Corporate Learning with Moodle Workplace: Explore concepts, implementation, and strategies for adopting Moodle Workplace in your organization

Moodle Workplace is perfect for the way people work today. In a single platform, you can set up onboarding, compliance training, group brand-building projects, team projects, webinars, and collaboration. The advantage of Moodle Workplace over simply building your own solution with standard Moodle is that Moodle Workplace has built a framework that allows you to quickly set up your business-related tasks.Author Alex Buchner helps you get started quickly and effectively. If you’re familiar with Moodle as it is used for an educational institution, you’ll immediately notice that some of the terms have been used to give the platform a business feel. Individual users are “tenants” which evokes the feeling of a building with physical office space where you can arrange the workers. The decision by the makers for Workplace Moodle to trigger a visual image of a single building may be a bit ill-advised, given the distributed workplace and the very real possibility that post-COVID, many companies will choose not to pay high rents but will encourage working from home as much as feasible and practical. For Minecraft devotees, the open-world sandbox aspect is an exciting one, and the prospect of building a training and collaboration world with Moodle Workplace is exciting.Moodle Workplace does not replace Moodle. Instead it consists of a series of plug-ins that sit on top of the Moodle platform. In this sense, it’s a customization and the downside is that any inherent limitations in Moodle will be present in Moodle Workplace as well. Some of the plug-ins are Totara Learn-developed plug-ins, so if there are aspects of Totara that you do not like, you’ll need to learn to live with them, at least until Moodle 4.0, and then all bets are off. Another limitation is the fact that it’s not available for your own on-premise download. Instead, you must work through an authorized Moodle Partner. They can be expensive.That said, the biggest advantage of using Moodle Workplace vs another solution is a quick learning curve for Moodle users, customizable appearance, and rapid deployment. Further, Workplace Moodle has made an effort to integrate with other databases or systems. For example, many companies currently use AEP for their payroll functions as well as compliance, workforce development record-keeping.For a developer or instructional designer who is used to using Moodle with educational institutions, it will be intuitive to use Workplace Moodle to set up training modules that include the content as well as assessment.The self-enrollment function for both synchronous and asynchronous training events eliminates the need for associations and professional societies with external members to use something like EventBrite. Being able to integrate the webconferencing function (Big Blue Button, for example), makes it possible to do everything from within Moodle and not have to exit in order to set up a separate meeting with Zoom, Teams, BlueJeans, RingCentral, etc.Buchner’s text goes into detail about how to set up the following: --training with assessment --training with automatic generation of badges and/or certificates --designing badges and certificates --collaborative projects with team members from different groups / locations --brand-building exercisesBuchner does not go into as much detail as he could about one of Moodle’s big advantages. Although the file sizes are limited, Moodle does and can function as a content management system as well as a learning management system. The choice whether to archive and create repositories in the cloud-based Moodle site, or to create a portal to one’s own storage / repositories is one that the user will make. But, the bottom line is the same: Workplace Moodle (as well as regular Moodle) can help you map your training path and the objects used in conjunction with it, and to do so with maximum flexibility and re-useability.

I absolutely enjoyed reading this book. What I liked about the book is the logical structured approach.Starting with basics in Part 1 where the emphasis is on explaining the basic concepts in the LMS world, comparison with the other industry siblings and then brilliantly bring it back to the Moodle workplace.Part 2: Data, Process and Workflows; covers knowledge on available features and tools that will aid the users to optimize their learning management workflow. I personal liked the modules on multi-tenancy, custom reporting, and automation rules.Part 3 – Technical tools, at a high-level, deals with how you can adapt to the Moodle workplace inline with your business goals and needs.Whether you are a beginner or an advance user, this book is for everyone who wants to understand Moodle workplace administration. I would strongly recommend this book, unlike most of the technical books, “I found this book well-written, through and very practical”.