Making the Moodle: First Year Case Studies Westmont College Northwest University

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Making the MoodleFirst Year Case Studies
Westmont CollegeNorthwest University

• Presented by
• John Rodkey, Westmont College
• Chris Martin, Northwest University

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Why are we here?

• To review the value of implementing Moodle, an
  open-source learning management system Following
  this session we hope you will
• Have sufficient information to implement Moodle
• Understand moodles structure and its integration
  with your SIS/ERP system
• Know where to learn more

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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, FreeBSD, Windows, Mac OS X
• Utilizes PHP, MySQL, and a web server
  (Apache/IIS)
• Cron Software VisualCron (Windows)

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Westmont Project Background

• 1200 students, 80 faculty, modest IT budget
• Linux-centric infrastructure
• WebCT since 2002
• Low WebCT Adoption lt 3 courses, lt 10 teachers

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Westmont WebCT

• Problems with WebCT
• Large Increasing Annual Fees
• No Integration with SIS/ERP (20K add-on)
• No LDAP authentication (10K add-on)
• Uncertain Future Blackboard Buyout
• Difficulty adding courses, students
• Interface Complexity -gt Faculty Frustration
• Faculty Advocates Left, or on Sabbatical

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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 WebCT
• Fewer on-going problems (e.g. passwords)

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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!

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Westmont Usage

• Fall
• 627 active students
• 38 of 366 (10) active courses
• 18 active teachers ( gt2000 accesses)
• Spring
• 856 active students
• 62 of 470 (12) active courses
• 23 active teachers

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Westmont Faculty Survey
Number who Used? of Responders Responses
WebCT 7 (12) 24 28
Moodle F2005 10 (18) 34 28
Moodle S2006 17 (23) 59 28
Numbers in Yellow are actual vs. reported
users.
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Westmont Faculty Survey
Frequency of Use S.D. N
WebCT 3.0 1.2 8
Moodle F2005 3.4 1.7 10
Moodle S2006 3.2 1.4 17
1very infrequently used, 5 very frequently
used
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Westmont Faculty Survey
Experience Rating S.D. N
WebCT 3.3 1.0 8
Moodle F2005 3.8 1.1 10
Moodle S2006 3.8 1.0 17
1terrible, 5 wonderful
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Westmont Faculty Survey

• Why Didnt You Use Moodle?
• 43 - No Perceived Need
• 32 - Too Much Work
• 15 - Interface is Too Complex
• 5 - Philosophically opposed to its use

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Westmont Server detail

• Hardware Generic 2U Rackmount
• Single P4 850Mhz
• 1 GB RAM
• 36GB Storage
• Single NIC
• Software
• SuSE Linux 9.1 OS
• apache2-2.0.49-23
• mysql-4.0.18-32
• php4-4.3.4-26
• Performance is OK, but replacing with a
• 2.8GHz P4 running SuSE Linux 10.

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Westmont Demo

• https//eureka.westmont.edu/

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Westmont Hare-brained schemes/Plans

• Course evaluations
• Automated plagiarism detection
• Portal-like integration (Grades, events)
• Calendar integration

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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 PowerCampus implementation in 2005.

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Key Points to our installation

• Utilized our skill set strengths without extra
  training
• Windows 2003 Server, PHP, MySQL
• 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

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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.

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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)

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Northwest Server detail

• Compaq DL380 G3
• Dual P4 3.0Ghz
• 3 GB RAM
• 500GB Raid 5 for data
• Dual NIC
• VisualCron software
• PHP5, MySQL, Windows 2003 server

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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

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Northwest Demo http//discovery.northwestu.edu
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Summary

• Moodle is highly cost-effective
• Utilizes common hardware/software packages
• Common support skills set
• Php, MySQL 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.

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Questions Answers
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Thank You!

• John Rodkey and Chris Martin
• rodkey_at_westmont.edu
• Chris.martin_at_northwestu.edu