Founded in 1965 under the Garbí Schools Foundation, the Garbí Pere Vergés Schools is a leading pedagogical model based on the principles laid by the teacher Pere Vergés. Being the ‘alma mater’ for more than 2,100 students, the school’s mission is to train the men and women of tomorrow as proactive citizens capable of transforming society in a fair, supportive and sustainable environment.
At the core of the organisation’s pedagogical approach is to create the foundations of an ideal city, where each person becomes a citizen, exercising rights and duties concerning the community. “Thus the individual passes harmoniously from the family group to the class, from this to the school, and from the school to the city,” says its ideator Pere Vergés.
Currently, there are two Garbí Pere Vergés schools operating in Esplugues and Badalona, Spain. To support its unique pedagogy, Garbí Pere Vergés worked with Moodle Premium Certified Partner, 3ipunt, to implement an innovative eLearning software solution that complemented its pedagogical philosophy, streamlined its administrative processes, and delivered learning pathways for its community of teachers and students.
The challenge: Moving away from rigid solutions and manual processes
With its impactful pedagogical approach, it was essential for the Garbí Pere Vergés schools to have a learning management system to streamline organisation and hierarchise courses. Garbí Pere Vergés schools had previously used a learning management solution that was too rigid and unable to adapt to their pedagogical criteria and blended learning approach.
Duplicating information, courses, and user management was a very tedious and manual process. Garbí Pere Vergés was looking for a solution with advanced features, automation, and an ability to organise their courses following the didactic sequence of their pedagogical project.
“We experienced the need for a more attractive, intuitive, and practical interface for students, teaching teams, school staff, and families. Furthermore, our ability to effectively manage the virtual environment was lacking and we couldn’t automate enrolment with personalised rules,” said Sr. Antoni Santisteban, Pedagogical Director of the Garbí Pere Vergés Schools.
The Foundation had to find an holistic solution that could provide a virtual learning environment for students; a training space for teaching teams and the Foundation’s staff; and space for consulting documents related to the school’s internal management.
Moreover, the eLearning software that they chose had to serve the learning needs of students between 10 and 18 years old to independently consult resources and carry out educational activities, as well as the needs of younger children (3 to 9 years old) accompanied by their families.
The solution: Delivering educational impact efficiently with Moodle Workplace
Moodle Workplace could solve all the challenges faced by the organisation with its grounding in pedagogy and social constructionist philosophy combined with its capability to streamline learning administration, onboarding, and training.
When asked about the most important evaluation criteria for their chosen online learning platform, Garbí Pere Vergés leadership stated the integration of a competency-based evaluation model and Moodle’s open source features (which provided the possibility to export the contents of the platform) were key.
The top three most important reasons to select Moodle Workplace were:
- At a structure level, single access to the platform with the possibility of managing the three web spaces of the organisation through Moodle Workplace’s multi-tenancy feature: one for each school and one for the Foundation.
- Providing more functionalities when customising the virtual learning environment interface.
- A much more agile and automated management of courses and users.
Working with 3ipunt provided exceptional value for Garbí Pere Vergés, as they helped address challenges in how to use Moodle Workplace’s advanced features while creating meaningful learning and teaching experiences.
Sr. Santisteban emphasised that the Partner team played an essential role in the planning, design, development, and implementation of the project.
Most importantly, the organisation benefited from the continuous support of proven professionals who specialise in various areas of eLearning software consulting and development.
The results: A reliable, profitable, and secure virtual learning and teaching environment
While the initial implementation of Moodle Workplace was a qualitative leap, the gradual developments have proven game-changing for the organisation. When asked about the most remarkable result achieved, Garbí Pere Vergés leadership is convinced that through the capabilities that Moodle Workplace provided, they have been able to support their unique pedagogical framework as well as create an efficient virtual environment that allows the organisation to build a blended learning model that enriches the teaching-learning process.
The Moodle Workplace solution provided the following opportunities for Garbí Pere Vergés Schools:
- Allowed the incorporation of a competency-based evaluation model for the schools and in addition, enabled both the student and teacher to know the degree of competencies development throughout the course.
- Made the Moodle learning management platform accessible across devices.
- Established a communication bridge between the Moodle grade book in the academic manager of the schools, based on their own indicators and evaluation rubrics.
- Integrated the activities of external learning platforms to Moodle, and enabling a direct transfer of the information that the student registers to the platform.
“We believe that with the solution provided, the change to Moodle Workplace, we have achieved a solid, profitable, and secure virtual teaching-learning environment,” said Sr. Antoni Santisteban.
