Sarah Sherman, BLE Service Manager, reported that “the BLE Technical team, which was highly commended by the Association for Learning Technology last year for its effective collaboration, will work together in migrating over to Moodle. Joint training and shared promotional activities will run for users across the Colleges”.

Moodle in HE

ULCC is the UK’s largest provider of managed and supported virtual learning environments for education. It now hosts and supports e-Learning services for close to 200 Higher and Further Education institutions, helping over 700,000 students perform in excess of 10 million online learning activities per month.

“We are excited to welcome the Bloomsbury Colleges as the latest HE Moodle customer to our continuously growing customer base,” said Richard Maccabee, Director at ULCC.”Not only does it confirm a general trend towards Moodle within the HE sector, but also means that ULCC now provides a hosted Moodle service to over half of the 23 colleges & institutes that comprise the University of London.”

ULCC’s e-Learning services

Since signing its first customer, Hackney Community College, in July 2005 ULCC’s e-Learning service has continued to grow twofold year on year.

The development of the Personalisation of Learning Framework in 2007, signing of the University of London International Academy as first HE customer and entering a strategic partnership with Mahara, the leading Open Source e-Portfolio in 2008 means ULCC is now well established as a leading provider of innovative e-learning services and a centre of excellence in the development and support for Open Source solutions and technology.

For more information about this announcement please contact:

Frank Steiner

Marketing Manager

University of Loncon Computer Centre

f.steiner at ulcc.ac.uk

+44 (0)20 7863 1322