An Outsourced Open Source LMS and a Pot of Gold? Clark Shah-Nelson, Coordinator of Online Education SUNY Delhi College of Technology Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike: Clark Shah-Nelson, 2008.

Background SUNY Delhi: over sixty 1, 2, and 4 year programs approximately 2700 students In house WebCT server since 2004 Also hosted courses on SUNY Learning Network Predominantly web-enhanced courses Small but increasing number of fully online / asynchronous courses

Online Courses and Enrollments Growth:

Online Coordinator Began December 2006 Past experience teaching with E-Education (Jones) ( ) eCollege ( ) Past experience admin/support for: Blackboard (2006) Position described working with WebCT and SLN…

The Task… Research and select a new system Migrate courses Train users Develop orientations, documentation, etc. By end of 2008… No time for lengthy focus group sessions, LMS comparisons, etc.

Documentation Agile Project Management Requirements Gathering in Confluence wiki Business, Technical, Functional Requirements: Integration with Luminis Message Broker for course setup, user enrollment via Banner Match current functions of WebCT Upload and store media files Online quizzes, discussions, etc.

Total Cost of Ownership

Final Selection Outsourced Open Source LMS: Moodle hosted by Moodlerooms, Inc. Do we need to hire more personnel? No. Is the LMS stable and secure? Yes.

Out vs. In Downsides: A bit slower than in house (bandwidth) Help - contact another company rather than the tech around the corner Upsides: Campus outages not affected Sys Admin focused ONLY on Moodle They purchase and maintain/replace software/machines

Open vs. Enterprise Rich community of user forums, tutorials, resources, bug tracker Less Cost - at all levels Luminis Message Broker Digester - $0 WebCTimport tool - $0 Just as stable and more feature-rich More social networking capability, Web 2.0 Quicker to gain new features More customizable Did I mention cost?

Timeline March Hostmonster account set up with multiple instances of Moodle for training development, experimentation, etc. ($75 /year splurge) May Course development server established June Initial training modules developed and delivered July Begin test Luminis Message Broker / Banner integration Fall initial courses developed for Spring 2008 production server October establish and test production server Spring offer Nursing BSN and Vet Tech courses on production server Spring/Summer additional training offered, Summer courses migrated Summer Fall courses migrated from WebCT/SLN Fall additional training and J-term/Spring course migration

Faculty Members Concerned about training: Took much less time than WebCT to learn Easier to use More features Exciting new possibilities iPod training program Concerned about converting courses: We do that for them Webctimport plugin from moodle.org

Students Love the new system: Easier to navigate than WebCT Like having images of fellow students Easier to follow discussions

Coordinator Faculty are more self-sufficient More fun to administer More focus on training Hosted in expert environment High level of customization More funds for faculty development

Staff More interested in using the LMS for training and staff development See LMS as a way to reach students Involved with Moodle Orientation for students No noticable difference for registration, enrollments, etc.

Administration Left research and decision in our hands Appreciate international-ness Bottom line: Furthering educational mission $$$: The Pot of Gold

The End Questions? Clark Shah-Nelson - Confluence wiki documentation Open Source Conference and Moodle Moot at SUNY Delhi June 19/20,