Vytautas Magnus University case

1. Moodle solutions integration for a
traditional university: VMU case
Danutė Pranckutė, Marius Šadauskas
___
June 9th
2017

2. VYTAUTAS MAGNUS
VMU or VYTAUTAS MAGNUS
UNIVERSITY since 1930
was Grand Duke of Lithuania, who ruled
from 1392 to 1430 and brought the greatest
military and political prosperity to the
country.
During his reign the push eastward by the
German Order was broken. In 1410 Vytautas
won the Battle of Grünwald (Tannenberg)
against Teutonic Order.
He also extended the state border all the
way to the shores of the Black Sea.
Vytautas legend was so great that
Lithuanians continue to name their children
after him.

3. TIMELINE

4. NUMBERS
10 FACULTIES of:
~ 7 000
BA and MA
students
> 300
PhD students
> 24 000
graduates (since’89)
Law
Music Academy
Natural Sciences
Political Science and Diplomacy
Social Sciences with Institute of
Social Welfare

5. multilingual: 30+ languages;
prospective: PhD in 16+ scientific fields;
mobile:
Erasmus+, VMU Bilateral Exchange,
Virtual mobility, ...
67
BA
76
MA
17%
of programmes
in EN
2000+
courses
STUDIES at VMU

6. Innovative Studies Institute (ISI)
Innovative Studies Institute was establish in 2000 named by
Distance study center and in 2012 reorganized to Innovative
Studies Institute. It is an university unit working with different
faculties on curriculum re-development for distance and virtual
studies.
The goal of the Institute is to develop distance studies at
Vytautas Magnus University in agreement with strategic goals of
the system of Education in Lithuania, and in the context of
Lithuanian distance and e-learning network.
___

7. The Institute has the following objectives:
to assist University teachers to design, implement and organize distance studies;
to promote online studies and e-learning;
to develop teacher competences to be able to design, implement and organize
distance studies;
to train teachers to design distance studies and to ensure their quality, to meet
quality requirements and to get them assessed and accredited at institutional and
national levels;
to promote social and professional networking among academics and education
specialists;
to perform research in distance studies, and to ensure its applicability on practical
level.
Innovative Studies Institute (ISI)___

8. VMU systems administrated by ISI
Virtual learning environment – Moodle
Video conferening – Adobe Connect, Cisco
Online support system for students
Online support system for teachers
Survey tool – LimeSurvey
___

9. Virtual learning environment – Moodle
2004 – 2010 we have been using BlackBoard VLE
2009 – migration for BlackBoard to Moodle VLE (version 1.5)
2011 – Moodle updated to version 1.9
2012 – Moodle updated to version 2.2, new design created
2013 – Moodle updated to version 2.4
2014 – Moodle updated to version 2.7
2015 – Moodle updated to version 2.9
2016 – Moodle updated to version 3.1, new mobile friendly design created
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10. Moodle platform 2012 – 2015

11. Moodle platform 2016
https://moodle.vdu.lt

12. Current version: 3.1.1
Updated every year (in July) to the latest version
First Class system for user authentication
Users enrolment synchronization with VMU students information system
(STUDIS) using web-services
VMU Moodle is fully translated into two languages: Lithuanian and English
including main content (using Multi-language content filter)
Course categories
Course titles
Course descriptions
Moodle platform http://moodle.vdu.lt

13. Moodle platform: first page

14. Course growth at VMU distance learning
environment
2320 courses, 748 teachers, 7090 students (data: 2017-02-22)
About 85% all university course are in VMU Moodle

15. Moodle usage statistics

16. Moodle usage statistics

17. Users from 130 countries visited VMU Moodle in 2011 – 2016

18. The most popular foreign countries in 2011 – 2016

19. Infrastructure
Vmware for virtualization;
Data-storages in different locations;
Web-servers are running on Linux Debian OS;
Rack and Blade server types;
Storage system connected by fibrechanel;
Network 10 Gbit/s.

20. Moodle Web-server
Web-server is running on Linux Debian OS
Database engine: MySQL
Running on:
8 CPU x Intel Xeon CPU X7542 @ 2.67GHz,
16 GB RAM,
2 TB.
Data is stored in external storage system with 25x600GB SAS 10k rpm
2.5”

21. Moodle backups
Automatic course backups created every week, 5 weekly backups are stored in
Moodledata to restore courses easily
Weekly backup process takes approximately 20 - 22 hours
Moodledata is stored in storage system and backups are performed nightly
VMU Moodle platform moodledata uses 534 GB
Storage system backed up to another location weekly

22. Support system for teachers:
Course request from
Moodle

23. Support system for teachers:
portal with support information
24/7 question about online study module
Moodle user manual (text and video)
Documents and regulations for organization of online studies
All information about virtual mobility
Our suggestions for other web 2.0 tools for communication and collaboration
OER
http://studyonline.lt

24. Support system for students:
24/7 for student

25. Moodle
Support system for students:
24/7 for student

26. The most popular Moodle activities tools
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
Assignment 1045 1465 2185 3069 4426
Chat 215 247 226 225 258
Choice 73 83 118 148 259
Feedback 20 33 90 100 152
Forum 1928 2884 4170 4772 5802
Glossary 190 229 232 249 257
Group choice 8 38 47 78 140
HotPotatoes 748 908 933 1085 1141
Mindmap 12 37 53 79 155
Quiz 922 1023 1092 1187 1568
Wiki 56 73 156 187 234
Workshop 38 55 71 89 66
Database 45

27. Additional plugins
Activity modules:
Group choice
Mindmap
Subpage
Lightbox Gallery
Submission plugins
Online audio recording
Blocks:
Completion Progress
Course Contacts
Course Contents
Statistics
Quickmail
Question types:
Drag-and-Drop Matching
Spreadsheet
HTML editor
extension:
WIRIS
Cloze Editor

28. Additional plugins
Course formats:
Onetopic format
Collapsed Topics
Grid format
Columns
Buttons format
Local plugin:
Event Reminders
Bulk course reset
Availability
restrictions:
By language

29. Thank you!