Project Description

Front-end and back-end web design and programming to create a bespoke online training plan for the IAT Programme.

Clinical trainees on the Integrated Academic Training programme need to keep a record of their research throughout the duration of their training. The records they keep are standardised into a very specific format and traditionally this has been done using a Word document template. At the request of the Academic Centre, I was commissioned to turn this into a digital resource directly available from Moodle.

The key challenge on this project was to allow the Academic Centre to record exactly the kind of data they needed in the format they required while leveraging the benefits of integration with Moodle, namely student access mediated through the normal Moodle course enrolment process. Unfortunately the activities available within Moodle, such as Survey and Feedback, are not flexible enough to record the data as required.

A possible solution might have been to link to an online survey tool such as web-monkey, or one hosted on our own servers. However, transferring student login details into this external system would have been time consuming and would have required users to log-in twice - first into Moodle to access the course page, then again to open the survey.

Instead, I created a bespoke web application that uses the IMS Global Learning Consortium's Learning Tools Interoperability standard. This specification, allows for the seamless connection between Moodle and external learning tools, providing a secure connection between the two.

Using LTI I am able to extend Moodle without having to build plug-ins, or ask for them to be installed by the external company that hosts the VLE. LTI allows me to create my own standalone tools and activities and link to them directly. In the case of the IAT's Research Methods Training Plan, I was able to implement exactly the features specified - ease of use, a templated data collection format, print to PDF functionality and an admin section for viewing the submission status of records.

Software used: Adobe Dreamweaver.

Project Details

• Client: IAT Programme.
• Status: Completed July 2015
• Themes: lti, keats, web design, web development
• Team: Jerome Di Pietro