NATO School Oberammergau (NSO) overhauled its Learning Management System to improve security, user experience, and teaching support.

    • December 2023 – The NSO sought a way to evolve digitally and to replace their incumbent LMS.
    • Determined to find the best LMS solution, the NSO turned to Catalyst IT, a Premium Certified Moodle Partner, and selected Moodle LMS.
    • February 2024 – The NSO announced the launch of their brand new Learning Management System (LMS)

Challenge

The NSO provides education and training in support of current and developing NATO operations, strategy, policy and procedures. Through a mix of residential and online courses of variable durations, from 1 hour to 10 weeks, the NSO plays a key role in NATO’s training, promoting and overseeing the continuing development of Alliance forces and capabilities.

The NSO’s Advanced Distance Learning (ADL) and eLearning faculty were most interested in the Moodle platform since it is in the top 5 LMS globally. Many within the NATO eLearning community were already familiar with it, and it met their requirements for security, user interface and faculty training capability.

However, their biggest concerns lay in how to deploy a new solution quickly, not least upskilling their staff most easily and straight-forwardly, as they were moving to Moodle from an entirely different platform.

Following a referral from AWS for a sole source contract, the NSO invited Catalyst IT to tender.

The NSO IT team valued Catalyst IT’s global expertise in secure Moodle LMS hosting, ensuring compliance with high-security standards, 24/7 follow-the-sun support, and continuous monitoring to maintain a robust and reliable learning environment.

The Solution: A Secure, Stable and Scalable Moodle LMS

Within just one month of being awarded the contract Catalyst IT had the NSO’s new Moodle LMS up and running, supporting course delivery and professional development, as well as capturing feedback and managing events.

All the training and support materials for their courses can be uploaded, and new courses can be quickly developed using templates.

Moodle provides everything needed for classroom, content and student management for over 100 courses, in a highly dynamic environment where staff change rapidly, and courses need to be repeated weekly.

The NSO have about 20 online introductory self-paced courses, including micro-learning videos and webinars, some of which are pre-requisites for the 115 1 – 2-week residential courses in their catalogue.

Ahead of the residential portion of their courses the LMS enables participants to break the ice and get to know each other before arriving in Oberammergau. Then during the residential period, the LMS is used for content sharing, daily tests or quizzes to check students’ progress, and for collecting feedback.

In terms of event management, Moodle supports pre-event planning and organisation for workshops and conferences, as well as sharing content and gathering feedback during and after.

This image showcases two laptops side by side, each displaying the NATO School Oberammergau Moodle platform. On the left, the dashboard is visible with course tiles for "Freedom to Innovate" and "Experts in Open Source Solutions," along with the option to view self-directed courses. The calendar for February 2025 is shown on the right side of the screen. On the right laptop, a military-themed background with a soldier and a transparent NATO emblem is visible, welcoming users to the NATO School Oberammergau eLearning platform. Both laptops are shown on a neutral background.

Results and Benefits

The NSO has an ongoing contract with Catalyst IT, who continue to maintain all the packages and keep the technology up to date.

 

Our new LMS revolutionizes resident training environment. It enhances the quality of learning by fostering an interactive, immersive space where students can hone their skills. The state-of-the-art user interface is intuitive and user-friendly, making navigation a breeze. The system is packed with innovative features that facilitate seamless communication, collaboration, and progress tracking. The content is dynamic and engaging, designed to cater to diverse learning styles. This LMS solution is not just about imparting knowledge; it’s about creating an enriching learning experience that empowers students to reach their full potential. Gigi Roman, subject matter expert for Advanced Distributed Learning at the NSO

 

Training and Support

The initial concerns about staff support and training have also been satisfactorily assuaged.

With a very responsive and flexible approach to training and support, including onsite hosting of 1-1 drop-in sessions for the NSO’s instructors, Catalyst IT proved that they are not just excellent with the technology, but are also a great help in getting the most out of the platform.

As a result the NSO has secured Catalyst’s services for a further year of technical support, and our Digital Learning Consultants will be returning to deliver more on-site training.

Ease of User Interface

With a global audience and a rapid changeover of instructors it is vital that the LMS is intuitive and easy to use.

The ADL team are finding there is no problem in re-purposing existing content on the platform and creating courses from scratch using templates. Furthermore, the instructors are enjoying using it.

Greater Responsiveness

Daily quizzes and feedback enable the instructors to get insights into students’ progress quicker and adapt the material to suit their learning needs more effectively.

The insights into how different audiences receive content, also enables them to develop their material accordingly.

Scalability

Residential teaching space has been freed up in the School by putting much of the standard pre-requisite material online. Better use can be made of the School facilities for more events.

Customisations

Moodle is an extremely flexible open-source platform with a whole host of plug-ins, available for different customisations. With the right level of knowledge and development expertise from an experienced implementation partner, customised features can be built in a short space of time. This is in stark contrast to other providers’ annual release approach to functionality updates, and makes for a more agile solution.

Security

The NSO’s IT department look after the security details for student registration, including human verification to defend against bots and multi-factor authentication. Access permissions and GDPR housekeeping also require careful attention.

The ADL team have been very pleased with Catalyst’s professionalism and technical know-how in understanding their security requirements and in liaising knowledgeably with the School’s IT department.

New Possibilities

The e-learning team at the NSO is looking forward to greater automation in the student registration and accreditation processes as well as making more interactive content, and embedding their streaming technology in the platform for live events.

NATO Training Technology Conference

In September 2024 the NSO ADL team and Catalyst IT presented their collaboration success story to a very appreciative audience at the annual training technology conference.

Whilst Moodle has been a familiar buzzword amongst NATO Schools and Colleges for some time the differentiator for the NSO in deploying Moodle has been the comprehensive capabilities of Catalyst IT, which are enabling more support and insight for the wider ADL and LMS Community across NATO’s educational remit.

Catalyst IT Perspective

Supporting the NSO has been a privilege. They had clear goals, and as they gain experience with Moodle, they’re now asking more advanced questions, which is always exciting for us! We look forward to continuing our collaboration.

 

The NSO is open to providing a reference for other military education and training facilities upon request through Catalyst IT.

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