We IT guys and especially software experts like to use the sentence ".... is not a silver bullet". This means that any piece of software or IT component is not enough to solve all of the business problems by itself. There are many factors surrounding the IT which participate to the success of the whole operation.
I have to remind this sentence to bunch of people here at college very often. College managers tend to think that utilizing Moodle to the full extent will solve all of the problems related to mobile learning and online learning. That is not true people! We need some other non IT components at place for success.
Quality Content
Content has the most important part in overall success of a Moodle installation. Colleges have to serve quality content to the students which should be developed with nice balance of pedagogy and technology. If your Moodle focus is mainly on mobile access, producing and serving quality content shall be taken seriously. Mobile devices with limited screen size is an important constraint defining the coverage of the content and mobility itself is a key factor as well. I think colleges shall separate mobile and regular content. While mobile content is being arranged more like flash cards, regular content shall provide all aspects of a learning objective. It is also very important to provide a way to switch between mobile and regular content independent of the device content is being accessed.
Teacher Commitment
Moodle is the soft media between students and teachers just like air is on traditional classroom based education. Unless both sides are ready for participation the media itself can do nothing to produce good results. Teachers are enablers and this is true for Moodle utilization as well. If you are using Moodle as learning support system, that is you give traditional classroom based education and use Moodle just as complementary tool, commitment of the teachers to Moodle may be a big problem. Colleges have to figure out how to increase teacher commitment to Moodle. For example, colleges can impose some regulations or promote teachers using Moodle actively.
Student Participation
You have Moodle, you think you have quality content and your teachers use Moodle actively but Moodle student usage is low.If student participation is lacking it may be indicator of another problem probably related to technlogy, content, teachers or all of them. Be aware of the separation between what students want from Moodle and what you want them to access from Moodle.
Complementary Software
Moodle is just a platform having some default modules, but that is not the whole story. Moodle has lots of third party modules, some open source/free and some commercial. Try to keep an eye on these modules and test them regularly even you do no use them on production.
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