Comparisons and advocacy

Hi Jonathen, there is a growing chorus of praise for Moodle on Educause.

There is also this discussion.

One way to start is to find out what office runs your servers, and see if they have PHP and MySQL available. If not, see if you can set up your own server to run them. How IT depts. handle this is different. A recent graduate from CSU Humboldt just got a tenure track job at a large U where they use Blackboard. She asked about Moodle as she had used here as a lecturer, and her IT folks were delighted to set her up with an account.

Another thing to check for is whether FAU has an LMS commitee, many U's are setting these up with faculty, staff, and students, to help advise the CIO on LMS decisions. If not, then maybe it's time FAU started one.

There are several documents that can assist the University's evaluation. One is Karin van den Berg's recent thesis "Finding Open options: An Open Source software evaluation model with a case study on Course Management Systems" published last week. Check out Jason Cole's "Using Moodle" Chapter 15. Also Carnegie Mellon Universities evaluation of Sakai and Moodle; a compilation of the CMU documents can be found at www.immagic.com/eLibrary/GENERAL/IMM/I050801F.pdf. Stanford University's Charles Kernes described Moodle as "pedagogy friendly" in his e-mail to Sakai Chief Architect Chuck Severance. A copy is available at www.immagic.com/eLibrary/ARCHIVES/U_MICH/S050716K.pdf.

The key is matching the learning system with the diversity of the student body, the subjects taught and their level, and method of integration with other university systems. The first step should be identifying the methods of instruction and the features needed to support that method of instruction (Cole's chapter 15 is a starting point). The second step is to identify the expected source of learning content; if faculty will be developing courses, then see how the authoring tools match faculty needs. The third step is to verify student performance and satisfaction; Humboldt University completed a study earlier this year that has been discussed on the Moodle Forum. The fourth step is to identify integration points with other university systems--especially the student system--and see how that should be done. Finally compare systems based on these criteria. Effectiveness, not cost, should become the key criterion for the choice.

You may want to check out the University of Wisconsin's comments about uPortal and Moodle integration (www.immagic.com/eLibrary/ARCHIVES/GENERAL/UW_WI_US/W050816H.pdf).  Portals are increasingly being used by colleges and universities.

LAMS is another very effective learning system. See www.lamsinternational.com/. Moodle and LAMS integration has been completed. See lamsfoundation.org/integration/moodle/. This work was initiated by Open Polytechnic of New Zealand and is being rapidly adopted by others.

Watch carefully the actions taken by SUNY. Check out their Learning Environment study; a copy is available at www.immagic.com/eLibrary/ARCHIVES/GENERAL/SUNY_US/S050601T.pdf. Expect a business plan and selections within the next two months. SUNY's choices could change the market for learning systems.

Because of the interest in Moodle and LAMS, the Instruction Technology Council is holding a MoodleMoot in Savannah February 10, 2006 in conjunction with their eLearning 2006l Conference February 11-14. They have asked Moodle's Martin Dougiamas to keynote their conference; he has tentatively accepted. This shows the interest in Moodle and LAMS (LAMS is part of this MoodleMoot) by the leaders in distance learning.