Hi everyone,
I asked this of one person in a specific forum topic, but I thought I would ask the entire community. We would like to know how other universities/colleges/organizations came to adopt Moodle. Having additional data will help our campus with adoption and migration decisions.
Specifically:
-- Did your campus/organization move to Moodle from another Learning Management System (LMS), or is this a new implementation of this type of technology?
-- If it is/was a move from another LMS, do you have a migration plan that the community can review?
-- If it is/was a move from another LMS, what is/was the faculty/student/employee reaction?
-- Would you share the adoption process that your campus/organization followed when choosing Moodle?
-- How are faculty/employees involved in the decision making process, or are they involved at all?
-- What considerations affected the decision (cost, scalability, sustainability, etc.)?
Our own university, San Francisco State University, is investigating a migration from Blackboard to Moodle (http://ilearn.sfsu.edu). (Many in the Moodle community may know Jason Cole, who got us started on this path.) We started with focus groups identifying pros and cons of switching LMS solutions. We ran our first test in Fall 2004 with 5 instructors and 300 students. This semester we have 20 instructors and 1500 students (~5% of our student population, from 8 of our 9 colleges). We hope to have a final, robust test in the Fall (up to 10,000 students).
I would love to see any and all perspectives on the transition from investigation to implementation, since we are currently in that grey area in between the two. So far, I have found only one discussion of this sort, from Dublin City University (see http://odtl.dcu.ie/wp/2004/odtl-2004-01.html).
Thanks,
Kevin
Kevin Kelly
Assistant Director
Center for the Enhancement of Teaching
San Francisco State University
The NZVLE project is helping tertiaries and schools across New Zealand go through the migration process. It's probably worth it to explore the documents, forums and the wiki at http://nzvle.eduforge.org/ .
Richard Wyles and Ken Udas lead the project and have driven The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand in the switch from two LMSs (a customized Blackboard and an in-house LMS based on forum software). They probably have useful information -- if they haven't published it already.
Check out the Wiki and you'll find several institutions are different stage of their deployments. As part of the NZVLE project, we are helping all of them with their transitions: legacy LMSs, training, content migration, SMS integration.
Is migrating to New Zealand an option for SFSU ;) ?
Richard Wyles and Ken Udas lead the project and have driven The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand in the switch from two LMSs (a customized Blackboard and an in-house LMS based on forum software). They probably have useful information -- if they haven't published it already.
Check out the Wiki and you'll find several institutions are different stage of their deployments. As part of the NZVLE project, we are helping all of them with their transitions: legacy LMSs, training, content migration, SMS integration.
Is migrating to New Zealand an option for SFSU ;) ?
Hi Martin,
Thanks for responding. I also read Richard's reply and thank you both for your help. I am interested to hear how you are helping institutions with SMS integration, especially for any that formerly used Blackboard. Our former Academic Technology Manager, Dr. Jason Cole, made preparations for integrating Moodle with our Student Information Management System (SIMS) before he left for the UK and Open University. As our Blackboard environment is currently integrated with our SIMS, this is something we will need to replicate for our faculty and students. Perhaps moving the campus to New Zealand is an option we should explore!
I will check out the wiki and other information that you and Richard provided to see what I can learn in the meantime.
Kevin
Thanks for responding. I also read Richard's reply and thank you both for your help. I am interested to hear how you are helping institutions with SMS integration, especially for any that formerly used Blackboard. Our former Academic Technology Manager, Dr. Jason Cole, made preparations for integrating Moodle with our Student Information Management System (SIMS) before he left for the UK and Open University. As our Blackboard environment is currently integrated with our SIMS, this is something we will need to replicate for our faculty and students. Perhaps moving the campus to New Zealand is an option we should explore!
I will check out the wiki and other information that you and Richard provided to see what I can learn in the meantime.
Kevin
Hi Kevin, well you could just come up here, we're a bit closer than NZ, though sometimes it seems a long way up the 101
.
We've got a start on snapshot integration with Banner, are you all using PS student or Banner?
Either one, we'd be happy to work with you all on integration issues as well as others, we have some programmers here that are pretty good with Moodle and getting better every day.
We've got a start on snapshot integration with Banner, are you all using PS student or Banner?
Either one, we'd be happy to work with you all on integration issues as well as others, we have some programmers here that are pretty good with Moodle and getting better every day
Hi Michael,
We will definitely take you up on your offer to work with us on integration issues!
We are using SIMS (Student Information Management System), as we have still not moved to the PeopleSoft product on our campus. I think SDSU is the only other campus still using SIMS. No matter what you have, though, we would love to see your integration process, so we can look at how you are getting snapshot data into Moodle.
Thank you,
Kevin
We will definitely take you up on your offer to work with us on integration issues!
We are using SIMS (Student Information Management System), as we have still not moved to the PeopleSoft product on our campus. I think SDSU is the only other campus still using SIMS. No matter what you have, though, we would love to see your integration process, so we can look at how you are getting snapshot data into Moodle.
Thank you,
Kevin
Hi Kevin, our main process is our Banner admin generates a text file with user info. and enrollment info. Which we then import into a custom management screen.
This is pretty similar to the Moodle batch enroll code, except that we have matched it to use the same format as our batch enroll for Blackboard, to make things easier for our Banner admin (see attached). This could be more automated with a little work, but since we can't do any more with BB Basic, we're using this for now.
We have also developed administration screens around this custom import screen that enables crosslisting courses, showing enrollment by user, etc. We're working on some more management stuff as discussed in the Moodle Enterprise thread.
As part of that, we have released an add course form (in CVS/contrib) which enables faculty to add a new course from a template or re-use an archived course into CVS/contrib/MoodleEnterprise. Jeff Graham has posted the batch enrollment management code here, but I'll ask him to add it into CVS/contrib as well.
PS for ASP, how is connnection with your SIMS managed?
This is pretty similar to the Moodle batch enroll code, except that we have matched it to use the same format as our batch enroll for Blackboard, to make things easier for our Banner admin (see attached). This could be more automated with a little work, but since we can't do any more with BB Basic, we're using this for now.
We have also developed administration screens around this custom import screen that enables crosslisting courses, showing enrollment by user, etc. We're working on some more management stuff as discussed in the Moodle Enterprise thread.
As part of that, we have released an add course form (in CVS/contrib) which enables faculty to add a new course from a template or re-use an archived course into CVS/contrib/MoodleEnterprise. Jeff Graham has posted the batch enrollment management code here, but I'll ask him to add it into CVS/contrib as well.
PS for ASP, how is connnection with your SIMS managed?
Hi Michael,
>PS for ASP, how is connnection with your SIMS managed?
For integration with Blackboard, our SIMS database generates three files each morning at 3 am or so: users.lst, courses.lst, and enroll.lst. It sends them to a server and Blackboard picks them up at 4 am. Blackboard then dumps the data into our Bb database.
-- A course shell is created for each course in the complete list of course sections for each semester
-- Instructors are automatically assigned to their course sections, as long as they are listed as the Official Instructor of Record
-- Students who add and drop courses via TouchTone or online registration are enrolled or dropped from the appropriate courses
This is nice because instructors no longer have to request to make a shell and students do not have to self-enroll. We are hoping to do the same exact thing with Moodle.
Kevin
>PS for ASP, how is connnection with your SIMS managed?
For integration with Blackboard, our SIMS database generates three files each morning at 3 am or so: users.lst, courses.lst, and enroll.lst. It sends them to a server and Blackboard picks them up at 4 am. Blackboard then dumps the data into our Bb database.
-- A course shell is created for each course in the complete list of course sections for each semester
-- Instructors are automatically assigned to their course sections, as long as they are listed as the Official Instructor of Record
-- Students who add and drop courses via TouchTone or online registration are enrolled or dropped from the appropriate courses
This is nice because instructors no longer have to request to make a shell and students do not have to self-enroll. We are hoping to do the same exact thing with Moodle.
Kevin
Kevin,
apologies for the late reply! Been snowed under, and I tune out of the 'social forum' a bit when busy.
We are keen on helping out. Working remotely is something we're used to, although I wouldn't mind a good reason to visit SF. We have a good background of working with a variety of SMSs using various glue languages, and helping migrations from BB.
And if Michael is involved as well, it'll only make things more interesting.
apologies for the late reply! Been snowed under, and I tune out of the 'social forum' a bit when busy.
We are keen on helping out. Working remotely is something we're used to, although I wouldn't mind a good reason to visit SF. We have a good background of working with a variety of SMSs using various glue languages, and helping migrations from BB.
And if Michael is involved as well, it'll only make things more interesting.
Hi Martin,
I totally understand being busy. We welcome the help in any shape or form!
Right now, we have snapshot files that we use for our current integration with Blackboard. Luckily, that means that we won't need to talk to the Student Information Management System (SIMS) database at all. Our IT group already sends us an updated snapshot of 3 tables (users, courses, and enrollment) every day (early in the morning).
Jason Cole's proposed solution is to take the snapshot of the three tables in the db, compare them to the lists coming in and create add and delete lists that could then be sent to the Moodle API for addition. Is there a cleaner solution? How do you get a script to delete data (e.g., someone drops a course during the add/drop period, so they are no longer enrolled in a course) once it's in Moodle?
Also we will need to make a new authentication module to accept the login string from the SIMS University ID & Personal Access Code lookup. I am guessing, and Jason felt as well, that we can look at the Blackboard scramble that we currently have and break it down for use with Moodle.
In any case, I would love to hear what work you have already done on migrations from Blackboard. Some of our talented coders may want to talk to some of your talented coders, once we get past the concepts of what to do. Can we talk offline to discuss this type of collaboration?
Thanks again,
Kevin
I totally understand being busy. We welcome the help in any shape or form!
Right now, we have snapshot files that we use for our current integration with Blackboard. Luckily, that means that we won't need to talk to the Student Information Management System (SIMS) database at all. Our IT group already sends us an updated snapshot of 3 tables (users, courses, and enrollment) every day (early in the morning).
Jason Cole's proposed solution is to take the snapshot of the three tables in the db, compare them to the lists coming in and create add and delete lists that could then be sent to the Moodle API for addition. Is there a cleaner solution? How do you get a script to delete data (e.g., someone drops a course during the add/drop period, so they are no longer enrolled in a course) once it's in Moodle?
Also we will need to make a new authentication module to accept the login string from the SIMS University ID & Personal Access Code lookup. I am guessing, and Jason felt as well, that we can look at the Blackboard scramble that we currently have and break it down for use with Moodle.
In any case, I would love to hear what work you have already done on migrations from Blackboard. Some of our talented coders may want to talk to some of your talented coders, once we get past the concepts of what to do. Can we talk offline to discuss this type of collaboration?
Thanks again,
Kevin
Your email address is private, so I sent you a 'Moodle message' with my email address -- mine is martin@catalyst.net.nz .
Hi Kevin,
My college system has not (yet
) adopted Moodle as a system wide CMS. I first heard of Moodle when I was completing an independent project for my MDE at Athabasca University. Since then, the campus at Woodstock is using Moodle, first a hosted site through Martin D, and then our own site (http://198.164.135.10/moodle).
The five Anglophone campuses of the NBCC network each using different systems (WebCT, IBM/Lotus), with two of them playing with Moodle. I am spearheading a drive (informal at this point) for the use of Moodle as a college wide system, as part of an overall strategy for the use of open source.
I will be using information from Dublin City and NZVLE to help in my quest.
Perhaps we can stay in touch and discuss strategies.
Regards,
Jim
My college system has not (yet
) adopted Moodle as a system wide CMS. I first heard of Moodle when I was completing an independent project for my MDE at Athabasca University. Since then, the campus at Woodstock is using Moodle, first a hosted site through Martin D, and then our own site (http://198.164.135.10/moodle).The five Anglophone campuses of the NBCC network each using different systems (WebCT, IBM/Lotus), with two of them playing with Moodle. I am spearheading a drive (informal at this point) for the use of Moodle as a college wide system, as part of an overall strategy for the use of open source.
I will be using information from Dublin City and NZVLE to help in my quest.
Perhaps we can stay in touch and discuss strategies.
Regards,
Jim
Hi Jim,
Thanks for your comments. It seems that we are in similar situations. Beyond our investigation at San Francisco State University (SFSU), I am very interested in seeing some campuses within the California State University (CSU) system--or better yet, all 23 campuses--band together with Moodle to maximize effectiveness. So far, there is plenty of interest, but there are a number of obstacles that we will need to address.
Foremost among these obstacles is support. Several CSU campus representatives have expressed genuine interest, but are concerned that technical support for open source products will not provide the same "security" that comes with a 3rd party vendor product. I have pointed out that, at least in our case at SFSU, vendors like Blackboard make changes based on their own production timeline, not always based on the needs of the clients. We have waited for over a year for resolution to several open tickets. We could do at least that well on our own!
I am concocting and looking for cost sharing models that would allow campuses with similar needs to split the costs of tech support, help desk support, training material production, etc. Right now, most campus reps seem to think that they will need to provide everything on their own. This perpetuates the "reinvent the wheel" cycle that we have mastered with Blackboard, WebCT, Angel and others. We pay people to do the same things, without benefit of feedback or reducing redundancies.
If you learn anything in your quest (or studies of other quests), please let me know. I would love to continue the dialogue with you and others, so we can improve our own situations as well as those who may follow our lead.
Cheers,
Kevin
Thanks for your comments. It seems that we are in similar situations. Beyond our investigation at San Francisco State University (SFSU), I am very interested in seeing some campuses within the California State University (CSU) system--or better yet, all 23 campuses--band together with Moodle to maximize effectiveness. So far, there is plenty of interest, but there are a number of obstacles that we will need to address.
Foremost among these obstacles is support. Several CSU campus representatives have expressed genuine interest, but are concerned that technical support for open source products will not provide the same "security" that comes with a 3rd party vendor product. I have pointed out that, at least in our case at SFSU, vendors like Blackboard make changes based on their own production timeline, not always based on the needs of the clients. We have waited for over a year for resolution to several open tickets. We could do at least that well on our own!
I am concocting and looking for cost sharing models that would allow campuses with similar needs to split the costs of tech support, help desk support, training material production, etc. Right now, most campus reps seem to think that they will need to provide everything on their own. This perpetuates the "reinvent the wheel" cycle that we have mastered with Blackboard, WebCT, Angel and others. We pay people to do the same things, without benefit of feedback or reducing redundancies.
If you learn anything in your quest (or studies of other quests), please let me know. I would love to continue the dialogue with you and others, so we can improve our own situations as well as those who may follow our lead.
Cheers,
Kevin
Hi Jim & Kevin & colleagues,
Across NZ's higher education sector there are similar concerns. Last year I co-authoered some commentary on the issues which you might find useful
Since then we've made a lot of progress and we're currently in the process of formally setting up Eduforge NZ Incorporated which consists of a consortium of institutions that will provide support structures, technical, hosting, professional development, student helpdesk etc.
There are currently two Moodle partners in NZ, one of which is very active in the NZOSVLE project - Catalyst IT . We've set up a high availability cluster of web servers for economies of scale.
Also you might want to check out VLE Setup and VLESupport which might give you some ideas how we're managing a collaborative system migration to Moodle with good technical back-up.
cheers
Hi Kevin,
I'm the project manager of the NZOSVLE project - I see Martin Langhoff, the lead programmer, has replied. The first phase of the project was evaluating FOSS LMSs - after selecting Moodle we've been pretty busy contributing code, but equally importantly facilitating new deployments and migrations from commercial systems throughout the higher education sector of New Zealand.
The largest migration has been for the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand which is NZ's largest distance learning provider. The Online Campus using Moodle supports up to 35,000 learners. I'll provide a brief answer using this 'sub-project" of NZOSVLE as an example.
-- Did your campus/organization move to Moodle from another Learning Management System (LMS), or is this a new implementation of this type of technology?
Migration from a customised version of Blackboard that supported the Open Mind Online programme and an inhouse system that was essentially an extended forum system.
-- If it is/was a move from another LMS, do you have a migration plan that the community can review?
I've attached a "cleaned" Project Blueprint which outlines our approach. In essence I devolved responsibility into 4 sub-project teams:
- Technical (interface with student management system, single sign-on for library services, provision of webmail for students and faculty, and a whole lot of code contributions upstream to Moodle!
- Helpdesk and Support (training the helpdesk staff in Moodle, ensuring we had our hosting and technical support right)
- Professional Development ( the first phase really being more orientation and training)
- Content migration (moving course materials over)
We did the whole thing at speed ( a 90 day project) which helped create the required momentum for a full cut-over.
-- If it is/was a move from another LMS, what is/was the faculty/student/employee reaction?
Very positive on both counts. Usage is up significantly, faculty are a lot more involved. In addition, demand for helpdesk services has actually dropped about 20%, a very positive endorsement of Moodle.
-- Would you share the adoption process that your campus/organization followed when choosing Moodle?
-- How are faculty/employees involved in the decision making process, or are they involved at all?
-- What considerations affected the decision (cost, scalability, sustainability, etc.)?
Key documents are available via the NZOSVLE project - I do see a need to publish a whitepaper on this though...
As you'll see from the technical evaluation (now somewhat dated but crucial at the time), then sustainability through strength of community, and scalability were key selection criteria.
If you would like any further information please feel free to contact me.
regards
Richard Wyles
Thank you, Richard!
Your responses to my questions and the Project Blueprint provide a lot of great information, which will help our campus plan its next steps. You are correct that a whitepaper is necessary for campuses that need help with the non-technical aspects of moving to an open source LMS, whether they relate to administration, staffing, marketing, training, migration or the myriad other issues that arise when adopting Moodle. I would be happy to add anything that might be useful from the SFSU experience. I may have to go get a PhD in Organizational Change & Development, so I can use this a dissertation topic!
In the meantime, I will keep on with the work. I will definitely contact you with requests for further information.
Cheers,
Kevin
Your responses to my questions and the Project Blueprint provide a lot of great information, which will help our campus plan its next steps. You are correct that a whitepaper is necessary for campuses that need help with the non-technical aspects of moving to an open source LMS, whether they relate to administration, staffing, marketing, training, migration or the myriad other issues that arise when adopting Moodle. I would be happy to add anything that might be useful from the SFSU experience. I may have to go get a PhD in Organizational Change & Development, so I can use this a dissertation topic!
In the meantime, I will keep on with the work. I will definitely contact you with requests for further information.
Cheers,
Kevin
Hi, Kevin.
I'm the lead developer for our on-line distance education campus for UC Davis Extension. We're currently in the process of migrating our on-line system from a home-grown Cold Fusion application to Moodle. We chose Moodle because my boss and I are both hardcore open source advocates and serious PHP developers. We've just launched our first course under Moodle, and we have had no difficulties so far.
Of course, that was not the only reason for our decision; we also underwent a lengthy process of reviewing all of the customer feedback we'd gotten from our teachers and students over the years, and determined the changes that we needed to make in our system. We looked at several proprietary LMS products, but none were to our liking (and were very expensive!). We also looked at Sakai, and even had a test installation of that up and running for awhile (if you're looking for a good way to make your brains bleed out your ears, try installing Sakai), but when we found that it's not even at a 1.0 release yet, we decided to move on. When we discovered Moodle, we realized that, with some customization, it would fit our needs perfectly.
We spent two months customizing our code and branding the site. We've created a library of functions and development protocols (we refer to it as the Evil Monkey standards), and we're quite happy with the results so far. One of our customizations was create a separate login page that students would get to before getting to the main Moodle page, and blocking content beyond Topic 2 to students who had not agreed to our refund policy.
Over the next couple of months, we'll be building a customized student administration page to more closely match our business model, and integrating with the University's Oracle-based student management system. Very exciting times indeed!
I'm the lead developer for our on-line distance education campus for UC Davis Extension. We're currently in the process of migrating our on-line system from a home-grown Cold Fusion application to Moodle. We chose Moodle because my boss and I are both hardcore open source advocates and serious PHP developers. We've just launched our first course under Moodle, and we have had no difficulties so far.
Of course, that was not the only reason for our decision; we also underwent a lengthy process of reviewing all of the customer feedback we'd gotten from our teachers and students over the years, and determined the changes that we needed to make in our system. We looked at several proprietary LMS products, but none were to our liking (and were very expensive!). We also looked at Sakai, and even had a test installation of that up and running for awhile (if you're looking for a good way to make your brains bleed out your ears, try installing Sakai), but when we found that it's not even at a 1.0 release yet, we decided to move on. When we discovered Moodle, we realized that, with some customization, it would fit our needs perfectly.
We spent two months customizing our code and branding the site. We've created a library of functions and development protocols (we refer to it as the Evil Monkey standards), and we're quite happy with the results so far. One of our customizations was create a separate login page that students would get to before getting to the main Moodle page, and blocking content beyond Topic 2 to students who had not agreed to our refund policy.
Over the next couple of months, we'll be building a customized student administration page to more closely match our business model, and integrating with the University's Oracle-based student management system. Very exciting times indeed!
At Tampere Polytechnic (Finland) we moved from WebCT to Moodle at the start of the fall semester (2004). Decision to do so was made late 2003 after a short trial. During spring and summer 2004 some pilot courses were run.
I wasn't around yet when Moodle was selected, so I can't really go into too much detail about reasons or how the transfer process was handled. WebCT (v4) was seen expensive and cumbersome. Moodle seemed the best bet.
Faculty reaction has been positive. Complaints have been few, usually about some specific feature and even then the system as a whole usually gets high marks. This is quite remarkable considering that faculty wasn't really consulted about the change. I guess nobody was really sad to see WebCT go.
As virtual learning environment Moodle has performed well for us. Especially satisfying has been its ease of use. Teachers need fairly little training to get going and the number of support cases as been dropping even though use is growing. We haven't had any unplanned shutdowns because of software (hardware and network have failed). There have been some problems with bugs and bad user interfaces, most of which have been corrected in later versions. On the whole Moodle has a real good reputation among the faculty and students (my gut-feeling, no surveys have been made).
Right now Moodle is the most flexible piece of our information system. We find ourselves using it for collaborative environment for various projects ranging from writing the annual study guide to R&D projects with international partners. While I'm kinda liking the attention, I'm also vary of trying to do thing the system wasn't meant to do.
Most of our information system is getting reimplemented with the next year and half. Moodle is pretty much the only thing visible to the end-user that gets to stay. Internal portals will be based on Sun's Java System Portal Server, the library uses its brand new Endeavor ENCompass to handle digital content; add into the mix a yet-to-selected document management system/learning object repository and I don't know what you get. Going to be interesting. Still, I'm pretty confident that we can integrate Moodle and those other systems into a coherent whole. You know, about as confident as I can be without actually knowing how. That's much much more confidence than I would have had we stayed with WebCT.
It would be understatement to say we are pleased with the return of investment we have getting from Moodle.
I wasn't around yet when Moodle was selected, so I can't really go into too much detail about reasons or how the transfer process was handled. WebCT (v4) was seen expensive and cumbersome. Moodle seemed the best bet.
Faculty reaction has been positive. Complaints have been few, usually about some specific feature and even then the system as a whole usually gets high marks. This is quite remarkable considering that faculty wasn't really consulted about the change. I guess nobody was really sad to see WebCT go.
As virtual learning environment Moodle has performed well for us. Especially satisfying has been its ease of use. Teachers need fairly little training to get going and the number of support cases as been dropping even though use is growing. We haven't had any unplanned shutdowns because of software (hardware and network have failed). There have been some problems with bugs and bad user interfaces, most of which have been corrected in later versions. On the whole Moodle has a real good reputation among the faculty and students (my gut-feeling, no surveys have been made).
Right now Moodle is the most flexible piece of our information system. We find ourselves using it for collaborative environment for various projects ranging from writing the annual study guide to R&D projects with international partners. While I'm kinda liking the attention, I'm also vary of trying to do thing the system wasn't meant to do.
Most of our information system is getting reimplemented with the next year and half. Moodle is pretty much the only thing visible to the end-user that gets to stay. Internal portals will be based on Sun's Java System Portal Server, the library uses its brand new Endeavor ENCompass to handle digital content; add into the mix a yet-to-selected document management system/learning object repository and I don't know what you get. Going to be interesting. Still, I'm pretty confident that we can integrate Moodle and those other systems into a coherent whole. You know, about as confident as I can be without actually knowing how.
It would be understatement to say we are pleased with the return of investment we have getting from Moodle.