Keynote presentation at 5th National and 2nd International conference on e-learning and e-teaching (ICELET2010) held on December 1-2, 2010 in Tehran, Iran.

1. Delivering e-learning at large scale
Dr Ross Mackenzie
The Open University, United Kingdom
International conference on e-learning and e-teaching
(ICELET2010) Tehran December 2010
1

2. Outline
• The Open University
• Learning & Teaching Online
– OU Virtual Learning Environment
• OpenLearn
– Open Education Resources
2

3. Dr Ross Mackenzie
• Lead the team that develops
and supports systems for
online learning at The Open
University
• Have been at The Open
University since 1995
• Previously at Oxford
University and at Cornell
University in New York.
3

4. 4

5. The Open University
• The OU is the biggest university in the UK with:
– more than 250,000 students
– more than 7,000 tutors
– more than 4,500 academic/support/admin staff
• Since launch in 1969 more than 2 million people
worldwide have studied with the OU
• Headquarters in Milton Keynes (80 km north of London)
– Regional Offices throughout the UK
5

6. The Open University
• Distance Learning / Supported Open Learning
• Technology Supported Learning
– Always using new technologies
• TV & Radio in the 1970’s
• Personal Computers in 1980/1990’s
• Online in 2000’s
6

7. OU/LTS image
7

8. Learning and Teaching Solutions
• OU Media and Learning Systems development house
• Produce and deliver all the learning materials used on
OU courses
• 400 staff
– editors / instructional designers / software developers
8

9. OU VLE
• Based on Moodle
–open source learning management system
• Scale of Activity
– 24 x 7 operation
– More than 1M transactions/day
– More than 50,000 students/day
9

10. 10

11. 11

12. OU OpenLearn
• Freely distributable learning materials
• 800 study units
– Drawn from across OU curriculum
– Study time 3 – 30 hours
• OpenLearn platform also based on Moodle
12

13. 13

14. 14

15. 15

16. 16

17. 17

18. Moodle
18

19. 19

20. Moodle
• Originally launched in 2001
• Recently (this month) updated to version 2.0
• Used by 50,000 organisations in 212 countries, and in
82 languages
• Estimated 40,000,000 users
20

21. Moodle – Open Source
• Distributed under a GNU General Public License
– source code is always available
• Gives the ability to any organisation to modify Moodle to
meet their own needs, and if they wish to share
developments back with the community
• Moodle is PHP-based which means it is relatively easy
to modify 21

22. Adopting Moodle for use at OU
• Adopted by the OU in mid-2005
• Didn’t do everything that the OU needed, but were able
to modify it as needed
• Established a development team in Milton Keynes to
allow Moodle to be developed for use at the OU
– all OU modifications shared back with community
22

23. Extending Moodle
• Authoring Learning Materials
• Collaborative Tools
• Online Assessment
• Portfolio
23

24. Learning Materials
• Authored in XML – using Microsoft Word
– OU custom module allows authors to create learning
materials with embedded
• Images
• Videos
• Quizzes
– Don’t need specialist web authoring skills
– Aligned with OU print production processes
24

25. 25

26. Collaborative Tools
• Key to much of the OU learning experience
• Forums
– Allows dialogs between students and learners
• Blogs
– Personal web log – can be limited to OU community
or made open to the outside world
• Wikis
– Collaborative working environment 26

27. Forum
• Threaded discussion environment
• Groupings can be limited to tutorial groups, whole
course or entire OU community
• OU rewrote forum to ensure that it would be able to
handle very high traffic levels
27

28. 28

29. Blog
• OU enhanced standard moodle blog to allow comments
to be added
• Can be set up within the context of a course or as a
personal tools for students to use
29

30. 30

31. Wiki
• Original Moodle wiki had lots of functionality
• OU use indicated that this overhead was distracting
students from their learning activity
• OU Wiki is a ‘minimalist’ tool tuned to the needs of the
learner
31

32. 32

33. Online Assessment
• OU has invested heavily in the assessment elements of
Moodle
• Re-engineered Moodle Gradebook
• Have redeveloped Moodle quiz engine (for Moodle 2.1)
• Developed an extension to the quiz to allow richer
question types (OpenMark) 33

34. 34

35. Portfolio
• Tools to allow students to
– Store
– Save
– Share documents
• Initial version had too steep a learning curve, later
simpler version had better adoption
35

36. 36

37. OU Moodle Architecture
• Three layer architecture – Red Hat-based
• 5 webservers – 4 load-balanced serving users, 1 running
cron
• Database cluster – postgreSQL 8.3
• NFS cluster
• Storage Area Network 37

38. Webservers
Database servers File servers
Storage Area Network 38

39. OU VLE - More than Moodle
• Real time collaboration via Elluminate (now Blackboard
Collaborate)
• Google Apps for Education – providing email and other
collaborative and storage facilities
• Assignment Handling – document tracking and handling
movement of assignment between students and tutors.
39

40. Elluminate/Blackboard Collaborate
• Real time collaborative tools – audio / video / whiteboard
• Tightly integrated with Moodle
• Used with c. 12000 modern language students
• Trial use in most areas of the University
40

41. 41

42. Google Apps for Education
• Being introduced for all students to provide
– email
– large storage capacity
– collaborate document authoring environment
42

43. 43

44. Assignment Handling
• Much of the OU’s continuous assessment is based on
essays – almost all students now submit electronically
• Handling system relays essays to correct tutor
• Returns to student after marking
• System handles over 1 M assignments / year
44

45. Supporting Users
• Critical in
deploying
e-learning
at scale
• Learners
• Teachers
45

46. Moving to Moodle 2.0
• Will be moving to Moodle 2.0 over the next 12 months
• Taking the opportunity to re-engineer and improve a
significant number of elements of the OU VLE
• Adding new functionality to improve personalisation,
support for user generated content, mobile devices
46

47. More Information
• About The Open University
– http://www.open.ac.uk
• About Moodle
– http://moodle/org
• About OpenLearn
– http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn/
• My Work blog
– http://bit.ly/rossmac
47

48. Any Questions?
Dr Ross Mackenzie
r.a.mackenzie@open.ac.uk
48