Virtual Learning Environments

Education is constantly evolving. A space designed for teaching, learning and training, virtual learning environments neither replace classrooms nor existing educational practices – they enhance them. Organisations can now benefit from added value as they extend the space of the physical learning environment. As the pace of digitisation accelerates daily, so too can the pace of active learning and collaboration anytime, anywhere.

What is a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)?

Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) are established educational online tools that are means to structure, manage, and deliver learning activities and content. With capabilities to track learners and manage online assessments, VLEs are centrally managed systems that support both learners and managers or administrators.

They include communication mechanisms to support dialogue between learners and those managing courses through email, bulletin board, or instant messaging (chat) – offering shared workspaces to support collaboration.

How does it work?

Learner Engagement

Designed to meet technological ecosystems today’s learners demand, VLEs allow learners to acquire skills, training and further information to take their expertise to the next level. Able to share content and participate in board discussions using any device, learners practice collaboration in an easy-to-use, self-managed platform.

Actionable Reporting

Educators are able to track learning and development with built-in insights and reporting tools, allowing the easy identification of areas that need improvement and helping learners build their talent and potential. VLEs allow for tailor-made content and learning modules to be imported in a few simple steps, offering flexible ways for learners to engage with content and receive feedback on assessments created for each course or module.

Cost effectivity

With greater access to training courses or learning modules as well as certifications, learners can maximise valuable learning time without losing any of the efficiency. Compared against traditional ways of training and learning, VLEs cut the costs while meeting the specific needs of each organisation by providing automatic grading, resource libraries, an interactive environment and a management system for educators to easily see and drive outcomes.

Able to provide the right information to the right person at the right time, VLEs offer a powered learning environment that meet the ever-increasing need of distance learning in an intuitive approach with reduced overheads.

How can Dorset Creative help you?

Moodle

Moodle installation

Configuration

Hosting

Custom theme development

Custom plugin development

Dorset Creative have been developing, supporting and configuring Moodle for over 10 years, working on financial, hospitality, health and medical solutions for both the public and private sector.

Mobile application development

Moodle have a great free application that can be used with existing Moodle websites, but if you want something custom, we can create a branded application with your branding identity e.g. logo, colours, content and custom advanced features.

To create a custom application, we:

Work with your branding team and branding guidelines to develop a custom look
Configure the application to contain a custom user interface (UI) and any other unique features and plugins

Benefits to having your own mobile application for Moodle:

Users log in to your custom application, see your logo and your brand identity
Users can access learning on the go
Users can live chat with teachers on the application
Access offline learning
Receive instant messaging notifications from teachers, messages, forum posts, calendar events and assignment submissions
Check course dates, upcoming deadlines and events via the events calendar
The application is on your app store and is your app store listing

Integration with existing systems

Over the years, we have integrated with various systems, using some of the Moodle standard plugins and by writing our own with custom API development so we can integrate with your:

CMS for streamlined onboarding
File storage
Analytics provider
WordPress e-commerce site so you can sell courses and then automatically enrol users onto your Moodle course

E-learning modules

We also create great looking, interactive e-learning modules to deliver bespoke learning content in Articulate Rise that, as standard, have SCORM support to report learners’ progress and scores within a module to their learning manager. We have also integrated learner tracking with Microsoft Power BI so managers can view all course data from a Power BI dashboard.

Dorset Creative can help you visualise, build and integrate your data from many sources into Microsoft Power BI. This will allow you to combine, examine, visualise and share data within Power BI, Microsoft Teams or external dashboards or software.

Hosting and support

We can offer various hosting packages for Moodle, from VPS hosting to custom installation on Microsoft Azure or Amazon AWS with prices ranging from £150pm. As an example:

Small Moodle website hosting:

Hosting of your website on our fully managed hosting platform
10GB Space

SSL/TLS Certificate
Dedicated help desk support system to contact us should you need to
Installation and monitoring of security related software to protect your website
Daily backups held for 7 days

£120P/M + VAT

Medium Moodle website hosting:

Hosting of your website on our fully managed hosting platform
15GB Space
SSL/TLS Certificate
Dedicated help desk support system to contact us should you need to

Installation and monitoring of security related software to protect your website
Daily backups held for 7 days

£150P/M + VAT

If your hosting needs exceed the above, please contact us using the form below for more information.

Mobile application packages

Silver

Minimally configured COTS (commercially off the shelf) Moodle

We will:

Configure your Moodle installation to work with the mobile application
Submit the application to the Apple and Google app stores

Gold

In addition to “Silver”, we will:

Add your logo and brand identity to the application
Create app store marketing material

Platinum

Platinum contains everything from silver and gold and we will create a custom user interface for your mobile application. The cost for this varies on how complex the custom user interface is and how many pages you need.

Cost – Please contact Dorset Creative on 01202 237 899