Implementing Moodle on a technical level can be relatively easy. The difficult part is using Moodle to impact organizational performance. There are many more factors beyond software to consider when planning to roll out a learning system. While we have discussed the advantages of Moodle relative to other LMS systems, the organizational challenges are the same as rolling out any other piece of enterprise software.
There are many factors to consider when considering enterprise software decisions: the business strategy or goals the software is meant to help enable, development of a solution, solution implementation, training, measurement, and finally circling around back to the goals to ensure an appropriate ROI.
To help structure the task of implementing business solutions in Moodle, we have developed a simple framework for analyzing your proposed application and measuring the results. The framework is designed to help you think through what you want to achieve with your Moodle solution, how you will implement it, and how you will measure whether you have been successful.
Our implementation framework has five main steps: Align, Develop, Implement, Measure, and Evaluate (ADIME). The framework is designed as an iterative process. The analysis in the Align phase determines what will be measured in the Evaluate phase. The data from the Evaluate phase is used to improve the alignment analysis as part of a continuous process.
The purpose of the Align phase is to explore the potential organizational impacts of your Moodle initiative. Your initiative needs to be aligned with larger business strategy and organizational procedure to ensure a positive impact. During this phase, you will also determine the success criteria for the project. These criteria will form the basis of the Evaluation phase after you have rolled-out the first version of the project.
What business problem are you solving with Moodle?
How is your Moodle initiative aligned with your larger organizational strategy?
How can you support your organization's practices, policies, and procedures with the use of Moodle?
How can we enable the organization to meet its goals faster / cheaper / better using Moodle as a learning and communication platform?
Is this initiative an opportunity to improve rather than simply translating existing practices?
Who in the organization needs to be involved? Who will be impacted by your initiative?
What is the budget for the project?
What are the anticipated savings / additional revenue from the project?
During the Develop phase, you will develop the solution to meet the objectives outlined in the Align phase. The Develop phase creates the Moodle course or collaborative area for other people to use.
Before beginning development there are some basic questions you need to answer to ensure you are developing a useful solution:
Where will people access your solution (office, home, road, client premises)?
How will people access your solutions (Desktop, laptop, mobile, in class)?
What Moodle tools will meet your audience's needs and deliver the expected business results?
What content do you need to develop? Who are the experts you need to work with to get the information you need?
How will you prompt or support any needed collaborative work?
How will you assess learning or change?
Does your solution require the participants to create something? How will they share or submit their creation?
Do you need to support reflection on the part of the learner?
How will you support transfer of the online experience to the job (assuming the online experience is not the job itself)?
In the Implementation phase, you will roll out your solution to your intended audience. Implementing your solution will probably be at least as difficult as developing it, but this is where we start to see the real-world impact of your solution on the business.
How will you give the right people access at the right time?
Are there special roles or permissions you need to define for various groups of users?
Do you need to set things to happen at certain dates or times?
How will you market your solution within your organization? How will you get the word out?
Does your solution solve a "job to be done" for your target audience?
Who will provide technical support for participants?
Have you tested your solution with a sample of your target audience?
Once people start to use your solution, you need to measure how they are doing within the context of the solution itself. You are not measuring the business impact yet, as we need to first determine if the solution is valid. In the Measurement phase, we look to see if participants are using the solution as it was intended. In the Evaluate phase, we will look to see if what they have learned impacts the organization:
How will you measure if participants are successful within your solution?
Will you measure assessment results, usage statistics, and time on task?
What are the benchmarks for successful participation?
How will you remediate if your participants are not successful?
How will you ensure continued engagement with your solution?
In the Evaluate phase, we begin to measure the impact of your solution on the organization and the goals you set out in the Align phase.
How will you measure the impact of your solution on the organization?
How will you measure change in performance by participants and compare it to prior performance or a control group?
How will you measure the financial impact of your solution?
How will you measure the schedule / time impact of your solution?
How will you measure the impact your solution has on quality?
How will you measure the impact your solution has on customer satisfaction?
How will you use the data you gather to decide how and when to improve your solution?
Obviously there are many possible answers to these questions, most of which will lead to even more questions to answer. The trick is to do enough analysis so you know what you want to achieve while avoiding "paralysis from analysis". Moodle makes it easy to try things, figure out what works, change what doesn't, and move on. So use the framework to sketch your solution, then go ahead and implement a pilot. Learn quickly, improve what you can, and roll out to achieve business success.