According to the 2014 Rhodes Learning guide, RUconnected is an “online learning platform” which has forums for discussion and connections to the online plagiarism checker Turnitin.
RUconnected is the online Learning Management System used to support the teaching and learning experience at Rhodes. It is run from the CHERTL by Nompilo Tshuma, who also runs Turnitin for Rhodes.
In the september 2014 Rhodes Exchange newsletter, Professor Boughey said that in terms of new technologies in tertiary education “… we are able to track the download patterns it has become clear that a more sophisticated use of the RU Connected technology is allowing lecturers to personalise their teaching using information and communication technology”.
RUconnected functions because of two things: The program Moodle and its creator Enovation Solutions.
Enovation solutions is a company specializing in integrating Open Source software for eLearning, Document Management and Web Content or so they say. Some of their products are Alfresco, DSpace, Drupal and of course Moodle
Tshuma said that RUconnected was first implemented at Rhodes around 2004. It was first used it at the beginning of 2005, where it had a Moodle interface. “However, for branding purposes – and to ensure that RUconnected blends in with other Rhodes web pages – a new theme was developed,” she said “At that time we were using Moodle v1.9. The interface changed again in 2012, after we upgraded to Moodle 2.3”
Moodle is an eLearning programme that was built by the Moodle project which is coordinated by Moodle HQ. According to their site, the benefits of Moodle are that it is easy to use, scalable to size, private, free from licensing fees, adaptable to language and can be used everywhere. The program is used by institutions such as Australia National University, California State Universities and London School of Economics.
It was founded and developed by Martin Dougiamas who started the early version of Moodle in 1999 and it uses the PHP programming language. In an interview with EdtechTimes, Dougiamas stated that the programme is written in PHP because it is very cheap for servers. “PHP is also a language that is easy to learn and use, and quite a few of our contributing developers have started as teachers who wanted to improve something small in Moodle and learned from there,” he said.
Tshuma hopes that RUconnected can be upgraded in the future. “Moodle has a wide range of plugins that extend its functionality beyond the basic version,” she said. “What I can see for the future of RUconnected is adding some of these plugins – like Google Apps integration and social media integration”.
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