We (a very large community college) are embarking on a fact-finding mission to see what others have done regarding Moodle implementation, migration from other LMSs, training, PR, etc. on both a technical and functional level. To give you some idea of the peer group we're looking for, our student body is in the neighborhood of 400,000 (100,000 per semester) students and we'll be looking to run about 75,000 courses (25,000 per semester) in the system.
I've been asked to find some contacts at other institutions willing to speak with our representatives and perhaps even host on-site visits. Any takers? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated -- we have found these interactions to be quite beneficial to both parties in the past.
Dear John,
Welcome to the Moodle community. You have some very interesting questions and I think this is the right place to start an investigation that obviously could consume large amounts of staff time and resources to implement.
You may have noticed that the custom in this community is to use our real names and elaborate on our institutional background and role with LMSs in our profiles. Click on my name and you will see my profile for example. You are welcome to do the same. I think it builds trust, an important value when you are asking people to take time to share valuable insights learned over many years.
If you need to keep your institutional background secret for now, so as not to offend current suppliers, I suggest you conduct some discussion offline via email. You may contact me at hinkel at sgu.ac.jp and will be glad to share some contacts. I think you cannot limit yourself to US-based tertiery institutions because so few are in the 400,000 student range of your system. For example, you can learn much from a UK-based university which has over 150,000 active students using Moodle.
In addition to peer-to-peer contacts with other universities, you should ask for proposals or advice from commercial services with experience in your size of operation. There are a number of Moodle Partners in the US and the advantage of contracting with them is that 10% of all your fees goes directly to Moodle HQ to support the staff who continually upgrade the code, develop new modules, and provide security fixes 24 hours a day. If you choose Moodle for your future LMS base, please consider how you will support Moodle HQ, because this is a shared service that everyone in this community benefits from.
With best regards,
Don Hinkelman
Sapporo Gakuin University
University of Melbourne
Welcome to the Moodle community. You have some very interesting questions and I think this is the right place to start an investigation that obviously could consume large amounts of staff time and resources to implement.
You may have noticed that the custom in this community is to use our real names and elaborate on our institutional background and role with LMSs in our profiles. Click on my name and you will see my profile for example. You are welcome to do the same. I think it builds trust, an important value when you are asking people to take time to share valuable insights learned over many years.
If you need to keep your institutional background secret for now, so as not to offend current suppliers, I suggest you conduct some discussion offline via email. You may contact me at hinkel at sgu.ac.jp and will be glad to share some contacts. I think you cannot limit yourself to US-based tertiery institutions because so few are in the 400,000 student range of your system. For example, you can learn much from a UK-based university which has over 150,000 active students using Moodle.
In addition to peer-to-peer contacts with other universities, you should ask for proposals or advice from commercial services with experience in your size of operation. There are a number of Moodle Partners in the US and the advantage of contracting with them is that 10% of all your fees goes directly to Moodle HQ to support the staff who continually upgrade the code, develop new modules, and provide security fixes 24 hours a day. If you choose Moodle for your future LMS base, please consider how you will support Moodle HQ, because this is a shared service that everyone in this community benefits from.
With best regards,
Don Hinkelman
Sapporo Gakuin University
University of Melbourne
I do apologize for not being more open, but as I'm sure you can imagine, it's quite a complicated process. And yes, there's the showing your hand to the vendor sorts of problems.
We have no intent to limiting our contact with the community to US-based institutions, but domestic travel is easier on the budget than international travel. Open U, however, is one we may be contacting.
We have no intent to limiting our contact with the community to US-based institutions, but domestic travel is easier on the budget than international travel. Open U, however, is one we may be contacting.
Hi John, another good place to get information are the Moodle Conferences known as "Moots" and/or the websites describing such.
For example, the previous Orlando Moodle Conference featured presentations and keynotes from folks implementing Moodle in US Higher Ed. institutions ~ your size range (NCCC, LSU, UNC, etc):
Report on the Moodle Moot.
For example, the previous Orlando Moodle Conference featured presentations and keynotes from folks implementing Moodle in US Higher Ed. institutions ~ your size range (NCCC, LSU, UNC, etc):
Report on the Moodle Moot.
You might want to take a look here- http://moodle.org/sites/