Making the Moodle First Year Case Studies Westmont

Making the Moodle: First Year Case Studies Westmont College Northwest University Presented by: John Rodkey, Westmont College Chris Martin, Northwest University

Why are we here? • To review the value of implementing Moodle, an opensource learning management system Following this session we hope you will: • Have sufficient information to implement Moodle • Understand moodle’s structure and its integration with your SIS/ERP system • Know where to learn more

What is Moodle? • Moodle stands for: (M)odular (O)bject (O)riented (D)istributed (L)earning (E)nvironment and was developed by Martin Dougiamas in 1999. – http: //www. moodle. org – Currently installed on 9, 237 registered sites with over 2. 5 million users in 242, 342 courses. • Open University – One of the largest online schools in the world recently adopted Moodle for their back-end delivery vehicle. – Runs on Unix, Linux, Free. BSD, Windows, Mac OS X – Utilizes PHP, My. SQL, and a web server (Apache/IIS) – Cron Software: Visual. Cron (Windows)

Westmont: Project Background • 1200 students, 80 faculty, modest IT budget • Linux-centric infrastructure • Web. CT since 2002 • Low Web. CT Adoption < 3% courses, < 10% teachers:

Westmont: Web. CT Problems with Web. CT: • • Large Increasing Annual Fees No Integration with SIS/ERP ($20 K add-on) No LDAP authentication ($10 K add-on) Uncertain Future – Blackboard Buyout Difficulty adding courses, students Interface Complexity -> Faculty Frustration Faculty Advocates Left, or on Sabbatical

Westmont: Implementation • Implemented Summer, 2005 – – Branded it: 3 weeks, 2 people Developed scripts to create all courses each semester Wrote scripts to push SIS/ERP faculty & student info into moodle • Results: unmitigated success (almost) – Less work than Web. CT – Fewer on-going problems (e. g. passwords)

Westmont: Support So what about support? Living dangerously? – Encountered only one substantial software problem with moodle. – It was • Identified Aug 11, 7 p. m. • Acknowledged Aug 12, 8 p. m. • Fixed Aug 13, 1 a. m. Hard to beat that kind of support!

Westmont: Usage Fall: 627 active students 38 of 366 (10%) active courses 18 active teachers ( >2000 accesses) Spring: 856 active students 62 of 470 (12%) active courses 23 active teachers

Westmont: Web. CT Moodle F 2005 Moodle S 2006 Faculty Survey Number who Used? 7 (12) % of Responses Responders 24 28 10 (18) 34 28 17 (23) 59 28 Numbers in Yellow are actual – vs. reported – users.

Westmont: Web. CT Moodle F 2005 Moodle S 2006 Faculty Survey Frequency of Use * 3. 0 S. D. N 1. 2 8 3. 4 1. 7 10 3. 2 1. 4 17 * 1=very infrequently used, 5 = very frequently used

Westmont: Web. CT Moodle F 2005 Moodle S 2006 Faculty Survey Experience S. D. Rating * 3. 3 1. 0 N 3. 8 1. 1 10 3. 8 1. 0 17 * 1=terrible, 5 = wonderful 8

Westmont: Faculty Survey Why Didn’t You Use Moodle? 43% - No Perceived Need 32% - Too Much Work 15% - Interface is Too Complex 5% - Philosophically opposed to its use

Westmont: Server detail • Hardware: Generic 2 U Rackmount – – Single P 4 850 Mhz 1 GB RAM 36 GB Storage Single NIC – – Su. SE Linux 9. 1 OS apache 2 -2. 0. 49 -23 mysql-4. 0. 18 -32 php 4 -4. 3. 4 -26 • Software Performance is OK, but replacing with a 2. 8 GHz P 4 running Su. SE Linux 10.

Westmont Demo • https: //eureka. westmont. edu/

Westmont: Hare-brained schemes/Plans • Course evaluations • Automated plagiarism detection • Portal-like integration (Grades, events) • Calendar integration

Northwest University Project Background: Why did we look? – Northwest University used Blackboard Basic for 5 years with approximately 26% voluntary faculty participation – Our costs kept rising while the product development curve was pretty flat – We are a Windows OS institution and our comfort/training for staff is on the Microsoft platforms – SCT Power. Campus implementation in 2005.

Key Points to our installation • Utilized our skill set strengths without extra training – Windows 2003 Server, PHP, My. SQL • Extension of the IQWeb space – IQWeb is our administrative portal, Moodle became our campus instructional delivery portal. • Branding: Discovery – Instead of using Moodle as the title, branding helped us “sell” this implementation • Training: – Brought the faculty up to speed very early in the process

Northwest First Year Statistics • Fall semester “voluntary” participation – 63% from 26% – All but two Blackboard instructors moved to Discovery immediately • Student Instructional Resource forum had 120 posts before school started with students asking questions, giving feedback • Christian Thought course had over 260 threads by the end of the semester with well over 4000 posts.

Spring Semester Changes • Spring Semester 100% of catalog had a Discovery course created as mandated by Provost – Posting of syllabus only requirement – No course listservs are created as this functionality is available in Moodle – Course picture roster available via class site – Student demand for content, functionality helped drive faculty involvement • Over 600 daily logins by students/faculty/staff (FTE count 1130)

Northwest Server detail • Compaq DL 380 G 3 – Dual P 4 3. 0 Ghz – 3 GB RAM – 500 GB Raid 5 for data – Dual NIC • Visual. Cron software • PHP 5, My. SQL, Windows 2003 server

Administrative Design and Other Uses • Enrollment/Un-enrollment script • Course Creation Script • Chapel Attendance course • Faculty Training • Plans for: – Final Grade submission – Course Evaluations – Attendance • Math Placement course

Northwest Demo: http: //discovery. northwestu. edu

Summary • Moodle is highly cost-effective – Utilizes common hardware/software packages – Common support skills set • Php, My. SQL etc…. – Works well with the SQL ERP structure • With more institutional adoption we will see more ERP-specific modules/blocks that assist us in supporting different functions.

Questions & Answers

Thank You! John Rodkey and Chris Martin rodkey@westmont. edu Chris. martin@northwestu. edu