The Set-Up and Implementation of Fully Virtualized Lessons with an Automated Workflow Utilizing VMC/Moodle at the Medical University of Graz

Abstract

With start of winter semester 2010/11 the Medical University of Graz (MUG) successfully introduced a new primary learning management system (LMS) Moodle. Moodle currently serves more than 4,300 students from three studies and holds more than 7,500 unique learning objects. With begin of the summer semester 2010 we decided to start a pilot with Moodle and 430 students. For the pilot we migrated the learning content of one module and two optional subjects to Moodle. The evaluation results were extremely promising ? more than 92% of the students wanted immediately Moodle ? also Moodle did meet our high expectations in terms of performance and scalability. Within this paper we describe how we defined and set-up a scalable and highly available platform for hosting Moodle and extended it by the functionality for fully automated virtual lessons. We state our experiences and give valuable clues for universities and institutions who want to introduce Moodle in the near future.