Building Moodle-based Learning Management Systems for Universities: A
Development Report of the Gikadai LMS
Jingjing Lin 1), Hitoshi Goto 1),2)
1) Center for IT-based Education, Toyohashi University of Technology
2) Information and Media Center, Toyohashi University of Technology
lin@cite.tut.ac.jp

Abstract
The Gikadai LMS is a Moodle-based learning management system developed over the course of
two years by the Center for IT-based Education at Toyohashi University of Technology. From its
inception to its full maturity, the platform underwent iterative design, development, and revision
processes. Now, the platform is fully operational and awaiting user visits and usages. This paper
presents the Gikadai LMS as a case study to share a comprehensive understanding of LMS
development and to demonstrate the final product. To actualize the university’s digital education
vision, the project was driven by four objectives that cover system interoperability, open curriculum,
e-portfolio management, and online teaching and learning assistance. Four levels of development
were implemented as responses: strategy, server, application backend, and application frontend. The
final product is a unique Moodle instance that is networked with e-portfolio management system
Mahara, integrates Google Classroom functions, allows unlimited video conference meetings
simultaneously via the BigBlueButton tool, highly tailored user management and course
management in accordance with the university’s academic structure, open online classrooms forteachers and students, and friendly online support provided by both asynchronous human agents anda synchronous chatbot.

1 Introduction
Toyohashi University of Technology (TUT or
Gikadai) is one of only two Universities of Technology
in Japan, with over 80% of its students directlytransferred from 5-year technical colleges called
Kōsens (高専). TUT had approximately 200 faculty
members and 2,027 students as of May 2021 (1,176
undergraduate students, 748 master’s students, 103doctoral students, and 277 international students).
Moodle has been an optional learning management
system (LMS) for teachers and students since April
2011, when TUT switched from WebCT to self-hosting
Moodle (IMC LMS, https://lms.imc.tut.ac.jp) on auniversity-based virtual machine. IMC LMS wasdeveloped and maintained by the Information andMedia Center (IMC, https://imc.tut.ac.jp), which
manages and operates the network system andcomputing environment at TUT.
In April 2020, TUT established the Center for
IT-based Education (CITE, https://cite.tut.ac.jp) to
dedicate more resources to e-learning research andpractices in response to the increasing demand foronline teaching and learning support due to the
COVID-19 pandemic. In December 2020, the TUTTI(in Italian it means all, everyone) initiative waslaunched, to which two additional virtual machines394

were allotted for designing and developing a new LMS
using
Moodle(GikadaiLMS
project,
https://lms.cite.tut.ac.jp), as well as an educational
e-portfolio creation and management system using
Mahara(Gikadai
Maharaproject,
https://mahara.cite.tut.ac.jp).
This paper will focus primarily on introducing the
Gikadai LMS project in terms of its objectives andvision, four levels of development activities, and final
output that highlights significant designs on four
aspects:
inter-systemcommunication,user
management, course management, and user support.

2 Gikadai LMS: Objective and Vision
Although TUT already had the IMC LMS, theGikadai LMS project (December 2020 to September2022) was initiated with the goal of transforming thee-learning landscape at TUT through a systematicallyplanned and better designed LMS. The project has thefollowing objectives and vision.
2.1 System interoperability
The first objective is to improve the systeminteroperability between the LMS and various
information management systems inside and outside
TUT, such as the Academic Affairs Information
System (AAIS or 教 務 情 報 シ ス テ ム ), in which
students select courses, the Google Classroom

management system, in which the majority of TUT
courses are currently held, and other third-party
plugins that can enhance Moodle’s functionality. The
accomplishment of this objective will contribute to therealization of TUT’s vision of improved course
management flow and experience.
2.2 Open curriculum
The second objective is to develop a cutting-edge
learning management system that supports TUT’svision of open curriculum. The open curriculum
education can promote open education at TUT and
foster a culture of free learning among members. By
removing the barriers between classrooms in the online
environment, it will also enable all TUT members toshare knowledge, learn from peers, and enhance thequality of education.
Gikadai LMS will provide robust support for thedelivery of the TUT curriculum, while promoting open
curriculum education and allowing all TUT members
to audit courses as online students. Students will not belimited by their specializations and will have golden
opportunities to access a vast array of educational
materials for which they are not required to enroll.
Teachers will also be able to audit other teachers’
online courses and study their teaching methods.
2.3 E-portfolio management
Using e-portfolios in classrooms encourages
students to become behaviorally, cognitively, andaffectively aware of the learning process [1]. A numberof studies have confirmed the positive impact of thistype of portfolio on learning engagement [2]–[4].
By pairing the LMS and Mahara, we aim to realize
the vision of integrating formal and informal learningin the online environment. Using Mahara assignmenton the LMS, portfolios created on Mahara can besubmitted as assignments for grading on the LMS.
With the aid of digital technologies, students will
experience a more vibrant and interactive learning
environment and develop the habit of monitoring theirown learning progress and outcomes.
2.4 Online teaching and learning support
The fourth objective is to provide efficient andeffective support for the adoption and use of the LMS
by teachers and students, so that educational activities
at TUT can gradually transition from using proprietary
technical solutions to open-source technical solutions.

3 Four levels of development
The Gikadai LMS involved four levels ofdevelopment: strategy level, server level, application
backend level, and application frontend level (Figure

395

1).

Figure 1. Four-level development of the Gikadai
LMS
3.1 Strategy level
E-learning strategy is a blueprint consisting of avision and a framework for detailed e-learning actions
designed to achieve e-learning objectives. When
properly conceived and planned, it can significantly
increase the likelihood of success for the organization
implementing it.
Guided by the work of Morrison [5, pp. 112–134],
the activities at the strategy level included teamdiscussions on the following aspects of content: vision,
content, senior executive support, business case,success criteria, stakeholders, learning value chain,technology, culture, transition, risk register, roll out
and communications, human resources, schedules, andmilestones.
3.2 Server level
The server level primarily encompassed tasks likevirtual machine/server installation and maintenance,
Shibboleth installation, virtual machine security,
virtual machine/hosting backups, etc. This level
required close cooperation with IMC.
3.3 Application backend level
This level included tasks such as installing the
Moodle application on the server, updating theapplication, backing up the application’s database anddirectories, debugging errors, securing the site,
customizing the site, etc.
3.4 Application frontend level
The tasks at this level involved both structure andcontent aspects of the Moodle website concerning its
appearance and user experience, including but notlimited to user management, course management, site
content development, site tutorial development, data
structure design, etc.

4 The final output
This section will discuss the final outlook of several
significant designs and developments within the
Gikadai LMS (Figure 2).

Figure 3. Mapping AAIS and Gikadai LMS

Figure 2. Front page of the Gikadai LMS
4.1 Inter-system communication
Login. The Gikadai LMS supports Shibboleth
authentication method, powered by GaKuNin.
Everyone with a TUT email account can sign in to the
LMS without a problem.
Course enrollment. The action plan to synchronize
academic data from AAIS to Gikadai LMS has been
established (Figure 3). The only communication
between AAIS and IMC LMS consisted of the LMS
administrator downloading the course keys from IMC
LMS to a PDF file, which was then manuallydistributed to students within AAIS. After selecting
courses in AAIS, students were required to search forcourse enrolment keys and log into the IMC LMS to
self-enroll in the chosen courses. However, the Gikadai
LMS will automate the entire course enrollment
process by mapping AAIS and LMS systems at the
database level. As a result, students select courses on
AAIS, and enrollment data is synchronizedautomatically to the Gikadai LMS system. When
students log in to the Gikadai LMS, their chosencourses will be displayed on their Dashboard. The
mapping was accomplished by configuring the Gikadai
LMS with the “External database enrolment plugin”,
which is already a part of the core Moodle installation.

Mahoodle. The Gikadai LMS is for formal learningin degree programs and classrooms, whereas theGikadai Mahara is for informal learning in student
projects, student clubs, study groups, interest groups,
laboratories, etc. Connecting Gikadai LMS to Gikadai
Mahara (also known as "Mahoodle" by thecommunity) enables communication between thesetwosystems.
Through
XML-RPC/MNet
authentication, Gikadai LMS (Moodle 3.11.8+) was
bridged with Mahara (21.10.1), allowing LMS users to
directly sign into Mahara. On the LMS, the Maharaws
plugin (https://bit.ly/3BXJf1U) was installed to enable
the Mahara assignment function. Figure 4 depicts thetechnical configuration and data transfer between
bridged Moodle and Mahara. In Mahara, students
create pages and collections of pages. In Moodle,
instructors create Mahara assignments. On the Mahara
assignment submission page, students can view their
existing collections/pages and choose one to submit as
an assignment. Meanwhile, when the Mahara portfolio
is enabled on Moodle, forum posts, assignments, chats,
database entries, and glossary entries can be exported
to Mahara. They can then be added as e-portfolio
content to Mahara pages.

Figure 4. Mapping Mahara and Gikadai LMS

396

Google Classroom functions. Due to the large
number of teachers and students at TUT who areaccustomed to using Google Classroom for course
delivery, it was deemed necessary to provide Google
Classroom’s capabilities in the Gikadai LMS at least
for the duration of the transition. First, we needed to
add the Google service as one service on the OAuth
service page inside Gikadai LMS. Personal Google
account is also acceptable for this step. Second, theassignment function of Google Classroom (Figure 5)
can now be used independently within Gikadai LMS.
However, it is not linked to any Google Classroom
courses a teacher may have. It is in fact a separate
activity that has been created and placed within the
LMS. The configuration and installation procedure canbe found at http://bit.ly/3UEloLZ. Thirdly, users areable to link their Google Drive account to Gikadai
LMS. Once connected, users can select files directlyfrom the folders of their Google Drive (Figure 6). To
achieve this function, we had to enable the Google
Drive repository on Moodle, make Google Drive
repository visible, choose the OAuth 2 service for
Google Drive to be “Google”, and configure theGoogle Drive plugin. Finally, with the installation of
the Google Meet plugin on the Gikadai LMS, teachers
can now directly create a new Google Meet session(Figure 7). They can set up a notification to remind
students before the meeting begins, configure themeeting’s repeating rule, and sync previously saved
meeting recordings from Google Drive to the Gikadai
LMS.

Figure 5. Enabling Google Assignments in Gikadai
LMS

397

Figure 6. Enabling Google Drive in Gikadai LMS

Figure 7. Enabling Google Meet in Gikadai LMSBigBlueButton. In collaboration with the Bluesky
project [6], the Gikadai LMS also enabled the
BigBlueButton (BBB) video conferencing function as
an alternative to Google Meet. Project Bluesky began
as an effort to create a collection of BBB servers that
could be utilized by numerous Japanese universities.
Each BBB session produces two distinct types ofrecordings (Figure 8). The presentation-style recording
can be viewed chapter-by-chapter or page-by-pagebased on the associated materials (e.g., used PPT when
the recording happened), and only browser-based view
is supported. The mp4 video recording cannot beviewed chapter-by-chapter or page-by-page but can be
downloaded. It is recommended that TUT instructors
download their own recorded meetings to local disks.
The virtual private server (VPS) is unable todifferentiate between recorded files. The VPS is sharedby multiple partner universities; consequently, files are
typically mixed based on which universities used that
VPS over time and who is using which VPS is
assigned in real time by the system.

Figure 8. Enabling BBB in Gikadai LMS
4.2 User management
User roles. The Gikadai LMS defines nine user
roles (Figure 9).
・ Authenticated user. All logged-in users via
Shibboleth authentication method have this role.
Every logged-in user can request new courses.
However, only teachers are advised to do so.
Students ought not to.
・ Manager: Like administrator role but with slightly
less technical capabilities on the system.
・ Course creator: These are some users who are
manually assigned the ability to create newcourses. Typically, this role is assigned to theheadmaster, department head, or program
coordinator.
・ Teacher: TUT teachers are assigned this role either
by being manually assigned to a course, orapproved course request, or synched role datafrom AAIS.
・ Course inspector: All teachers at TUT aremanually assigned to this role to allow them thefree access to other teacher’s courses without
participating. It is also possible to exclude courses
from course inspectors’ access.
・ Non-editing teacher: The role is assigned bycourse teachers to co-teachers or teachingassistants. It allows the user to view and gradestudents’ work.
・ Student: Logged in users can self-enroll or get
enrolled to courses in the role of student
depending on the enrolment methods of courses.
・ Auditing student: Any student can request to audit
a course on Gikadai LMS by sending a request to
the administrator.
・ Guest: Can view some limited content without
logging into the system.

398

Figure 9. User roles in Gikadai LMSUser cohorts. All users of the Gikadai LMS are
manually organized into three cohorts: faculty,
students, and staff (Figure 10). Cohorts are site-wide orcourse category-wide groups that make it easy for all
cohort members to enroll in a course. For example, if acourse is required for all students, the teacher can add
cohort synch as an enrollment method and select“student cohort” to automatically enroll all TUT
students in the course.

Figure 10. User cohorts in Gikadai LMS
4.3 Course management
Alignment with the university curriculum structure.
The course categories of the Gikadai LMS are
structured in accordance with the TUT curriculum
structure outlined in its Course Requirement Guide
Book 2021 (http://bit.ly/3DGDJbb). The Gikadai LMS
uses the degree programs’ education levels(undergraduate courses, master’s courses, and doctoral
courses) as its first-level course categories, as opposedto the IMC LMS’s use of TUT’s five faculties. On thesecond or third level of the hierarchical structure, thefaculties
becomesubcategories.
Figure11
demonstrates specifics.

Figure 11. Course categories in Gikadai LMS
A complete database of all TUT courses. The LMS
administrator will receive csv files from AAIS staff
regarding the available courses in their system andupload the csv file using the “upload courses” function
on Moodle in April and October of each year. Using
this method for the first time on April 15, 2022, theGikadai LMS now contains a comprehensive list of
1,320 degree-program related courses. The Gikadai
LMS is also equipped with the csv flat file enrolment
method, which permits the uploading of a csv file to a
specific path on the LMS server, where it can be readand modified by the web server process. The file isdeleted automatically after processing. However, once
AAIS and Gikadai LMS are connected, theaforementioned two methods will no longer benecessary, as new courses added to AAIS that are notpresent on Gikadai LMS will be automatically added
to Gikadai LMS.
Course templates. On the launching page of a new
course, a list of course templates are displayed,allowing teachers to choose how to begin designing
their courses based on the available templates (Figure12). This support is enabled by the Kickstart Moodle
plugin.

course template allows instructors to create an
entirely new course using the topic format. This
template includes the following components bydefault: A label indicating the availability oftutorials on using the course templates; anembedded YouTube video; a BBB activity; a blockindicating who the teacher is.
・ Template 2: Google Classroom redirect course(Figure 13.b). This template serves as aplaceholder for Google Classroom courses. It is a
simple page listing the invitation link to theGoogle Classroom course. This template includes
a label reminding student that this is a course
redirect page and instructing instructors on how tolocate the invitation link for their course on
Google Classroom, and a link to the Google
Classroom course which must be manually
updated by the instructor.
・ Template 3: Google Classroom replacement
course (Figure 13.c). This template course is ideal
for teachers who wish to continue teaching within
Gikadai LMS while retaining Google Classroom’sfunctionality. Google Meet, Google Classroom
assignments, and the direct insertion of Google
Drive files are among the features.

・ Template 4: creation-based learning (Figure 13.d).
This course template follows the CLEAR (create,
learn, extend, apply, and reflect) model of
instructional design and experiments with Mahara
assignments as assessment activities. See details in[7] and [8].

(a)

(b)

Figure 12. Course templates in Gikadai LMSFour course templates are available now.
・ Template 1: default course (Figure 13.a). This399

chat bot, they will be able to not only chat with a CITE
support agent, but also search the knowledge base forsolutions (Figure 14.c).

(c)

(a)

(b)

(d)
Figure 13. Course templates in Gikadai LMS
Course backup/archive and reset. A rollover is theprocess of preparing Moodle for the upcoming
academic term. Carr [9] identifies three approaches toacademic year rollover: (1) clone a new Moodle
instance annually, (2) backup a course and then reset it
to remove all enrollments, grades, etc., and (3) clone acourse and retain both the live and archived versions.
Considering the situation at TUT, the “backup a course
and reset” approach is the default setting with threesteps: (1) the administrator will execute a bulk backup
of all courses on the platform during a specified time
window by executing a script on the terminal; (2) all
backups will be downloaded and saved to a local
external disk for archival purposes; and (3) teachers
will reset their courses. The “clone a course andarchive” approach is only accessible upon request fromindividual instructors. The administrator will copy theentire course and place it in the “Archive” course
category upon receiving the request. Before resetting
the original course, the instructor is instructed to verify
that the archived version is complete.
4.4 User support
Knowledge base and chat bot. We utilized the freetechnical solution of tawk.to to create a knowledge
base for providing searchable tutorial support, such as
how to create a new page or assignment (Figure 14.b).
The knowledge base is accessible in both English andJapanese languages. Gikadai LMS also integrated atawk.to chat bot. The chat window is located at theright bottom of the platform. When users click on the

400

(c)
Figure 14. Knowledge base and chat bot in Gikadai
LMS
Example course to fully experience the LMS
functions. The tutorial course “Fully Experience
GIKADAI LMS by Example” provides examples ofavailable resources and activities (Figure 15). All
logged-in users are automatically enrolled in thiscourse due to cohort synchronization. Thus, they areable to see what resources/activities are supported by
Gikadai LMS and how they will appear once
successfully implemented. A copy of the course won
the Best Moodle Open Courseware of 2021 (honorable
mention) award from the Moodle Association of Japan.

Figure 15. The example course and the award

CITE help ticketing system. When online
synchronous support is unavailable, users can still
submit help tickets using an asynchronous support
system on the CITE website (Figure 16,
https://cite.tut.ac.jp/en/helpdesk/add-ticket).

[3] M. M. Abuzaid, W. Elshami, and Z. Noorajan,‘The impact of clinical practice E-portfolio inradiology education during COVID-19 outbreak’,
Int J Cur Res Rev, vol. 13, no. 06, p. 115, 2021.
[4] B. Hegarty and M. Thompson, ‘A teacher’s
influenceon

student

engagement:

Using

smartphones for creating vocational assessment
ePortfolios’, J. Inf. Technol. Educ.-Res., vol. 18,
pp. 113–159, 2019, doi: 10.28945/4244.
[5] D. Morrison, E-learning strategies: how to get
implementation and delivery right first time. John

Figure 16. The CITE helpdesk page

Wiley & Sons, 2003.

5 Conclusion[6] T. Rawson, A. Jenkins, and M. Meadows, ‘ProjectThis paper describes in depth the development of auniversity-level Moodle-based LMS and demonstrates
the final appearance of the platform. It provides a casestudy for other Japanese universities to use as a guidewhen creating or renovating LMS. Before launching
the LMS to the entire campus, additional work is
required to perform quality assurance. Teachers andstudents must be properly trained on how to use theplatform. Research activities should be conductedconcurrently with the development of the LMS inorder to continuously seek evidence-based teachingapproaches and incorporate them into course templates
for use by teachers. Teachers can be invited toparticipate in action research with CITE to redesign
their courses and conduct collaborative research foracademic publication. To identify and disseminate bestpractices in the shared community, outreach activities
are also encouraged to improve communication
between universities’ e-learning support labs andcenters.

Bluesky: A collaboratively built BigBlueButton
cluster’, presented at the MoodleMoot Japan
2021, University of the Ryukyus. [Online].
Available:
https://moodlejapan.org/course/view.php?id=87#s
ection-9[7] J. Lin, ‘The CLEAR framework to implement
active learning in STEM education’, in 2021
IEEE International Conference on Engineering,Technology Education (TALE), Dec. 2021, pp.
01–05.

doi:

https://doi.org/10.1109/TALE52509.2021.967870
2.
[8] J. Lin, ‘Connect curriculum to reality via
creation-based learning: The pre-experiment of
the CLEAR pedagogy among STEM students’,presented

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