Dawson College migrated from WebCT to Moodle as its course management system. The migration process required developing scripts to automatically migrate most content, while some elements like quizzes had to be manually migrated. Custom authentication modules were created to integrate Moodle login with the college's existing LDAP directory. Usage has increased significantly since the migration, with over 500,000 visits and nearly 4 million pageviews recorded. Lessons learned included explaining the reasons for migration, showing example courses, and providing training and support for instructors.

1. Canadian Moodle Moot 2011 Photo: Roger Aziz Lessons Learned from the Implementation of Moodle at Dawson College Rafael Scapin, Ph.D. Coordinator of Educational Technology & Moodle Evangelist Dawson College – Montréal (QC)

4. Customization

5. New Modules

6. Lessons Learned

8. Dawson College Overview

10. Students: 10,000 (7,000 day students and 3,000 night students)

11. Teachers: 600

13. CMSs Analyzed Open Source Proprietary

14. CMSs Analyzed And the was...

15. Who Uses Moodle (Québec)

16. Who Uses Moodle (Québec) 31 Community Colleges from Québec will move to Moodle Presentation: Quand 31 collèges passent ensemble à Moodle By François Lizotte DecClic Project Manager Today @ 3:30 PM (Maligne)

17. Migration: WebCT to Moodle Automatic Migration Script Developed by Université de Sherbrooke 4 Start from Scratch Manual Migration 6

18. Migration: WebCT to Moodle WebCT 4 Course (Created by Rajesh Malik)

19. Migration: WebCT to Moodle Example of a WebCT4 Course Migrated to Moodle Using Université de Sherbrooke’s Script

20. Migration: WebCT to Moodle Some Migration Issues No script to automatize migration from WebCT 6 to Moodle Manual Migration (time consuming) Quizzes migrated manually (WebCT 6) Final layout (different than WebCT)

21. Customization and Integration Theme: Dawson’s website look and feel

22. Customization and Integration Architecture Internet Servers (CentOS + Apache) Moodle 1.9.11 Backup Database + (Moodle Data) (MySQL)

23. Customization and Integration Authentication: Teachers, Staff and Students Authentication modules: ldap_faculty, ldap_staff, ldap_student The custom authentication modules connect to our Novell LDAP server. Three similar modules which distinguish between faculty, students, and staff. A cron job that runs daily and creates new users in Moodle if they don't already exist. (faculty & students)

24. Customization and Integration Authentication Modules ldap_faculty ldap_student ldap_staff Novell LDAP Server

25. Customization and Integration One Single Login and Password Teachers, Students and Staff use the same Novell Login/password to access Moodle No need of a specific Moodle password (no resetting passwords anymore!) Also integrated with My Dawson Portal (Single Sign On)

26. Customization and Integration Student Login (First Time Access)

27. Customization and Integration My Moodle Page (Students)

28. Customization and Integration My Moodle Page (Teachers)

29. Customization and Integration Creating a New Course

30. Customization and Integration A Moodle Course Shell

31. Customization and Integration Most Used Features – Menu (One Click Approach)

32. Customization and Integration Enrolling Students We can merge 2 or more sections into 1 course OR create separate courses for every section

33. Customization and Integration Unenrolling Students We can unenroll 1 or more sections

34. Customization and Integration List of Enrolled Students Teachers can reuse their courses every year by unenrolling old students and enrolling new ones.

35. Customization and Integration Admin CEGEP Module: How it Works Student Information System (CLARA)

36. Modules and Plugins Moodle has a great number of plugins and modules developed by its community of users Pros: Diversity, flexibility, do-not-reinvent-the-wheel approach Cons: Compatibility with a newer Moodle version when upgrading (big issue now: 1.9.x -> 2.0), some plugins/modules have not been reviewed, and the quality and/or suitability for a working Moodle site has not been checked.

37. Modules and Blocks

38. Omnivox Integration Omnivox is a gradebook system used by Dawson. Developed by Skytech (Montreal) We didn’t have permission from Skytech to make a real integration between Moodle’s gradebook and Omnivox. No public API. Solution: We have developed a module that creates an Excel file compliant with Omnivox.

39. Omnivox Integration

40. Statistics Google Analytics September 2009 – April 2011 547,075 Visits 3,770,973 Pageviews 6.89 Pages/Visit 04:46 Average Time on Site

42. Detail how the content of the former CMS will be converted to Moodle (emphasize the content won’t be lost!)

43. Show examples of how courses will look like in Moodle

44. Help teachers to create courses from scratch (if necessary)

45. Have a Migration & Communication Plan

47. Create a FAQ (text and video, if possible) and an email and phone Helpline

48. Training workshops should be available when Moodle is released.

49. Personal Moodle Trainer

50. Technician to support Moodle (programmer)

52. Create your own “Moodle Flavour”!

53. Stay up-to-date to what other people are doing with Moodle all over the world: Moodle.org, MoodleNews.com, Moodlerific.org, Moodlemonthly.com, feeds from Twitter (Moodle), Paper.li/tag/moodle, etc

55. Questions

56. Contact Rafael Scapin rscapin@dawsoncollege.qc.ca rscapin www.facebook.com/rscapin rscapin@hotmail.com rscapin

57. Thank you very uch !