We undertake a great deal of research work in the higher and further education sectors. As well as projects on behalf of umbrella organisations, such as Jisc, we sometimes work directly with universities and colleges. In the early development of its Moodle-based VLE, the University of Nottingham asked Mindset to undertake a programme of qualitative research amongst students, academic and teaching staff and administators to evaluate usage of and attitudes to the new learning platform. We used focus groups and one-to-one depth interviews to reveal how the community was using the new VLE and what needed to be done to address early problems and maximise engagement.