Hello again!

It’s been a few weeks since I last posted on here, start of term as busy as ever!

Our Moodle is now being used in the classrooms, the first few tutors have been getting resources on there and to my relief the Live@Edu sign-on system has worked (after getting rather worried about it a few weeks back when the co-branding broke the login flow).

Course creation and enrolments are handled by a custom web interface designed by our MIS provider which makes administration a lot easier and quicker. We’ve got a nice little system running with our MIS database to pull in new enrolments, generate passwords and then print out the details on labels that students can then put in with their ID cards, looks good too! Learners also get an introduction sheet to what their login entitles them to plus first time login info, fits nicely on a sheet of A4 (as a 4 page A5 booklet). More tutors are coming on board and we’ll soon have Mahara and e-ILPs on test as well… so far so good 🙂

On the design side of things I felt something still wasn’t quite right so had a play around and ended up with a few subtle tweaks that look a lot better…

• lightened up the greys in the page background so it blends better with the white content areas
• removed borders on Moodle blocks, again more fluid to look at
• changed page background to a subtle light blue > white gradient
• tweaked footer with common navigation page links added
• My Moodle page now has a nicer graphic and also some custom welcome text with the student name as part of the intro, this idea was suggested by one of the tutors to give a more personal touch and I think it works pretty well.

Found a nice link today with some Web 2.0 design tips and having read through it I’m amazed how many I’ve added subconsciously!

http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/web-design/web-2-0-design-style-guide/