Stand Alone Moodle (SAM)
Moodle is an open-source learning management system (LMS) that allows educators to create online courses and manage learning activities. A stand-alone Moodle installation refers to a Moodle installation that is not integrated with any other system or platform. By the end of 2012, a project team was awarded a $AUD 217,000 funding from the Australian government’s Office for Learning and Teaching Innovation and Development to further develop Stand Alone Moodle (Farley & Doyle, 2014). In the PLEIADES new initiative, it took two USQ ICT Services workers a day to deploy the server software, the most recent instance of Moodle, and the TPP7120 course on the correctional Center education server. This was deemed unrealistic if SAM was to be expanded to other correctional facilities in the future. The goal of ”From Access to Success” was to automate most of the server software, Moodle instance, and course installation. SAM can be installed from a DVD, and the course instance can be uploaded from another DVD. Correctional center education personnel can easily uninstall the previous semester’s course, update SAM, and install the new course from the DVDs by following a few basic instructions. This process takes roughly thirty minutes, which is a major improvement over the time it takes USQ ICT workers to accomplish the duties in situ.