Adventures in Open Source - Moodle, Mahara, Drupal et. al. at

Purchase CollegeKeith Landa

SUNY Wizard Conference18 November 2010

http://www.slideshare.net/keith.landa

StudentInformation

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LibraryInformation

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AcademicAnalytics

CampusRepository

The View from 30,000 Feet

Why @ Purchase?

http://moodle.org

Criteria-Functionality-Support-Architecture/integration-Total cost of ownership-Risk management

Background – Purchase – 2008

ERes electronic reserves

Liberal Arts and Sciences plus Arts Conservatories

~4200 FTE

Web enhancement of F2F coursesOnline programs in the works

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

1. Distribute materials2. Library services3. Integration with SIS4. Course communications5. Links to external web sites6. One stop shopping for students7. Discussion forum8. Gradebook9. New media (blogs, wikis, podcasts)10. Drop boxes11. Student collaboration tools12. Course reports13. Self-directed lessons14. Online quizzing15. Real-time tools (chat, etc)16. Clickers

LMS desired features

No “killer app” tying us to Blackboard

Stud

ent S

urve

y Re

spon

ses

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 comparisonsBlackboard Moodle

Licensing $40K $0K

Server VM VM

Staff Fraction FTE server admin1 FTE instructional tech

Fraction FTE server admin1 FTE instructional tech

Course migration NA $3K onetime (ERes, mostly)

Faculty development ?? $3.6K summer 2009

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

Community contributed modules

Community Modules and Plugins pagehttp://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?id=6009

Map activity

Lightbox Gallery resource

Bringing the cloud into the course

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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 artifactso File uploadso Blog reflectionso External materials (web video, RSS feeds, etc)

• Creating a viewo Determining the layouto Assembling and arranging portfolio components

• Determining access controlso Share with individual user (e.g., instructor)o Make public, generate unique URLo Share with group (e.g., course group)o Submit to a course group (freezes portfolio view)o 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

CampusRepository

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/appearanceAbility to add othersCentral 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

StudentInformation

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The View from 30,000 Feet

Questions?

Keith LandaPurchase College SUNY914-251-6450keith.landa@purchase.edu