Image source: Cambrian College (cambriancollege.ca)
Established in 1967, Cambrian College is a publicly-funded, post-secondary institution serving educational needs in Northern Ontario and beyond. Cambrian College is one of 24 colleges in Ontario, with campuses in Sudbury, Espanola, and Little Current.
Cambrian College is the largest college in northern Ontario, serving more than 5,000 full-time and part-time students from approximately 70 countries. The College offers more than 100 programs that lead to degrees, post-graduate certificates, diplomas, advanced diplomas, certificates, and micro-credentials. With a plethora of offerings, Cambrian was looking for a reliable LMS provider to host their Moodle site and support their diverse program offerings and delivery methods.
Key Needs / Challenges
Cambrian College was seeking a capable and qualified Moodle Services Provider to deliver a robust, cloud-based solution for hosting, maintaining, and servicing the College’s existing Learning Management System (LMS), Moodle. In particular, they were looking for a provider that could support them with the following:
- the migration of site data from existing provider
- setting up of a new instance
- upgrading to the latest version of Moodle
- ensuring the site was up-and-running for the next term
Findings / Solutions / Process:
The team at Catalyst IT worked closely with Cambrian College to understand their needs and have provided the following:
- Detailed timelines and clear outline of the steps involved in the migration, site setup, version upgrade, and post-launch support
- Early access to a staging site, which allowed Cambrian staff to explore the features of the new Moodle version and develop training resources for users
In addition, Catalyst also helped Cambrian with:
- Identifying necessary plugin updates and configuration changes, enabling the Cambrian team to resolve potential issues ahead of the launch date, and
- Ensuring the login experience remained consistent with their previous site, making the transition seamless for students, faculty, and staff.
This proactive support minimized user confusion and allowed the new term to start smoothly, without any disruptions.
The Catalyst team communicated with Cambrian every step of the way, ensuring a smooth and well-managed transition from their previous LMS provider.
Results:
Timely Delivery
With strategic planning and a proactive approach, the Catalyst team was able to migrate the majority of Cambrian’s data well in advance of the anticipated timeline, thus completing the full site migration and having the new Moodle environment ready in time for the start of the semester.
Minimal Disruption
Catalyst coordinated directly with Cambrian’s previous LMS provider to handle the bulk of the migration early, which significantly reduced the data load during the final migration window.
On the actual migration date, only a small delta of new data needed to be transferred, drastically reducing downtime.
As a result, users experienced minimal disruption, and Cambrian College was able to launch the new Moodle site on time for the start of the term.
Proactive Approach and Efficiencies
The Catalyst team anticipated potential challenges and provide tailored solutions before issues could arise. This proactive approach not only minimized risks but also has saved the Cambrian team countless hours that would have been spent troubleshooting and fixing last-minute problems.
Catalyst’s technical leadership, and their early recommendation to migrate the majority of our data in advance, was key to reducing downtime and ensuring the migration was disruption-free. Catalyst’s Project Manager provided expert coordination between the Catalyst and Cambrian teams, keeping the project on track and ensuring accountability on all sides; as well as timely delivery of every task.”
