Adventures in open source

Adventures in Open Source - Moodle, Mahara, Drupal et. al. at Purchase College Keith Landa SUNY Wizard Conference 18 November 2010 http:// www.slideshare.net/keith.landa

Student Information System Library Information Systems Academic Analytics Campus Repository The View from 30,000 Feet

Criteria -Functionality -Support -Architecture/integration -Total cost of ownership -Risk management Why @ Purchase? http:// moodle.org

Background – Purchase – 2008 Liberal Arts and Sciences plus Arts Conservatories ~4200 FTE Web enhancement of F2F courses Online programs in the works ERes electronic reserves

What is Moodle? The world’s most widely used open source LMS
49,000 Registered Moodle Sites
35,000,000 Registered Users
http://www.moodle.org/stats

Faculty Blackboard uses
Distribute materials
Library services
Integration with SIS
Course communications
Links to external web sites
One stop shopping for students
Discussion forum
Gradebook
New media (blogs, wikis, podcasts)
Drop boxes
Student collaboration tools
Course reports
Self-directed lessons
Online quizzing
Real-time tools (chat, etc)
Clickers
LMS desired features No “killer app” tying us to Blackboard

Student Survey Responses

Implementation – course migration
Blackboard - ~1000 courses; ERes – substantially more
ERes – document download, upload to Moodle
Blackboard – Moodle can import Blackboard course archives (zip files), but…. (problems with the Bb archives)
Temp services staff - ~300 hours from May to Aug 2009, primarily ERes migration
Bb course migration on request during 2009/2010 year

Implementation – faculty development
Spring 2009 workshops: hour long sessions, various topics; early adopters; 28 faculty
2009 Summer Faculty Workshop Series: new programming, not just Moodle; half- and full-day workshops; stipends; 36 faculty at Moodle sessions
Fall 2009: Moodle Kickoff workshops; Getting Started, Gradebook, Learning Activity; 98 faculty

Cost comparisons Switch to Moodle saves us over $50K each year (Blackboard and ERes licensing costs) Risk management: -dislocations in the commercial space -self-host vs vendor host: http ://goo.gl/tQ5uX Blackboard Moodle Licensing $40K $0K Server VM VM Staff Fraction FTE server admin 1 FTE instructional tech Fraction FTE server admin 1 FTE instructional tech Course migration NA $3K onetime (ERes, mostly) Faculty development ?? $3.6K summer 2009

Community contributed modules Community Modules and Plugins page http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?id=6009 Map activity Lightbox Gallery resource

Bringing the cloud into the course

Student Information System Library Information Systems Academic Analytics Campus Repository Enrollment automation Open advantages
Library integration
Reserve requests
Electronic resources
Senior projects

Focus on teaching & learning - Robust set of activities & resources - Add-on modules from the community - Moodle development pathway Costs - No licensing costs - Similar support costs Integration - Other systems - Web 2.0 world Flexible open architecture Why @ Purchase? Risk management - Risks of open source - Commercial products have different risks

Campus lessons - Moodle
LMS focus should be learning
Faculty AND student perspectives
Change is hard, and exhilarating
Stewardship of campus resources
Choose the risk you’re comfortable with
Importance of community critical mass for open source apps
Clear roadmap for product development

“ Mahoodle”
Single sign-on
Mahara assignment in Moodle
Adoption process for Mahara
Why e-portfolios?
Tool to showcase student/faculty work?
Tool to support student learning?
Tool to collect institutional data?
http:// mahara.org

Mahara overview
“ Collect, select, reflect” and share (access control)
Resume building Social networking

Building and sharing a portfolio
Assembling artifacts
File uploads
Blog reflections
External materials (web video, RSS feeds, etc)
Creating a view
Determining the layout
Assembling and arranging portfolio components
Determining access controls
Share with individual user (e.g., instructor)
Make public, generate unique URL
Share with group (e.g., course group)
Submit to a course group (freezes portfolio view)
Creating templates

Campus lessons - Mahara
Adoption slower than with Moodle
Less faculty interest
Stealth adoption
Stronger tie to Moodle 2.0
Repositories
Focus on tool for student learning
Constraints on student showcase uses
Constraints on harvesting institutional data

Campus Repository
Importance of video at Purchase College
Film and media studies; cinema studies; journalism
Class projects
Student organizations
Training materials
Existing use of cloud video
Journalism & YouTube
TLTC Vimeo channel
http://vimeo.com/channels/97810
Five Minute Moodling
Need for a campus solution?
Kaltura open source video
kaltura.com vs kaltura.org
Use by serious players
Plugins already available

Campus lessons - Kaltura
Too early to tell, hopeful
SaaS and community source model is interesting
Developer community appears vibrant
Baseline integrations with apps on campus

WordPress, Drupal, OpenScholar WordPress -Implemented on campus before Moodle - http:// blogs.purchase.edu -Some active individual blogs -Departmental use instead of homegrown CMS -e.g.: http:// tltc.blogs.purchase.edu Drupal -Replacement for our home-grown CMS? -CampusEAI portal – includes CMS -Drupal for special projects - http:// drupalsites.purchase.edu OpenScholar -Faculty scholarly web pages -Customized Drupal application

Why were we so interested? -Legacy faculty web page service -Faculty desire for self-service -Information reuse possibilities -External faculty profile pages

Ease of faculty updates -Editing existing content -Adding new items -Default layouts, widgets

Faculty choice of -features -themes/appearance Ability to add others Central content access However….

Campus lessons - OpenScholar
Make sure application is ready for primetime
Default authentication, site creation
Server constraints
Be prepared for community growing pains
Persistence
Recent progress

WordPress Drupal

Campus lessons – WordPress, Drupal
WordPress – plug-in proliferation
Plug-in and version upgrades
Initial decisions can be critical – WP config
WordPress is easy for most users
Drupal is powerful, can be daunting
Need for turn-key Drupal set-ups

Student Information System Library Information Systems Academic Analytics Campus Repository The View from 30,000 Feet

Questions? Keith Landa Purchase College SUNY 914-251-6450 [email_address]

Adventures in open source

by Keith Landa

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