A new short course platform for the University of Exeter

Our approach

University of Exeter (UoE) previously ran their short course provision from FutureLearn. It was decided internally that UoE would prefer to run this on their own Moodle platform so they can utilise the functionality that Moodle provides (where FutureLearn fell short). Then we need to elevate Moodles functionality to add features that FutureLearn previously provided. 

UoE had a staged release to their users. The first stage was to have a “soft release” the site to their internal users in August 2023 (under 3 months since project start). The second release was to external users in April 2024. We aimed to provide a brand new Moodle (with new theme and branding) that gave the added ability for forum moderation. 

During Phase 1, a brand new Moodle was provisioned with the Edwiser theme which met the business need very quickly when it came to look and feel. After some collaborative adjustments, the site was delivered within 3 months for internal release. This was to ensure that the funded short courses could be delivered to their internal users. Following Phase 1, we started the creation of the ‘Forum moderation toolset’ which was created in time for the Phase 2 launch in April 2024 which added a button to flag a forum post for moderation to the moderator role on Moodle via email and account notification when logged in.