Sharepoint as an LMS

CPIT has now moved into a fully Microsoft based environment for their intranet.  As part of this move, the Microsoft collaboration platform, Sharepoint, will be launched for institution wide use later this year. My sister-in-law works as a corporate staff developer and the organization uses Sharepoint as both its CMS and LMS. At present, we use Moodle as a LMS. Therefore, a good reason to explore if there are advantages to using Sharepoint as an LMS and possibilities for integration of Moodle with Sharepoint.

Also found some references to integrating Moodle with Sharepoint, mostly at the school level rather than at a corporate training or tertiary insitutions. There is a Moodle to sharepoint plugin but is has a 2007 date so not sure how up to date it is. There is a guide to using sharepoint as a file sharing part of Moodle, with some discussions on the Moodle forum and on a educators forum of how to integrate sharepoint and Moodle.

The general approach seems to be to use Sharepoint as a file system and link these files on Moodle. Which is not too different from what we do now. Will need to do more investigation into this to explore how others integrate Sharepoint with Moodle.

Collaboration tools

Well, found rather a lot on collaboration tools! A very comprehensive sample from Robin Good plus some recommended ones for project management  and free web based collaboration tools.The CED team will really need to knuckle down and work out the main objective of using a collaboration tool in order to try to work out the best option available.

CPIT IT will be moving to a totally Microsoft environment next year. First adjustment will be transition from Novell’s Groupwise to Microsoft’s Outlook. Microsoft Sharepoint will be available from later in 2011. A review from the enterprise 2.0 viewpoint reveals both good and bad points depending on whether you are a user or IT adminstrator. So not sure if starting CED staff on collaboration tools will be a good move at this point in time. However, use of Sharepoint might not eventuate until well into 2012!


There has been an increase in interest in using Google Docs as a teaching / learning platform through two presentations / workshops attended recently. Firstly, the CAME project around automotive courses at Unitec and then demonstration of using Google docs by Aaron Steele with computing students’ projects at UCOL. Having a change to play with Google Docs last week with Aaron, was a good chance to try out the latest features on Google Docs.

So to begin, it might be good to start people on using google docs and just setting up one document into which we could archive various links etc. under various categories. This may still be the easiest approach as some Wiki tools can be intimidating to newcomers as per this article on the dos and don'ts of setting up collaborative sites and why people don't like using wikis.  Using Google Docs will help everyone come to grips with the possibilities of using collaborative cloud computing based platforms and building capability for more complex initiatives.

However, the extent of the various collaboration tools, does raise greater possibilities for project planning. Other options are basecamp (well-known but costs), wiggio (recommended by another team at NMIT and on trying out, seems to be user friendly and free) and dropbox (essentially a file sharing system).