UNEMI improves student experience with modern Moodle deployment on Google Cloud
About Universidad Estatal de Milagro
UNEMI is one of the main public universities in Ecuador and offers a wide array of undergraduate, graduate, and research programs.
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About Edvolution
Edvolution focuses on improving education through innovation and technology with customized solutions and services for institutions of all levels.
The university migrated its online education systems to improve students’ learning experiences and also administrative processes and professors’ working hours.
Google Cloud results
- Capacity to host and process 50,000 exams per day
- Up to 35,000 students connected at the same time
- 40 academic management instances in seconds
40,000 students enrolled in under 30 hours
Created in 1969, Universidad Estatal de Milagro (UNEMI) is an Ecuadorian public higher education institution providing a wide array of undergraduate, graduate, and research programs to thousands of students through in-person, hybrid, and distance learning.
With over 50 years of experience, 726 professors, and 343 servers for a community of over 60,000 students, UNEMI is now one of the main universities in the region, renowned for its academic excellence and commitment to educational innovation.
Aware of the importance of technology in education, the university seeks to leverage the advantages of digital transformation to their fullest to democratize access to university through online education and the training of highly skilled professionals who are committed to the sustainable development of Ecuador.
In search of a better way to teach and learn
Faced with a growing student population, UNEMI was finding it hard to manage its systems and applications on Moodle, the e-learning platform that triggered the university’s online education project.
The technology infrastructure available to the institution at the time—expensive local servers for e-learning—prevented it from streamlining students’ increasing demands, mainly in enrollment and evaluation processes. Performance issues also began appearing, with constant service failure in high-concurrency environments.
The university realized it needed an innovative, profitable, and scalable solution to help improve system efficiency and provide a top-level educational experience.
In this context, the UNEMI team, supported by partner Edvolution, decided to search for a strategic partner that could help boost its performance and scale services, while reducing operating costs.
Efficient solutions for ambitious goals
UNEMI reached out to the Google Cloud team to kick off a modern migration process for its Moodle platform, including its academic management systems and virtual classrooms, to Google Cloud.
This strategy could be implemented through several solutions, such as Cloud SQL, to search for information on the database more quickly, and Compute Engine, to execute virtual machines with differing operating systems and scale as needed, backed by minute-by-minute monitoring of the entire infrastructure with Cloud Monitoring.
Of course, security was there from day one, thanks to the protection against attacks provided by Cloud Armor and the cloud security portfolio, which safeguards the privacy and confidentiality of the student and professor information held by the university.
In daily management, incorporating Google Workspace solutions, such as Calendar and Google Meet video calls, also expanded planning and organization possibilities across university teams.
"The support provided by the Google Cloud team was key for a successful deployment. They gave us the tools, support, and training needed for the Moodle migration to take place in record time and with transparency for both internal users and university staff."
—Mario Ruben Chifla Villon, IT Service Director, UNEMIImprovements that benefit all
With the deployment of Moodle on Google Cloud, the institution secured huge benefits, including better stability for IT services, technical and specialist support in incorporated applications and systems, and the peace of mind and certainty it required.
The university was able to seamlessly provide mass access to IT systems in high-concurrency events, such as enrollment, admission, and partial and final exams, driven by cloud solutions.
For example, the enrollment process featured a remarkable improvement. Before Google Cloud, enrolling 5,000 students could take up to six days. Today, the university can enroll nearly 40,000 students in under 30 hours, ensuring a trustworthy, timely service.
Online exams, with around 35,000 students connected at the same time, also reflect the success of migrating to Google Cloud. Today, UNEMI has managed to consolidate a seamless service and better experience for all parties involved, with the capacity to host and process up to 50,000 exams per day.
By deploying cloud solutions, the university can have up to 40,000 students connected at the same time, operate 40 academic management instances in a matter of seconds, and improve online class recording and storage. This has considerably reduced the work of professors, who were required to perform these tasks manually before the migration.
UNEMI’s cloud-based technology platform has had an amazing qualitative impact on professors’ work and students’ learning.
The information professors generate is stored in the cloud, which optimizes teamwork, collaboration, and content development, regardless of geographical location.
For students, besides driving collaborative work, the possibility of accessing recorded video calls at any time—stored in servers—through automated links created at the end of the recording expands their learning possibilities with continuous knowledge availability.
"The elasticity Google Cloud solutions provide has increased our enrollment over 10 times. We can now serve more than 60,000 students, ensuring that, from anywhere in the country, they can study in 10 online and 20 in-person courses of study using our digital platforms."
—Mario Ruben Chifla Villon, IT Services Director, UNEMITransforming the future of education
UNEMI has successfully completed the first stage of its digital transformation by migrating its Moodle-based undergraduate, graduate, admission, and exam platforms to Google Cloud. As a result, the university has boosted scalability and elasticity and it is now able to promptly respond to the needs of professors, students, and candidates alike.
The next step is to move forward with educational technology, streamlining the use of Google Cloud technology to develop simulation, lab, and artificial intelligence programs.
As for incorporating new tools, data analytics deployment tasks are already underway using BigQuery, including a project to develop teaching skills and create dashboards with useful, scalable information.
UNEMI is also working on systematizing all of its processes and methodologies. These initiatives are expected to benefit the university community in the short and medium term and they may become a benchmark for others across Ecuador.
"Throughout the time Universidad Estatal de Milagro has been working with Google Cloud, supported by us as partners, it has become a benchmark for other universities across the country. New student enrollment demand has increased exponentially."
—Génesis Cruz, Delivery Manager, EdvolutionUNEMI has set the course for the future and that means collaborating with Google Cloud.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Universidad Estatal de Milagro
UNEMI is one of the main public universities in Ecuador and offers a wide array of undergraduate, graduate, and research programs.
About Edvolution
Edvolution focuses on improving education through innovation and technology with customized solutions and services for institutions of all levels.