Moodle has become the world's favourite Learning Management System (LMS). The E-Learning Guild survey in 2008 revealed that Moodle was used by more private sector organizations than any other LMS. It is a robust, scalable open source LMS used by thousands of organizations across all sectors.

A Flexible Learning Management System

At Kineo we have been advocates of Moodle since the beginning. Moodle provides a robust, reliable, feature rich and scalable LMS solution. The Open University has up to 400,000 users on their Moodle.  Our largest implementation at Kineo so far has been for 80,000 users. We have now customized and implemented Moodle for over 40 clients. Moodle comes with a vast range of functionality from the ability to upload and track e-learning resources to collaborative features including wikis, blogs, discussion forums, chat rooms and polls.

We have customized new Moodle modules including online booking for classroom courses and customized reporting with easy to use filters which can be exported to Excel. We have also been integrating Moodle into corporate environments with single sign on to Moodle and passing learner data back to systems such as Oracle HR.

Moodle is open source and hence, whilst there are costs for customizing, hosting and support; there are no annual license fees. Thus Moodle typically costs a small fraction of a commercial LMS.

Your Own Customized Moodle

We provide a wide range of  services including tailored design and development of the Moodle LMS. So you can have your very own hosted Learning delivery site branded with your own look and feel. Contact us to view the Moodles we have set up for clients from BP to Cable & Wireless.

Kineo Consulting on Moodle and Open Source Options

Contact us to discuss open source options such as Moodle, and how our Moodle consultants can help you. Our open source and Moodle consulting services have been utilized by organizations such as UK banks to major travel companies. Kineo is the only e-learning provider to have set up a dedicated company Kineo Open Source to focus on providing professional open source services.

Why Consider Moodle?

Moodle is used by 25% of small and medium sized businesses in the US, it is used by over 70% of Further Education Colleges in the UK, by over 25% of UK local councils, central Government departments such as Ministry of Justice and the National School for Government and it is used by a growing band of large corporates such as Marks & Spencer, Shell and Cable & Wireless.

Below are just some of the reasons organizations are using Moodle.

1. Speed to deploy.

A hosted Moodle can be up and running in a week or two. We can handle all the Moodle set up for you to ensure a smooth implementation. We set up all the course structures and functions you require, from blogs and chat rooms to tracking reports. We can also upload all of your initial content and resources.

An externally hosted solution can offer a key speed to deployment advantage. The reality is that internal IT hosting means relying on internal IT resources.  Rarely is learning a high priority when competing with operational systems, hence, it can be frustrating trying to set things up internally and take a long time, though there are notable exceptions

2. Low risk start up.

A hosted Moodle can be set up from a few thousand dollars, so it can be used as a pilot project or for a specific need to test how well it works.  This fits with the general move towards agile and lean project methodologies, where you start small, move fast and adjust quickly; as opposed to the more traditional big project planning approaches where you think you can plan everything in advance and then start a major project like a proprietary LMS with certainty. In reality things change and it can be hard to adjust when you have invested hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Moodle is also ideal for a specific initiative such as setting up a compliance area, a reseller portal or a sales academy.

3. Low initial investment

Hosted solutions mean no infrastructure investment as it is in the cloud. This can make it easier for people to start projects in this time of cash restrictions.

4. More reliable and faster updates

Open source is proving more reliable with larger support communities and much faster updates. We have spoken to many clients recently who say their large LMS suppliers simply don’t respond fast enough to web 2.0 trends. With open source there are thousands of development projects on the go all the time and hence many more new releases each year with new features. Even if the latest release doesn‘t have the features you want you can plug in modules that other people have developed or you have developed, due to how open source is structured and coded.

5. Level of support

In addition to professional support from Kineo, the large Moodle community means that there are over 30,000 active members of the user community contributing to Moodle forums and answering questions and queries each month.

6. Lower cost

Cost is ultimately a factor. Some large LMS vendors are still trying to charge hundreds of thousands for solutions that you can get with open source software for a fraction of the cost. This could result in a sea change over the next few years which will threaten the viability of larger LMS vendors, some of whom are still not profitable - and that is before their clients start looking at hosted and open source solutions. As Brandon Hall recently said "Will your LMS vendor still be here in 3 years?"

7. Hosted software as a service is growing trend

Hosted software as a service is not just a learning trend.  Look at CRM systems and the growth of Salesforce as a hosted software as a service solution and Sugar CRM the open source alternative. Both have soared ahead of the old internally hosted proprietary systems.

We provide low cost hosting from $2000 a year, so you can give your staff access from anywhere that they have an internet connection.

Find out more

You can see and try Moodle for yourself as a user at our free kineo moodle demo site.  You can try it as an administrator by going to Kineo Open Source, which is our sister company that focuses on delivering professional open source solutions. You can also see a recent presentation we gave on using Moodle LMS and some top tips.

Moodle is the registered trademark of the Moodle Trust.