Monitoring System to Help an e-Learning Institution to Manage Tutors and Student Data Retrieved from Moodle

Abstract

E-learning has become an excellent alternative for those who want to align studies, professional qualification, and career. Several courses offered in this modality use the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) known as Moodle to support the process of teaching and learning. However, some managerial needs are not optimized in this VLE, especially regarding the administration of students and tutors information. Because of this, the monitoring process carried out by the work teams in the educational institutions might become expensive and time-consuming. Although the data is in a single database in Moodle, it is not a practical activity retrieving the information. Therefore, in face of this reality, the Open University of Brazilian National Health System in partnership with the Federal University of Maranhão (UNA-SUS/UFMA) and other higher education institutions developed the Monitoring System, a tool that makes easier the decision-making and the didactic strategies elaboration using data from Moodle. This paper aims to present the Monitoring System, that enabled data management in a faster and online way, requiring less effort of the monitoring team to generate useful information for a satisfactory course control and progress, resulting in a significant reduction in the time spent by UNA-SUS/UFMA monitoring team to manage students and tutors data