Adventures in Open Source: Lessons Learned at Purchase College

Keith LandaSUNY CIT

26 May 2011

http://purchase.academia.edu/KeithLanda http://www.slideshare.net/keith.landa

Overview

• Purchase College• Our vision for open source @ Purchase• Moodle – LMS • Kaltura – video support• Drupal, WordPress & OpenScholar• Mahara – e-portfolios• Big Blue Button – live classroom

Background

Liberal Arts and Sciences plus Arts Conservatories

~4200 FTE

Residential campus - F2F coursesLiberal arts plus studio focusSome online course developmentCOIL and international programming

StudentInformation

System

LibraryInformation

Systems

AcademicAnalytics

CampusRepository

The View from 30,000 Feet

LiveClassroom

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

Library reserves project

• Prior systems: paper forms, Google Docs• Limited notifications• Moodle block to mediate interaction between

faculty, library and students in course– Course-based requests– Faculty and librarian dashboards– Course-based notifications

Campus lessons - Moodle

• LMS focus should be learning– Faculty AND student perspectives

• Change is hard, and exhilarating• Choose the risk you’re comfortable with• Importance of community critical mass for

open source apps• Clear roadmap for product development• Leverage LMS to meet other campus needs

Video @ Purchase

Faculty use of video in Moodle

• YouTube resources very popular– Moodle multimedia filter– Embedding other video sites

• Web video not sufficient– Privacy, copyright needs

• Video uploads to Moodle– 150 MB limit per file– Playback issues– Course backups in the multi-GB range

Commercial/community hybrid-http://corp.kaltura.com/-http://www.kaltura.org/

Kaltura-Moodle integration

• Video resource– Media added to Kaltura through Moodle– Upload bypasses Moodle (file size issues)– Playback controls

• Video assignment type– Student submitted videos– Video sequencing tools: content bank, timeline,

transitions

Streaming video rights

• Librarian role in obtaining streaming rights• Direct access to Kaltura publisher dashboard• Upload & transcode video• Schedule availability• Provide embed code for Moodle courses

Campus lessons - Kaltura

• Good feature set• SaaS plus community source model• Developer/support community

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

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– Event scheduling, video

StudentInformation

System

LibraryInformation

Systems

AcademicAnalytics

CampusRepository

LiveClassroom

Questions?

Keith Landakeith.landa@purchase.edu

http://openscholar.purchase.edu/keith_landa