St.Francis Xavier University (StFX) is a premier institution in Nova Scotia, renowned for delivering outstanding undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs within a vibrant and close-knit campus community.
As one of Canada’s oldest and most prestigious universities, StFX offers an exceptional student experience to more than 5,000 learners, combining academic excellence with a welcoming, picturesque campus.
A proud member of the Maple League of Universities, StFX stands among a select group of top-ranked institutions committed to transformative undergraduate education and rich, collaborative learning opportunities for students, faculty, and staff.
The University has been using Moodle since 2012 as their LMS. However, as demand for online learning surged over the recent years, StFX sought to improve their LMS to meet the demand for growing online course offerings and registrations, and to accommodate evolving learner needs.
Addressing diverging priorities
The StFX Centre for Online Learning & Professional Studies delivers nursing and graduate education programs, undergraduate courses, micro-credentials, and non-credit, open learning opportunities to students in Nova Scotia and across Canada.
Originally, registrations for both the StFX Main Campus and open learning were integrated directly with the Registrar’s Office. As the number of open learning online course registrations grew for the distance learning department, this arrangement provided some challenges:
- Prospective students needed a more integrated course enrolment solution. The original Moodle instance was not designed to deal with course registrations, as it was directly integrated with the Main Campus Registrar’s Office.
- StFX Online delivers courses throughout the year, which does not align with the timing and scheduling needs of the main campus, which primarily focuses on Fall and Winter courses.
With diverging needs and priorities, StFX started to look for an LMS platform that could assist creating courses at any time of the year, thus providing more open learning for learners.
They looked to Catalyst IT Canada to leverage their 25+ years of experience working with higher education, government, and health institutions in providing open source solutions and expertise in LMS support. As a Moodle Premium Certified Partner, Catalyst IT has a track record of success implementing Moodle-based solutions for growing institutions.
Findings and Solutions
Catalyst IT Canada worked closely with StFX and the StFX Online team to understand their vision and needs for their growing programs. The vision was to lay the foundation for future non-credit courses, certifications, and microcredentials with an LMS that can support their needs, while still staying integrated with the rest of the main campus.
They recommended using Moodle Workplace, available through Moodle Certified Premium Partners, to provide a learning environment that would be conducive for evolving learner needs, while also providing high scalability and resiliency for StFX Online’s future growth.
With this recommendation, StFX Online was able to launch a new and scalable platform fit to grow with the department and their offerings across and beyond campus, thus connecting learners to new pathways of learning.
Working with Catalyst, I have been able to really get into the deep end of Moodle to develop better interactive online classrooms for instructors.
Results
As a result of a successful collaboration, StFX Online was able to launch a new and improved LMS that works for their goals – LearnOnline.
- Diverse course offerings. StFX Online is now able to offer an increased – and growing – number of non-credit and open learning courses throughout the year through LearnOnline.
- Tailored, customized features for learners. With Moodle’s available functionalities, plugins and integrations, StFX Online was able to create a tailored learning environment for their instructors and learners. They were able to customize their LearnOnline LMS with custom login page, branding, reporting, language translation (from English to French), and more, thus adapting the platform to their unique needs.
- Streamlined user registration. Learners can easily browse and sign up for their courses online instantly, as opposed to lengthy processes with paper forms. Administrators have saved more time from conducting manual, administrative work. With a separate LearnOnline platform, registrations for online and distance learning courses now go directly to the StFX Online office. The team can now focus on providing quality courses.
- Continued growth. Since the launch of StFX Online’s new LearnOnline Moodle instance, enrollment has continued to grow in the open online courses. Their LMS platform is poised to grow with their course offerings in the future.
Increasing partnerships for learning
StFX Online is now able to use their LMS to its full potential, allowing them to partner with other campus stakeholders, such as the Coady Institute, to grow their online course offerings. Coady Institute has been a world-renowned leader in community development education since 1959. Thanks to their modern platform, StFX Online has been able to assist in transforming the Institute’s historically in-person programs into hybrid courses, using a mix of in-person and online synchronous course deliveries, and making it more available to learners beyond the province.
Furthermore, in conjunction with the Government of Nova Scotia, StFX Online has been able to develop several online programs that meet the current provincial framework for accreditation, thus expanding the reach of their courses beyond the university community to the provincial government and businesses, making an impact to more professionals and learners.
Catalyst Canada has been instrumental in enabling us to expand our vision of education beyond traditional degrees. Through their support, we have been able to partner with industry, deliver micro-credentials tailored to working professionals, and create accessible learning opportunities that meet real-world needs. This collaboration has allowed StFX not only to strengthen professional development within Nova Scotia but also to extend our impact to communities and learners well beyond our campus.
From LearnOnline to Main Campus
Following the success of StFX Online’s new LearnOnline Moodle instance, registrations for distance learning courses grew rapidly. This convinced the StFX Main Campus to migrate their original Moodle LMS onto Catalyst’s Managed Services, equipped with secure, flexible, and fully-managed cluster on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and 24/7 support.
In addition to a smooth migration process, StFX was able to integrate their Banner SIS with their new Moodle platform, thus providing a seamless experience for students, faculty, and staff, and making their Moodle platform a main component for learning across the university.
As a result of a successful migration, StFX can now hold courses across institutions within the Maple League of Universities to better serve all learners, thus strengthening their ties with other higher education institutions to provide better learning for all students.
Investing in modern solutions for modern learners
Today’s learners require more than traditional approaches; they need modern, adaptable solutions that meet their learning goals and where they are. With a highly customizable, capable and resilient LMS, StFX can meet their institutional learning priorities and continue to expand the boundaries of what higher education can offer, driven by the flexibility, accessibility, and innovation enabled through Moodle.
Our collaboration with Catalyst has allowed StFX to modernize how we support learners. By strengthening our online platforms, introducing innovative program formats, and ensuring a seamless connection between learners and instructors, we’ve been able to extend high-quality education well beyond the traditional classroom.
We thank St. Francis Xavier University for trusting us with this project. This partnership reflects a shared commitment to continuous growth, innovation, and the future of education in Canada, and we are proud to support them in this endeavour.
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