Project Evaluation

Within this chapter, the project has been evaluated against the minimal requirements specified and an evaluation of the project stages has been carried out. Also conclusions have been drawn and suggestions for further work documented.

Evaluation against Minimum Requirements

A literary review of existing material on the subjects of teaching, learning and Virtual Learning Environments.

Earlier, teaching styles, learning styles and Virtual Learning Environments were discussed. It was found that three styles of teaching exist within modern schools, Direct Instruction, Indirect Instruction and Social Constructivism. This knowledge was then used to research the teaching styles used within the host school and to ascertain whether the final solution was capable of allowing these teaching styles to continue within it.

A requirement document generated through interview with problem holders.

Previous chapters document the requirements capture process used to develop a set of core requirements for the proposed system. Several interviews were used to gather requirements from the technical staff and teachers at LPS School and student requirements were derived from the results of a questionnaire filled out during an ICT lesson. These requirements were then listed within chapter 4 along with the functionality required for each user type.

An open source Moodle solution customised to meet core requirements and to match existing systems within the chosen school.

During the course of the project, a Moodle installation known as LPS Moodle was developed for the School. This final system was designed to match the existing school website and to provide the core requirements highlighted during the requirements capture phase of the project. As an extension to the project, addition functionality was added to the solution to cover non core requirements gathered from the requirements capture phase such as Chat functionality and revision quizzes.

Deployment of the solution for use by the chosen school.

As the project was developed using the rapid application development methodology, the final system was made available for use by School at a very early stage during development. LPS School continued to use the final solution while the project continued to develop and have now upon completion of the project taken complete control of the environment.

An evaluation of the final solution against the specified core requirements.

Chapter 7 of this document is an evaluation of the final solution against the core requirements gathered during the requirements capture phase. Here each requirement is addressed with respect to the final system.