DEOSS-hosted Electronic Professional Development Portfolio for NHS-funded Wessex vocational dental practitioners has been a huge success, according to Regional Vocational Training Adviser, Nick Priest

It runs on all open source software, and so far has cost the taxpayer absolutely nothing. Even the hosting at DEOSS has been provided gratis as part of an experiment into the businesss case for open source software in the public sector. The revolutionary new project has two key parts...

Electronic Log Book This is a private area used by individual VDP and Trainers and overseen by the VT Adviser.
Moodle Courseware This is a group area - but hidden from public view - which details what needs doing week by week. It also includes discussion forums, chat, survey's quizzes etc.

How it works...

This ePDP system is both low-cost and very robust, based 100% on standards-based open source software. It runs on a cheap but very reliable Linux/Apache server. The system comprises of two parts...

1. The Electronic Log Book based on phpMyGarfBase - a series of open source derived web-based databases written for various NHS projects over the last 12 months. For the VDP's Electronic Log Book, we need to record around 600 pieces of data, in various formats, about each student's progress at various intervals throughout the year and present them so their VT adviser (clinical tutor) can easily monitor their progress at any time. Each student also has one or two trainer's with whom they work and share info. However each student's logbook also contains confidential patient data that must not be seen by other students or other trainers.
2. The legendary Moodle (Modular Object Orientated Distance Learning Environment) as deployed by over 10000 academic institutions around the planet. In this application, Moodle is used for the teaching, student feedback, forums, quizzes, live chat and links to resources and the Electronic Log Book. It is configured so the VT adviser (clinical tutor) can add, amend and delete course objects as the course progresses and thus respond quickly and effectively to student's needs.

Unlike some proprietary content management systems which can only be edited on Windows computers, this system does not restrict the type of computer used by students. Also, because it is open source, the core components may be freely adapted and modified to suit almost any distance learning situation without having to hire expensive outside companies to do the work or pay for expensive software licences.

And development time is considerably less than with traditional proprietary software. the DEOSS team estimate that it is perfectly possible to develop and deploy similar systems in under six weeks!