Book Image

Corporate Learning with Moodle Workplace

By : Alex Büchner
Book Image

Corporate Learning with Moodle Workplace

By: Alex Büchner

Overview of this book

Moodle Workplace is a comprehensive extension to Standard Moodle, the world's most used learning management system (LMS) platform, empowering millions of learners worldwide. Moodle Workplace is suitable for businesses and organizations, from small enterprises to global corporations. Corporate Learning with Moodle Workplace is a comprehensive introduction to this latest product from Moodle, which facilitates collaborative learning in enterprises and larger teams. Complete with detailed descriptions, a variety of diagrams, and real working examples, this easy-to-follow guide will teach you everything you need to know to manage a Moodle Workplace system. You’ll learn how to manage your users along reporting lines and organize them in to tenants, organizations, positions, job assignments, and teams, before setting up typical HR processes such as induction, compliance, and reporting. Filled with real-world examples, the book covers blended and offline scenarios, including appointments and the Moodle Workplace mobile app. By the end of this Moodle book, you’ll have learned how to fully manage a Moodle Workplace instance.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)

Comparing Moodle Workplace and Totara Learn

Totara LMS is a subscription-based Moodle distribution that was launched in 2010 by Totara Learning (www.totaralearning.com). Initially, it was an extension to standard Moodle, plus some plugins, that was kept in lockstep with Moodle's releases until version 2.9. Moodle introduced competencies and learning plans in version 3.1, which conflicted with their counterparts in Totara. Totara LMS was renamed to Totara Learn, and new versioning was introduced that is currently at release 13 (see www.totaralearning.com for details).

Totara Learn is now part of a product family—Totara Experience Platform (TXP)—that comprises the following three interlinked components:

  • Totara Learn: An LMS for training and development

    Totara Learn is Totara's flagship product and has been the only serious contender among the open source Moodle LMS distributions for the commercial sector, until Moodle Workplace arrived on the scene. Totara Learn is the product in the Totara suite that is used for comparison with Moodle Workplace in this chapter.

    Key features include online learning design and delivery, offline seminar management, assessment and certification, learning plans, program management, adaptive learning, and reporting.

  • Totara Engage: A Learning Experience System (LXP) focused on social learning

    Totara Engage provides a secure social space powered by people, where learning comes recommended and self-directed, and not just mandated by the organization. Totara Engage is an LXP that supports day-to-day workplace communication, knowledge sharing, and discovery.

    Key features include peer-to-peer content creation and sharing, collaborative workspaces, integration with Microsoft Teams and Slack, informal learning, messaging, discussion, recognition, pulse surveys, and action lists.

  • Totara Perform: A performance management tool supporting various HR activities

    Totara Perform is a flexible performance platform that allows organizations to proactively manage staff performance in order to operate more effectively and achieve their goals.

    Key features include appraisals, check-ins, goals, OKRs, 360° feedback, competencies, evidence banks, and reporting dashboards.

There might be additional products added to the mix in the future, but for now, these are the available components. All three products make use of the same underlying core business logic represented in a shared services layer.

Totara Learn and Moodle Workplace target the same audiences and are effectively competing products. You may ask what the differences are between the two available offerings. Generally, these dissimilarities can be grouped into the following three categories:

  • Features unique to Moodle Workplace
  • Features unique to Totara Learn
  • Features that exist in both products but are implemented differently

Let's take a look at these in more detail.

Features unique to Moodle Workplace

There are several features that only exist in Moodle Workplace that are not offered by Totara Learn. An example is dynamic rules, where automation can be achieved via "if this, then that" rules to trigger actions when certain conditions are met. For instance, when a course has been completed, a certificate will be issued, and a notification will be sent to the user and also to the responsible manager.

Totara Learn comes with so-called dynamic audiences, which support similar workflows, but are nowhere near as comprehensive and flexible as Workplace's dynamic rules.

Another example is the migration tool, which supports the export and import of various Workplace elements into other Workplace instances.

Features unique to Totara Learn

Equally, some features are unique to Totara Learn. For instance, seminar management is a component covering room and equipment management, manager approval, sign-ups to the course catalog, and much more.

Moodle Workplace contains the appointments feature mentioned earlier, which covers some of the same use cases, but to date, it is no match for Totara's seminar management functionality.

Another example is the highly customizable course catalog offered by Totara Learn. It allows users to browse, search, and filter courses, programs, and certifications. Moodle Workplace currently doesn't have a catalog feature.

Features that exist differently in both products

Competencies and learning plans have already been mentioned as two features that exist in both products but have been modeled and implemented very differently.

Another good example is the way managers are modeled. In Totara Learn, a manager has a 1:1 relationship with a user; that is, one user is the manager of another user. Both users belong to one or many organizations. In Moodle Workplace, a user belongs to a department, and a manager is responsible for this organizational entity. Every user that belongs to the same department reports to the manager in charge. The result – one user is the superior to one or many other users – is the same in both systems, but their implications when implementing user profiles and synchronizing HR data are significant.

There are plenty of features that belong to this category but a full comparison is beyond the scope of this treatise. Instead, we offer some pointers on how to decide which is the better product for your setup.

So, which is the better product?

The only way to answer this question is that it depends on the project at hand and its requirements. For instance, if your organization only provides sporadic face-to-face training, Moodle Workplace is likely to suffice. However, if you require full-blown seminar management, Totara Learn might be the better option. A thorough evaluation of each element and how it responds to your requirements is highly recommended to make an informed decision.

It has to be noted that both systems continue to grow organically at a breakneck pace. Also, both products' architects look sideways to see what the other side is doing, and we all know that competition is good for business!

Both Moodle and Totara offer their services through global partner networks. While the principles behind the partner models are similar, the business models are very different. Moodle's business model is discussed in the following section.