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Requirements Capture
The requirements capture phase of the project involved highlighting
the users groups involved within the system and capture the
requirements of each of them. To capture the requirements
of the technical staff and teachers, interviews were used.
These interviews allowed elaboration and adhoc questioning
to take place although proved very difficult to organise due
to the busy schedules of the people involved. To capture the
requirements of the student users, a questionnaire was created.
This questionnaire was handed out during an actual ICT lesson
resulting in a very high return rate and the questionnaire
being answered in a serious fashion. The data gathered from
the completed questionnaires was then used to derive the core
requirements for the student users. Although a lot of requirements
were generated from the interview with teaching staff, ideally
a broader range of teaching disciplines would have been used
to gather requirements for a school system rather than a system
based around the ICT staff.
Solution Development
The final solution was developed using the Rapid Application
Development methodology to allow the core requirements to
be implemented and tested while development continued. This
was important due to the problems encountered during the project
and to make sure that the minimum requirements for the project
could be met if further problems ensued. This process worked
very well as Moodle is module by nature and fitted the concept
of Rapid Application Development very well.
Solution Implementation
Again in line with the Rapid Application Development methodology,
the final solution was implemented and made available for
use by School in a modular fashion. As each stage of development
was completed, the final installation was updated with the
new functionality. This method along with the continual user
testing allowed the system to be used while problems were
being overcome that became apparent during the user testing.
This technique also allowed LPS School to gain the maximum
amount of benefit from the AA Board Set assignment course
as they were able to start using the system at an early stage
of the AA assignment. If the project had been managed using
the Iterative Waterfall model as first decided, the final
solution would most likely not have been made available for
use until a much later stage of the AA assignment.
Conclusions
This project has proven that Moodle can be used within a
School environment and can be modified to meet the core requirements
of the host school, namely LPS School which were the primary
questions that the project proposes to address. The changes
made to modify the functionality will be scalable when the
system grows. It is however a concern that problems that are
currently very infrequent will become an issue when the environment
is developed to include further courses and subject areas.
On major issue has become apparent during the course of this
project. The changes made to the functionality of Moodle during
the project have all involved skills vastly beyond the knowledge
and ability of the average school technician or teacher. Through
discussion with the LPS School ICT staff it was found that
ICT teachers with a degree in a technically subject such as
Computing or Computer Science are very rare and most have
a degree within the area of Education. From a programmers
point of view the Moodle source code is very poorly documented
and often required several thousand lines of code to be examined
before a solution can be conceived.
So in reality although Moodle can be modified to meet the
core requirements of a School, these modifications would require
either substantial learning or the use of an external body.
Suggestions for Further Work
The current implementation of LPS Moodle is limited to the
ICT subject area. Further work could be carried out into the
usability of the system from the point of view of other subject
areas such as Maths or Foreign Languages.
Moodle generates a vast amount of data relating to the activity
within the environment. Within a system that had been running
for a substantial amount of time, this data could be analysed
to ascertain and quantify the actual benefit of a Moodle environment
to the host school. This would very likely require a timeframe
beyond that offered by a final year project and would probably
be more suited to a research project where the current situation
could be analysed, a more comprehensive Moodle environment
developed and after a period of time the effects and benefits
of the environment could be ascertained.
Finally Moodle contains functionality that has not been deemed
unnecessary for this project. This functionality could be
researched and used to further develop the LPS Moodle environment.
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