Lounge

At York things are open because the University is only now investigating its options. We have drawn up a long list of requirements and will use that to start off a tendering process for comercial software. In parallel I have been charged with investigating the open-source route.

Given the positive experience that we have had with Moodle you might wonder why we are investigating comercial software at all. I think the main reason is that it is always safer to do the same thing as all your competitors. And it is a fact that most Universities are using comercial VLE's.

OK, the promised paper, Moodle at DCU, is now available. (Again, my sincere thanks to Morag Munro who did the bulk of the work on this!).

Enjoy!

Hmmm... Just noticed that the link to the DCU announcement of its adoption of Moodle, both in my original posting, and as copied to Moodle Buzz, is broken. Dunno whether something changed at the DCU end, or if it was broken all along. But here's the version that currently works anyway:

http://www.dcu.ie/news/press/2004/p0204e.shtml

Of course, the better reference for anyone wanting some support in promoting Moodle, would be the paper at:

As to your five points, here are my five (euro)cents:

1. Moodle is on the move. It is continually being developed and has only recently reached the penetration that has brought it to wide attention (I do believe WebCT were aware of it well before you, considering the comments I have heard from them about "open source").
2. From the above follows that Moodle's userbase will expand rapidly in the coming years. We at Kemi-Tornio Polytechnic aim at full Moodle adoption by the end of 2005, but we only represent 2500 students (3500 if you count all our subsidiaries). However, nationwide in Finland there is an interest in Moodle that will very likely limit the future use of commericial VLEs to only a handful of schools (The Finnish school system is public and based on free education for all (including tertiary), which implies that school budgets are very limited. Hence, the great interest in open source software.)
3. From the above also follows that where there is a userbase, there is a market for support, so enterprises offering full support for Moodle are likely to pop up. I know already of at least one in Finland and I can imagine that in the land of opportunities there will be many more grasping the chance to make a few bucks, if Moodle.com is overstretched.
4. Moving material from WebCT to Moodle just like that is not an option (not because it would not be compatible, but, especially, because Moodle is based on another pedagogical approach than WebCT and therefore courses should be rethought and reorganised to work to their fullest potential. Selective release can, or will be possible via the group function, but not (yet) for individual students, as far as I can tell).
5. As to epacks, the first thing would be to check whether those publihers have a deal with WebCT that disallows the modification of the material for use in another VLE. If that is not the case, you could offer the epack publishers to modify their material for Moodle. If they have business sense, they may be interested in expaning their market coverage to another promising VLE.

Hiring a PHP expert (or becoming one yourself) is always an option, as it will put you in control of the VLE. I am a language teacher, not an IT expert at all, yet even I have been able to edit Moodle's source files to improve it following the advice from this web site. With WebCT that would have been out of the question.

Summing up, I think it is a very good idea to have a separate Moodle box running for staff training. I trust they will find it easier to use in many ways than WebCT (at least that is my experience). It will allow you to try out course conversion from WebCT to Moodle (and do inform us of your experiences!). If you can enlist the help of some student assistants in this process, it may not be such a gargantuan task.

Keep us posted, regards,

Paul.

Moodle does not have the user base that WebCT does and it can be argued that it's not as tested and therefore not as reliable.... that can be over come, especially in the academic arena.

It is very hard to get reliable figures for the "user base" of either WebCT or Moodle. I think is is certainly fair to say that the Moodle user base is substantial, and growing very rapidly; sometimes (as in my own institution) at a direct reduction in WebCT.

From my own experience I can say that WebCT is generally a well engineered and reliable package (better than most); but Moodle is certainly at least as solid.

The full-blown support for moodle isn't available for moodle as it is for WebCT. This is almost a total show-stopper for us. We're very spoiled with the high-end WebCT support. We call them and they fix it.

Well, we buy support from moodle.com and the service to date has been absolutely amazing - significantly better that anything I have ever experienced in the closed-licence software business. And it's a lot cheaper to boot! But there is no surprise there: the open source business model precisely supports vigorous competition on service quality. As I say, we're very happy with moodle.com, but if it should ever falter we have a number of other outfits who would be only too delighted to bid for that business. Try saying that for any closed-licence software product. Open source is software consumer heaven.

Migration of existing content is a major issue as well. We have over 40 highly-developed fully online courses that support "advanced" WebCT features like selective release. Migration of that content has to be planned and resources for that need to be allocated.

That's a real and genuine problem; which flows directly from your original selection of a closed-license software platform. You are locked into that vendor. That is the point of the business model. Great for vendors (especially if they can achieve a "dominant market position") and a disaster for consumers.

The strategic challenge for your organisation is whether to "dig deeper" (by continuing to design even more such courses on that platform - basically locking in to the current platform even harder), or to jump ship now. Of course you will have to take a significant hit to do so: that is the price for future flexibility. But the longer you wait, the higher that price will get. The fact that it is already high is therefore a poor rationale for keeping going...

Moodle doesn't (to my knowledge) support WebCT epacks (pre-formulated WebCT courses available for adoption direct from major publishers). Perhaps SCORM supports that but I havn't really looked into things as of yet in that area.

Again, this is a serious issue, with no simple answer. The first thing to understand is that e-Packs are primarily about using the VLE as a (primitive) Digital Rights Management device. So, as has already been mentioned, there is a high incentive for the publishers to support any VLE which attains significant market share. Given the current momentum behind Moodle, I would think there is a good prospect of ePack publishers beginning to support it in the near future.

I should also say that, in my own institution, while we played with some ePacks on WebCT, we did not find any of appropriate quality and relevance that we really wanted to adopt them. Of course, this is a very dynamic and discipline specific thing, so your mileage may vary.

Out current fall back position is that if any Faculty member really does want to adopt ePack material, then that will be done by linking to external hosting of the ePack. This is offered, at no extra charge, by the leading ePack publishers. The linkage would normally be embedded within a "shell" Moodle course, so there is some superficial integration. Of course, you don't get any "deep" integration (e.g., into the gradebook). But, at this moment in time, this is a reasonable compromise. It is certainly a straightforward response to the claim (sometimes touted) that adoption of Moodle is simply incompatible with use of ePacks. It is not.

Hope this helps. Good Luck!