e-learning, Co. Ltd., together with Moodle Association of Japan and AWS, provides free support to high schools and universities in Hokkaido that are struggling to cope with the new coronavirus.

e-learning, Co. Ltd. (Head office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; CEO: Takeshi Matsuzaki) is offering its learning management system, Moodle, free of charge, to universities and high schools in Hokkaido, Japan, in order to support education in the region, where the spread of the new coronavirus has led to the closure of schools and the postponement of the start of classes for the new school year.

This is in cooperation with the Empowering Educators in Hokkaido Project (hereinafter referred to as the “EEH Project”), an initiative of Moodle Association of Japan (President: Mr. Yoshikazu Asada, hereinafter referred to as MAJ) to support the operation of online classes for universities and high schools in Hokkaido.
In addition, Amazon Web Services Japan, Inc. (AWS), which has endorsed the EEH project, has provided support for the cloud environment.

■Project Overview

• Period: March 23 to July 31, 2020
• Target, number of schools accepted: 30 universities and high schools in Hokkaido
• Provision of Moodle by e-learning, Co. Ltd. and class operation support by MAJ
• In order to provide this service to a large number of universities and high schools, we will use the tenancy feature of Moodle Workplace.
• Providing a cloud environment with AWS
• It will be provided free of charge during the above period, and can be migrated to another Moodle after the period ends.

■Background and Objectives

While the spread of the new coronavirus worldwide shows no signs of coming to an end, the number of infected people in Hokkaido is the highest in Japan, and the situation remains unpredictable. Some educational institutions in Hokkaido have confirmed that the start of classes for the new fiscal year will be postponed, and dealing with delays in education has become an urgent issue. Although educational contents using ICT have already been provided free of charge, most of them are only for viewing and self-learning, and there is a need for a “learning environment” that is more similar to a full-fledged face-to-face class in the future.
Moodle is an e-learning platform with over 150,000 sites and 180 million users used by universities and high schools around the world. By using Moodle, it is possible to distribute videos of classes, hand out materials, create quizzes, take questions, work in groups, grade PDF assignments online, etc. Students can easily access that learning environment at any time with their computers or smartphones.
The EEH project will support teachers to create a teaching-friendly environment and provide a “learning environment” that is similar to face-to-face classes and students’ spontaneous learning.