Introducing our Economics VLE (Moodle) for 2011/12

Our Moodle-based VLE for AS and A2 Economics courses for subscribing schools and college during the 2011-12 academic year is now available. Our open-source Moodle VLE is hosted by Synergy Learning and provides users with the latest version of Moodle which has numerous improvements and extra features compared to a year ago.

Each subscribing school has their own unique course comprising resources for AS and A2 micro and macroeconomics. And students are also automatically enrolled onto four extra courses covering the four core units of the AS and A2 exams.

The essence of a Moodle VLE is the opportunity for teachers to experiment and enrich teaching and learning by getting students to create their own content either individually or in numerous collaborative activities bringing many different types of assessment into play.

Our hope, in addition to providing every student with core revision resources, is that schools and colleges joining us will use their own tutor2u VLE spaces to try things out – in using glossaries, different types of quizzes, active discussion forums, databases and different types of assignment.

We use the very latest version of Moodle - Moodle 2.1 - which provides a highly flexible learning space and connects well with many third-party applications including Google Docs, You Tube and social media apps.

Any teacher and department who would like to get involved this year can order access to their own Moodle course on the tutor2u VLE using this link:

Once we receive details of student names and their specific courses we create a new Moodle course for that school and then assign students into their chosen groups with each teacher have full editing rights. So schools will only see the Moodle course that they have been enrolled for.

Our pricing covers the hosting, support and maintenance costs of our VLE installation which is now one of the biggest Moodle sites in the UK. In school year 2010/11, over 5,000 A level Economics students were registered and active users of the VLE, covering over 200 schools and colleges. There are two price bands based on the number of students who you wish to be registered to use the VLE each year:

Large institution: £125 (+VAT) for institutions with 50 + registered students - full year access to all courses + dedicated course for institution
Small institution: £75 (+VAT) for institutions with less than 50 registered students - full year access to all courses + dedicated course for institution

Teacher registrations are free provided they are made as part of an institutional subscription.

If you would like to have a look around the Tutor2u Economics VLE pleasegeoff@tutor2u.net for a guest login and password. Existing schools and colleges who require renewal of their subscriptions should contact the office and egeoff@tutor2u.net for a copy of the enrolment spreadsheet template.

If you are new to Moodle and to the work of a global Moodle community of hundreds of thousands of teachers around the world, here are some useful links:

Moodle main web-site: http://moodle.org/

The spirit and principles behind the Moodle project (July 2011): http://www.slideshare.net/moodler/moodle-keynote-july-2011-8597385