2010 SUNY Freedonia Teaching and Learning conference - "Universal Design for Learning: Accessible and Assistive Technologies to Enhance Student Learning"
Session description: Over the past 18 months, Purchase College has migrated from Blackboard to Moodle for our campus learning management system. Our decision was partially driven by the lower total costs for Moodle as an open source product and our desire to avoid the risks and lack of control associated with commercial applications. Our primary consideration however was that Moodle provides a pedagogically stronger learning platform, and its openness allows us to integrate it with other learning applications that faculty would like to use to promote student engagement.
This session will focus on the pedagogical aspects of Moodle as a learning platform. We will briefly discuss the process and findings Purchase College used to develop a consensus among faculty, students and technology staff to switch to Moodle. Participants will then spend the bulk of the session in a directed exploration of the diverse learning activities in Moodle that promote student engagement and learning, to facilitate discussion of how Moodle compares to ANGEL and Blackboard. We will examine examples of how Moodle’s open architecture allows it to integrate with external Web 2.0 applications, and finally discuss options for no-cost hosted Moodle solutions that will allow participants to evaluate Moodle for their campuses.
Moodle: using an open learning management system to support student learning
1. Moodle: using an open learning management system to support student learning Keith Landa Purchase College http://www.slideshare.net/keith.landa
2. LMS future(s) for SUNY Overview of LMS usage in the system LMS developments DOODLE task force
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5. Background – Purchase – 2008 Liberal Arts and Sciences plus Arts Conservatories ~4200 FTE Web enhancement of F2F courses ERes electronic reserves
6. LMS review @ Purchase Fall 2008 : faculty task force established; faculty survey; discussion of selection criteria (functionality, technical requirements, costs) Spring 2009 : Moodle production system established; pilot Moodle courses (~20); student survey (key driver); ongoing communication; development of general sense among faculty that ‘we’re going with Moodle’…. Context : faculty dissatisfaction with Blackboard; superficial use of LMS; escalating costs Summer 2009 : summer faculty workshop series (new); course conversion and course prep; consolidation of electronic reserves into Moodle courses Fall 2009/Spring 2010 : transition year; immediate termination of ERes; one more year of Blackboard; faculty assisted to move courses to Moodle; ongoing Moodle workshops; termination of Blackboard at end of year
9. Why Moodle @ Purchase? 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 Risk management - Risks of open source - Commercial products have different risks Integration - Other systems - Web 2.0 world Flexible open architecture
26. Some options for free hosting Sign up: https://www.keytoschool.com/member/signup.php
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28. Questions? Keith Landa Purchase College SUNY 914-251-6440 [email_address] www.slideshare.net/keith.landa Thank You!
Notas del editor
This illustration was developed by the independent management consulting company, Delta Initiative, less than a year ago (late 2009) to summarize (quite well) how the landscape of the LMS has changed in roughly the last decade. This is a busy screen so let me attempt to describe what you are seeing: For each year displayed along the x-axis (or the columns at the top) you can see the amount of usage for each of the various LMS technologies used for that year. The thickness associated with each individual LMS demonstrates the number of users using that particular system. This illustration also identifies the mergers or acquisitions that have taken place over the years. For example we see when eCollege was acquired by Pearson in 2007 and when several systems including WebCT and ANGEL were acquired by Blackboard. A couple things stand out to me with this illustration: 1) Below the dotted line you can see that in the proprietary space there has been quite a bit of volatility primarily due to acquisitions. In fact, there is only proprietary system displayed that appears to have not YET been acquired by either Pearson or Blackboard. 2) Above the dotted line you can see the most notable open source systems. The story here is quite different. Here it is clear that the open source systems are experiencing slow, consistent yet substantial adoption by institutions. In a recent survey by the Campus Computing Project, Moodle is the second most used Learning Management System in the US behind Blackboard (or Blackboard’s suite of acquired systems). Not only does this illustration do a fantastic job of demonstrating where we have come from, but also signals the direction in which LMS technology adoption is headed.
Moodle is globally the most widely used open source Learning Management System (also referred to as a VLE, Virtual Learning Environment, or CMS, Course Management System). Most of the features that you would expect in an LMS are build natively into Moodle such as Collaboration and Communication tools as well as tools for Instruction and Assessment. The development of Moodle began in the 1990’s when a WebCT Administrator from Curtin University of Technology in Australia when he realized people were struggling with using technology to enrich their classroom experiences. In 2002, version 1.0 of Moodle was released and was made publicly available under GPL (or “General Public License”). GPL is licence applied to a program to specify it can be distributed and modified by anyone, but if a modified version is distributed, the source must also be distributed. There are several aspects of Moodle that make it a great fit for facilitating online programs. 1) Moodle is Open Source. This means it is freely available for anyone to download making access to the system easy for all. 2) Moodle is built to meet the specifications for Section 508 of the 1998 ammendment of the Rehabilitation Act paving the way for users with disabilities to best interact with the system. 3) Moodle is highly scalable whether you wish to install Moodle on your local computer or it is the Open University in the UK which uses one instance of Moodle to serve more than 600,000 individuals. 4) Moodle is built on all of the leading industry standards that ensure portability of content between Learning Mangement Systems and also from publishers. 5) Moodle is a feature rich system that over the last decade has developed hundreds of helpful tools used by educators globally. 6) Moodle is a highly flexible system that allows it to be integrated with other campus systems and technologies.
Attempt to show the variables that many schools must consider when deciding