This is the third and final part of our series on the importance of great user experience for websites of higher education institutions. The first article covered the key elements of HigherEd website UX, the second one focused on tips & considerations for providing these experiences, and this final part will present two open source platforms which offer advanced e-learning capabilities as well as the features needed for great HigherEd UX.
Why open source?
In addition to the openness of open source platforms, there are additional benefits which are particularly relevant for higher education institutions:
Lower costs: proprietary platforms require default costs in addition to those associated with design and development. In contrast, an open source platform such as Drupal provides many features out of the box completely free of charge, and the creation of great experiences has been getting easier and easier – but more on that a bit later.
Higher customizability: with closed systems, you’re limited to the features provided by the platform and new releases. With an open source platform, however, you have free reign to customize existing features and/or create new tailor-fit ones as per your specific requirements.
Strong community support: speaking of custom solutions, the free innovation of open source communities means that you’ll often be able to find an existing contributed solution that fits your needs perfectly, or might only need very minor tweaks.
Drupal
Drupal has a long standing reputation as a content management system able to power advanced digital experiences, particularly in areas such as governments and NGOs, and higher education, where it’s used by some of the most renowned universities such as Stanford and Princeton.
It offers a lot of features that seem tailored for HigherEd institutions, being robust and secure but also highly customizable. Some of these specific features include excellent multisite and multilingual capabilities, a great system of roles and permissions, and, on top of everything else, it provides next-level editorial and content management capabilities, which only keep improving.
Its great headless support enables combining the best features of Drupal’s back end with modern front end technologies such as React, Vue or Next.js. In fact, you can even make use of the Next.js-Drupal integration, Next-Drupal, developed by the Chapter Three team.
Recent and upcoming updates are also especially relevant for higher education institutions. The latest major version, Drupal 11, was released back in August, and future minor releases of 11.x plan on including features such as Automatic Updates and Project Browser.
Most importantly, a completely new version of Drupal is coming soon – Drupal CMS, which is specifically tailored to provide a great experience and empower users without the need of using an integrated development environment (IDE).
Moodle
A newer technology than Drupal, the Moodle platform is a great example of a learning management system (LMS). Wikipedia defines LMS as a “software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting, automation, and delivery of educational courses, training programs, materials or learning and development programs.”
Specifically, the Moodle LMS is secure, scalable and accessible, while offering easy integration with other technologies and fully customizable learning environments that benefit both students and teachers. In the context of higher education, Moodle is the most trusted learning management system, with a number of the world’s leading universities choosing it for their online learning experiences.
Agiledrop has partnered with the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, which consists of 26 faculties and academies which used to operate on their own individual Moodle installations which resulted in inconsistent and inefficient experiences.
We solved this problem by developing a custom SIS (Student Information System) Sync plugin which streamlined the flow of information between the SIS and Moodle. We also provided a unified feel and look with a new custom theme, and enhanced the learning environment even further by improving the course search functionality. You can read more about our Customized Moodle Solution for the University of Ljubljana here.
Wrapping up
This concludes our series on the importance of great digital experiences in higher education, where we discussed the key elements of great experiences in HigherEd together with tips & considerations, and a breakdown of two platforms that fit the bill perfectly.
Drupal and Moodle both provide the right functionality for creating and powering great HigherEd digital experiences. Both platforms are open source technologies, so they’re easy to get started with and also easily integrate with each other as well as with other components of your technology stack.
In case you need some help with your higher education institution’s website, check out how you’ll benefit from partnering with Agiledrop, and feel free to reach out to us directly to learn more about how we can help your website shine.
