Case Study

Situation: Dr Stuart Lee, Head of the Learning Technologies Group, University of Oxford.

Critical issue: Oxford went through a long procurement process for a VLE/LMS system. We needed one that accommodated our complicated teaching structures and did not pigeon-hole students into modules and courses, as interdisciplinary studies are encouraged here. It needed to be easy to use, scalable, and with proven reliability across a 15,000+ institution.

Reasons: Bodington met our needs exactly. Its two strengths were its ease of use, but most importantly the access control system. At any point in the structure you can control access opening it up to the world, or limiting it to a select cohort. This can be devolved down so individual academics can set up their own seminar/tutor group areas, and so on. The open source nature was a bonus. With the code at our disposal we could develop new functions to match our needs and the needs of other Higher Education Institutions. We also felt safer with a Java-based system as it is more robust and scalable.

Vision: We are rolling out Bodington (under the local name - WebLearn - www.weblearn.ox.ac.uk). We are developing it to the needs of our users. Our vision is for a modular system, in keeping with the JISC E-learning framework, and we have already made it interoperable with LAMS and TOIA. The recent development of Shibbolethizing Bodington offers up a range of possibilities.

Result: Very successful. Take-up has been good and user feedback, especially from colleagues who have come from other Universities where commercial VLEs were in place, has been extremely positive. Academics like the ease of use, and the access control. We have also attracted considerable amounts of external funding to support the development of the system.