Introduction

Nord Anglia Education (NAE) is an organisation of 55 international schools located across 25 countries, with almost 10,000 staff providing education for over 50,000 students from 2 to 18 years of age.

Staff across the organisation use a centralised Moodle platform for professional development branded as ‘Nord Anglia University’.

Problem

Nord Anglia University saw the need to improve the look, feel and navigation of their Moodle site so that it is user-friendly and meets the e-learning needs of everyone at the organisation.

They chose to work with Titus Learning on a number of projects including tailored Moodle development and to create a new theme for their Moodle site.

The key aim of the new theme was to improve both the aesthetic and usability in order to support a target to double the amount of site visitors.

“We were referred to Titus Learning by our Hong Kong IT team. We felt that they showed a good understanding of what Moodle could do and also how it was actually used day to day by both end users and the people maintaining the site.” – Joanna Lay, Programme Lead for Nord Anglia University at Nord Anglia Education.

Action

With such a large and diverse user base to cater to, designing the new Moodle theme was a challenging prospect. We sat down with the team at NAE to establish the key parameters which would make the new theme a success:

• Clear and consistent branding throughout to communicate and support the Nord Anglia Education visual identity and its presentation to users
• Reduction of visual clutter and increased prominence of most relevant or frequently used sections
• Enhanced functionality and usability to encourage increased usage of the site
• Embedded translation tools to allow the site to be used in multiple languages

“The process went very well. We were kept informed of what was happening by your team throughout the process through email and regular catch up meetings. The consultation was handled professionally and was a two way communication that allowed us to adapt our plans to be more effective. The development went well apart from a few small hiccups which for a project of this size was actually very successful! Any issues that were found were dealt with quickly and effectively.” – Joanna Lay

Results

The platform now allows staff to enrol in short online courses to further their professional development, as well as communicate with one another via online communities, complete directed self-study modules and access an extensive library of research materials including journals, video resources and e-books.

Custom development

Since launching the platform, we’ve continued to work closely with Nord Anglia Education on a number of bespoke projects, some of which are currently under development including:

• Customisation of the media gallery plugin
• A new, highly visual dashboard with at a glance access to key user data
• An events tool which allows scheduling and management of online seminars
• A content tagging and streaming interface
• A media driven social sharing environment

Looking to the future

Nord Anglia Education also subscribes to our proactive support service to support the UK and Hong Kong based administration teams in the day to day running of the sites.

As part of the service they have access to a named contact in our team who can advise on tweaks and improvements to ensure their Moodle is well used, as well as spotting any minor issues before they become a problem.

“Overall things have gone extremely well and we already have plans in place to work on further projects and functionality for the website.” – Joanna Lay

In addition, we have also started working with a number of NAE member schools on their individual learning platforms, including Dover Court International School in Singapore and the British School of Beijing. We’ll publish separate case studies for these projects shortly – watch this space.

To learn more about the work we’ve done with Moodle, or to find out how we could help your school or organisation improve engagement, communication and learning outcomes, book a short online demo with one of our team.