Renowned for the quality of its teaching certification programs, the Louisiana Research Center for Educators(LRCE) was challenged with transforming its face-to-face classroom delivery model to an online learning platform with the escalation of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Working in partnership with Moodle Certified Partner,My Learning Consultants (now Moodle US) over an intense 8 week period,LRCE transformed years of curriculum content into Moodle courses,established a reliable and scalable online infrastructure,and trained their teaching workforce to use the Moodle platform. Not only has the project created efficiencies,supported differentiation and utilised data insights to inform improvements to course delivery,it has allowed LRCE to reach historically underserved communities and improve the quality of teaching in districts across Louisiana.

About LRCE –Driving educational equity across Louisiana

The Louisiana Research Center for Educators (LRCE) is a not for profit teacher training organization that prides itself on driving educational equity across Louisiana. Originally established in 2003 as a resource library for teachers,the LRCE has evolved to delivering professional development,certification programs and in 2006,post baccalaureate teacher’s certification. Renowned for the quality of its programs and instruction,LRCE has trained well over 2000 teachers for the state of Louisiana,many of whom have subsequently won district and state awards or become leaders within their educational context.

Up until early 2020,all LRCE training and certification had been delivered in classroom settings to participants in the Baton Rouge area. This model included a 7 week full-time concentrated block of in-person classroom instruction over the summer. As the COVID-19 pandemic escalated in early 2020,LRCE were challenged with transforming their education programs from face-to-face delivery to an online or virtual learning model.

Challenge –Maintaining quality instruction in an accelerated move to online delivery

With 150 student teachers signed up for the 2020 summer Certification program,the LRCE leadership team were tasked with selecting an e-learning platform,establishing an online infrastructure,moving years of curriculum content into online delivery and training the teaching workforce of 9 full time and 20 adjunct teachers in the use of that platform.

Chris Joyce,the Senior Director of Programs at LRCE explains,“We have always been known for having great relationships with our students and a 1 on 1 personal touch. Our curriculum and instruction are second to none and it was very important to us,unlike some of our competitors,that we maintained a component of synchronous delivery and,of course,the quality of our instructional design. We also recognised that the move to online would provide us the opportunity to train and certify teachers all across the state of Louisiana,rather than being limited to a certain subgroup based on time and location. We knew that this would allow us to reach historically underserved communities and ultimately improve the quality of teaching in those districts.”

LRCE had just an eight week period to select,build and implement an online learning platform. 

Approach –Working in partnership with Moodle Certified Service Provider

A number of alternative LMS platforms were reviewed. LRCE identified that they needed a platform that supported both synchronous and asynchronous delivery and was easy to navigate as many people that undertake teaching training have not completed formal education for many years,or their technology skills may not be that strong. Equally,ease of use needed to be balanced with good course design and the ability to utilise data to make informed decisions about curriculum design and delivery. 

“We liked the Moodle platform,but very importantly we liked My Learning Consultants (MLC) and the partnership with them. We valued that they provided a team of people dedicated to ‘hold our hand’through the process as none of us had the required level of experience to build the platform ourselves,”says Joyce.

The choice of Moodle as a platform was therefore made hand in hand with the choice of Moodle Certified Service Provider,MLC (now Moodle US) who worked very closely with Chris Joyce,Senior Director of Programs and Bethany Robixheaux, Senior Director of Operations and Finance at LRCE.

“The team at MLC walked us,namely myself and my colleague Bethany,through the build,every step of the way,both technically and from a learning design perspective. Michelle Moore and Ryan Hazen was there to explain,for instance,‘this is the type of learning activity you would create;this is the way to sequentially set up your course;this is the way you can keep people on a learning pathway through Restrict Access and Activity Completion’,and the list goes on,”says Joyce. 

We love that there are no limits. Other platforms can do six things really well,but if you want to do things outside that you might be at a lock. With Moodle it is,“I am sure Moodle can do this so let me pick up the phone and talk to someone about how this can be done.”

Chris Joyce,Senior Director of Programs at LRCE

Success stories from Moodle Premium Certified Service Provider, Catalyst IT

Awarded as Moodle’s 2021 Global Certified Service Provider of the Year, Catalyst IT is a multi-region group of Moodle and open source software specialists with teams in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK. Managing complex integrations is one of Catalysts’s core strengths and the following case studies from leading higher education providers Concordia University and CQUniversity highlight how integrating Moodle with other key systems can enhance student outcomes and deliver faculty efficiencies and greater insights.

Concordia University – Canada

Concordia University (CU) CU supports 45,000 students and over 2,000 full and part time staff through online learning via its Moodle LMS. As the Covid-19 pandemic took hold in Canada and lockdown began in March 2020, Concordia University made the decision to move to online delivery of high stakes exams. Working with Moodle Premium Certified Service Provider Catalyst IT, the project went from initial discussions to delivery of the designed solution, COLE – Concordia OnLine Exams, in eight weeks. The user-friendly solution has provided automated grading workflows allowing faculty to deliver examinations more efficiently and has allowed more immediate feedback to students and analysis of data to improve assessment insights. 

CQUniversity – Australia

With over 30,000 students and over 300 courses, leading Australian higher education provider CQUniversity (CQU) wanted to improve its student retention and conversely decrease its overall attrition rate by providing students with targeted support when it counts, during the term/semester. CQU, already a leader in the learning analytics space, wanted to enhance its existing tool that leveraged Moodle LMS data to create an enterprise level solution that would give them meaningful and actionable metrics as well as accurate predictions of academic grade outcomes. The Catalyst IT team worked with CQU to integrate the solution with data from six different systems/data sources across the university’s digital infrastructure. These included their Moodle Learning Management System, Student Management System, CRM, Academic Information Management System (AIMS), continuous feedback data, business intelligence data and predictive analytics data. Using open source frameworks Laravel and React, the solution, named CQU Success, is now a core business system and provides stakeholders with analytics as to what results are predicted to be. This means that teaching staff now have visibility of students that are struggling, to enable the provision of proactive timely support and intervention.

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