April 09

Learners completed their initial questionnaires this month enabling Bev to gather some baseline data so we can now start introducing the learners to some elements of the Learner Portal and identify the best presentation for September. To find out more see Bev’s Evaluation blog – link on the right of the page.

The process of migrating the Diploma course from Blackboard to Mahara is well underway. As anticipated this has not been anywhere near as easy as the documentation makes out. Archive Blackboard and restore in Moodle – Joke! The team tried this but found that Moodle didn’t recognise the structure that had been set up in Blackboard but simply laid out all the materials in a long, long, long list. Some of the links worked, some didn’t. The time it would have taken to sort this out would have been incredible so we had to look for other ways to do this.

After trying various methods we finally came up with the following:
1. Archive Blackboard course
2. Run this zip file through the free application BFree which goes through the Blackboard zip and renames/recreates the content to replicate the folder structure and file names displayed on the Blackboard course.
3. Zip this new folder and import it to the Files area on the Moodle course and then design the course around it linking to the files as needed.

Anyone interested in the tips we have been recording as we progress can find out more by using the link to visit our Moodle course.