Attention: AHS Executive Director of Organizational Change
The purpose of this proposal is to present the affordances of Moodle, the open source Learning Management System (LMS), for workplace learning, and how it fits with the strategy and vision of the Alberta Health Services (AHS). The Organizational Change unit of AHS is tasked with the management of learning and improvement for 116,00 employees province-wide. Formal learning at AHS is increasingly organized in the online environment. A system to manage this enormous undertaking should not only have the appropriate capacity and functionality but also be aligned with the strategic vision of the organization. The LMS that best fits this need is the open source project – Moodle.
Moodle, guided by social constructionist pedagogy, was first released in 2001 by creator Martin Dougiamas (Moodle.org, 2011). The development of the LMS has been informed by contemporary thought in education rather than commercial interests. Martin Dougiamas describes guiding principles behind Moodle such as, “everyone is a potential teacher and a potential learner” (Feldstein, 2010). This principle can be observed in the functionality of the Forums. Participants within a Forum can be given teacher-like rights and permissions allowing peer teaching, unlocking the learning, and more importantly teaching, potential of employees. This contemporary educational philosophy is balanced with the more established and traditional ADDIE models of instructional design that begin with the “analysis” of the learners and context, as well as the SECTIONS model that also begins with the “student” needs (Bates & Poole, 2003). The AHS is now activating “learning champions” to complement traditional instructors. Learning champions are identified as people within the organization that have specific knowledge and are interested in leading communities of practice in their field. An LMS that de-emphasizes the hierarchy in learning will fit well with this initiative.
Learning is widely recognized to be a social process as illustrated by the well-quoted statistic that 80% of workplace learning is actually informal (Cross, 2003). This informal, social type of learning is difficult to explore within a restrictive LMS. George Siemens (2004) explains “learning is by nature multi-faceted and chaotic. Organizations that now lock into enterprise-level systems will be able to do an excellent job of delivering courses. They won’t, however, be positioning themselves well for informal learning, performance support, or knowledge management.” Moodle, albeit an LMS, does integrate well with the “real” web – not just commercial educational products. Social media sites such as WordPress, Flickr, and YouTube all integrate easily into Moodle. This supports the notion that learning is broadly a community endeavor, not just a transmission of knowledge from one assigned instructor to a group of students selected for training.
But can an open source project be sustained and support learning for such a large organization? Moodle has 58,848 registered sites and has been adopted by major institutions across Alberta including the University of Lethbridge and Athabasca University (Moodle.org, 2011). This widespread implementation not only speaks to its reputation but also opens the door to collaborative projects with provincial postsecondary institutions in charge of developing many of our employees. The functionality of Moodle can also be extended with over 100 third-party plugins. This means that the system can grow with the growing needs of our learners. The plugins allow for a degree of customization centered on the learner rather than the administrative side of content management.
There is a worrying trend in the commercial LMS market where one company, Blackboard, is buying out the competition. This means that purchasing a commercial LMS other than Blackboard can be risky as Blackboard may take the product over as it did with Web CT 2006 and ANGEL in 2009 (Panettieri, 2007). AHS must caution against deploying an LMS with a possible short life cycle. Open source projects have proven to be sustainable and scalable, and with the growth of Moodle since 2002 to over 43 million users, it would seem that Moodle is the educational version of Firefox or Linux (Moodle.org, 2011).
To be a leader in workplace learning AHS should move away from the administration of learning with enterprise-level systems and towards a more organic approach of informal learning. AHS employs a diverse and well-educated group of potential teachers. Our system should be chosen to leverage this fact, and not to limit learning to the 20% that takes place in structured course content (Cross, 2003). Moodle is a solution that is robust enough to manage the IT side of workplace learning without reducing it to a systems approach to content management.
References
Bates, A.W., & Poole, G. (2003). Chapter 4: A framework for selecting and using technology. Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher education: Foundations for Success. 77-105. San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers.
Cross, J. (2003). Informal learning – the other 80%. Retrieved from http://74.125.155.132/scholar?q=cache:cbTG-LQY0AAJ:scholar.google.com/+jay+cross+informal+learning&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1
Feldstein, M. (2010). Interview with Martin Dougiamas. [Video file]. Retrieved from http://mfeldstein.com/interview-with-martin-dougiamas/
Moodle.org. (2011). Moodle Philosophy. Retrieved from http://docs.moodle.org/20/en/Philosophy
Moodle.org. (2011). Moodle Stats. Retrieved from http://moodle.org/stats/
Panettieri, J. (2007). Addition by subtraction. University Business, August, 58-62. Retrieved from www.universitybusiness.com/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=845
Siemens, G. (2004). Learning management systems: The wrong place to start learning. [Web blog message]. Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/lms.htm
