This document discusses whether to abandon Moodle, the college's virtual learning environment (VLE), and move to Office 365 (O365). It provides background on Moodle, which was released in 1999, and O365, released in 2011. The college has experienced increasing Moodle upgrades, from 1-2 per year to 8-10. Students give the VLE an average 3.58 satisfaction rating. Potential benefits of moving to O365 include improved user experience, lower maintenance costs, and preparing students for tools they will encounter after college. Potential downsides include vendor lock-in and complexity of meeting exam requirements. Moodle is working to better integrate with O365 and improve its own mobile and cloud offerings to remain competitive.

1. IS IT TIME TO
ABANDON
MOODLE AND
MOVE TO O365?

2. HELLO!
I am Conor Bradley
Interim ISLT Manager – Borders College

3. 1.
Background

4. A SHORT HISTORY OF MOODLE
▸ Released 1999
▸ 150 million people around the world used the Internet (3 billion
today)
▸ Dial up internet
▸ Facebook was 5 years away (2004), Twitter was 7 years away
(2006), LinkedIn was 4 years away from its launch (2003),
and Instagram wouldn’t exist for another 11 years (2010).
▸ iPhone wouldn't be released for another 8 years (2007)
▸ 1 coder at release (Martin Dougimas) around 50 core developers
today
▸ 78 million users (2015)
▸ Aims
▹ Empowering educators to improve our world.
▹ To give the world the most effective platform for learning.

5. A SHORT HISTORY OF O365
▸ Released 2011
▸ Since then seen release of Windows 8, 10 - also demise of
Windows Mobile
▸ Hundreds of developers (probably thousands including Azure
teams)
▸ Microsoft classroom released 2016 - retired Jan 2018
▸ Features rolled into Microsoft Teams
▸ 100 million monthly commercial users (2018)
▸ Aim
▹ "To empower every person and every organization on the planet
to achieve more."

6. 2.
Our experience
at Borders
College

8. 8-10 upgrades/year
Up from 1-2 (plus move to Boost based theme over Summer 2017)
5 areas covered by user toursIncluding homepage, courses, Turnitin, assignments
~20 training videos
Also training on request and via 3 major CPD day events

9. How satisfied are you with the
Borders College VLE (Moodle)?
3.58 average score
Range from 1-5 (higher is better)

14. What do students say about OneNote?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnc5IrHYZTE

18. 3.
To move or not
to move?

19. WHY MIGHT YOU WANT TO MOVE TO O365
▸ Promotes a different kind of online/blended learning experience
▸ UX/UI (including mobile UX)
▸ Always up to date
▸ Lower maintenance (server side) allowing for more input with
users
▸ You’re already driving our students there if you’re promoting
OneDrive (storage limitations)
▸ Your students are probably heading to O365 once they leave you
anyway – why not prepare them?
▸ Readymade training materials
▸ Taking advantage of a ‘free’ service
▸ Still allows governance/management/oversight

20. WHY MIGHT YOU NOT WANT TO MOVE TO O365
▸ Vendor tie-in
▸ Presumes a ‘trusted’ work experience
▸ Little support for certain academic workflows
▸ Meeting exam board requirements can be more complex (in
certain ways)
▸ Content can become heavily tied to users
▸ A ‘clean slate’ approach to content each year
▸ Doesn’t work well for part-time lecturing staff
▸ Little recourse when things ‘break’
▸ Big project/transition
▸ Integration with your MIS system

21. WHAT CAN/IS MOODLE DOING TO RESPOND?
▸ UX/UI improvements
▸ Faster pace of upgrades
▸ Better testing for releases
▸ Moodle Cloud offering
▸ Better integration with O365 (login, repositories, linked
Notebooks)
▸ Moodle User Group
▸Mobile UX

22. 2015 2018

23. THANKS!
Any questions?
You can find me at cbradley@borderscollege.ac.uk
Presentation available at bit.ly/moodleo365

24. CREDITS
Special thanks to all the people who made and released these
awesome resources for free:
▸ Presentation template by SlidesCarnival
▸ Photographs by Death to the Stock Photo (license)