lms

The LMS committee is taking advantage of two consortial opportunities to take a closer look at Sakai CLE.

Recently the group completed an application for a collaborative pilot through NITLE. If accepted planning and training will be conducted in spring 2007 with courses piloted in fall 2007. The group is optimistic that they will be invited to participate in the pilot but will not receive official notice, one way or the other, until the middle of the month.

In April two members of the group will travel to a NERCOMP special interest group meeting on Sakai.

Posted by James Fadden at 10:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here are two different options to sign up for a test account on Sakai.

Academus OpenCampus http://www.academusopencampus.com

rSmart Group http://www.sakaisandbox.com

We will be discussing Sakai on December 19th at 11:00am in Murray 116.

Posted by Linda Bills at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you want to get started looking at a Desire2Learn course from a student's perspective, I found this online demo course at Minnesota State University. Username and password are both student

Desire2Learn – Minnesota State University, Mankato

Posted by Susan Fenton at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The fact that Moodle is open source is a big plus in my opinion. This should not be taken to imply that there will be no cost to implement Moodle, as it would be wise to spend money for support and training, at least initially. This will be the case whatever LMS we adopt, though.

But with no license fees, an open source product has potential to save us money down the road, should we get comfortable enough with the product that we don't feel we need to pay for support any more. Also, we can rest easy that we won't suddenly have the rug pulled out from under us. Even if any of a number of unlikely events came to pass (Moodle goes commercial, or development comes to a halt) we will still be able to continue using the product in its current state for as long as user's browsers continue to work with it. This is likely to be a very long time.

Another plus for Moodle is that it has a large user base among schools, and in particular among small liberal arts schools.

One major feature of Moodle - its modularily - is of concern to me. On the surface, it sounds like a great feature. If Moodle is lacking some functionality you desire, you either search for a module someone else has written, or you write one yourself and you're all set. But in practice this can cause confusion and difficulties.

To illustrate this, let me use some examples from Movable Type, the blog software we use here. Many people have written "plug-ins" for Movable Type, to add functionality not present in the core product. These plug-ins would work in the same way that Moodle modules would work so issues we've had with plug-ins will give a good idea of issues we can expect with modules in Moodle. I'll list some of these below.

Continue reading "Thoughts on Moodle" »

Posted by Susan Fenton at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Impressive Features

Overall tools
D2L has the standard suite of tools including threaded discussion, quizzes, drop box, and gradebook. It also has some pieces that are nice to have including...

>> Customizable Design for branding purposes. This is not a must but it is nice to be able to make the product a little
more Allegheny.
>> Blog included that allows a user to determine how public their posts or blog is. The incorporation of the blog and news aggregator is a good example of how the LMS industry is predicted to incorporate more of the Web2.0 features.
>> Email - full featured and not limited to within course correspondences
>> Ability to scale to include portal system that can also be purchased from D2L

Learner Tools
While it is hard to really know without using the interface, the descriptions of the student interface make it seem more customizable than our current myWebCT space as the following tools are present. It also seems that the user's main page is more than the door way to their courses.

>> My "tool" allows student to customize preferences across system and provides a common file repository called my locker/briefcase.
>> ePortfolio tool - the idea of learner portfolios continues to be an idea for changing assessment practices. D2L embraces the idea by including this option. It might be a tool that is useful to the folks in ACCEL?

Instructor Tools
I have similar feelings about the descriptions of the instructor interface as for the student interface. I would hope that the My Briefcase option would ease the upload of content for use in multiple courses. I would also hope that the one click editing would be as easy as it suggests.

>> The common storage space called My Briefcase is a great idea in my opinion. One upload per file with the ability to reuse it in multiple courses.
>> Import and Conversion based on SCORM/IMS standards allows granular import of content whether whole course, quiz, or quiz question. The question is does WebCT allow granular export.
>> The D2L Quizzing tool can be licensed as a standalone tool.

Concerns
The commercial LMS landscape is very unsettled because of patten that Blackboard holds and because of its acquisition of WebCT. The uncertainty of the lawsuits and what the new Blackboard product will look like makes it hard to determine which commercial product is most viable over the long term. That being said my two chief concerns with D2L are:

>> The current Blackboard vs D2L Patent Lawsuit.
>> The majority of clients listed on the site are large research institutions and university systems. Will we be able to find the peer using it? What does this say about the price?

Points of Intrigue
>> The language of the site is very appealing and draws you in to believe that D2L is the answer
>> It seems as if it is the commercial - open-source as much as it tries to convey the importance of the D2L community in developing the products' future.
>> There are many ways to contract for additional support including hosting, training and implementation.

Posted by James Fadden at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Linda's post included references to what the Sakai community was saying about Sakai. This got me thinking, "what is the Desire2Learn Community saying or doing?"

The sense that I get from the Desire2Learn(D2L) community is that there are many opportunities for the community to come together for sharing, learning and "drawing the roadmap of future releases"

The sharing and learning has been pretty standard as most LMS have provided user conferences but the helping of developing the roadmap of the products seems to have a different feel than the suggest a feature/improvement that WebCT "offers" us.

The language that the web site uses to explain there products, services and philosophy communicate a commitment to education and users.

The lawsuit with Blackboard is still a major concern.

Posted by James Fadden at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sakai is an online Collaboration and Learning Environment. It can be used to support teaching and learning, ad hoc group collaboration, portfolios and research collaboration, according to its website. it is the successor to the CHEF, OnCourse and Stellar systems which were all developed by R1 institutions. It is built using the J2EE environment.

It is open source. Users can voluntarily join the Sakai Foundation and if they do so and pay dues (about $5,000/yr for us) they can participate in foundation governance. However, use and development of the software are open to all.

Continue reading "Sakai" »

Posted by Linda Bills at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Background: ANGEL Learning Inc. is based in Indianapolis, IN. The Indiana University Research and Technology Corporation (IURTC), an independent 501(c)3 corporation affiliated with Indiana University, created the company in mid-2000. ANGEL Learning evolved from research conducted by the CyberLab at the Purdue University School of Engineering and Technology on the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) campus.

The company says that ANGEL features easy customization and secure, simple integration. Because much of their development is driven by ongoing customer feedback, the systems is based on flexibility and customization. Features include ...

Continue reading "Angel" »

Posted by at 8:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Moodle is Open Source software, meaning that it is free to use and to modify. It was developed by a former WebCT system admin, while working on a PhD in education. The name was originally an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. The philosophy of social constructivism underlies the software.

Moodle is written in PHP and uses a MySQL database (other databases can be used, but MySQL seems to be the prefered one.) The M in Moodle (Modular) seems to very much apply. All kinds of people have written and contributed all sorts of modules. Ask me later why I think this is not necessarily a good thing.

Moodle features seem to include all of the usual suspects: quizzes, grades, discussions, wiki, etc. Email is notably missing. The module thing confuses the issue somewhat - if it's not a core feature of Moodle there may be a module out there somewhere that adds the feature.

With a large user base, development of Moodle has been (and continues to be) rapid. Many of the resources and comparisons I found online are a year or two old so are likely to be outdated. They can still be used to help determine that some features exist in Moodle, though shouldn't be taken at face value for features that are missing or inadequate.

I tried to get a sense of whether WebCT courses could be imported into Moodle when doing my research. I found some indication that parts could be imported. One site indicated that WebCT quiz questions could be imported directly. I also found one college with a form that faculty filled out to request a course conversion and one company that did course conversions for a fee. From this, I take it that a certain amount of hands-on work is going to be needed to convert a WebCT course into a Moodle course. James has already talked about the possibility of using student help over the summer to do this.

Commercial hosting of Moodle is available, as is paid support. Moodle.com lists companies around the world who do this. In addition, there are online user forums on the moodle.org site which one can turn to for free peer support.

Moodle seems to be able to use LDAP for authentication and for course enrollment. This will need closer investigation if Moodle becomes a serious contender.

Some of the sites I found that can be of interest to our investigation are:

• For kicking the tires, these sites give you full access to Moodle (as teacher, admin or student). Sites are rebuilt every hour or two: Opensourcecms.com demo site, moodle.org demo site
• Moodle Documentation
• A quite thorough - though 2 year old - report on the features of Moodle
• A report on some of the differences between WebCT and Moodle
• Moodle System Requirements (these were actually fairly hard to find)

Posted by Susan Fenton at 2:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After a little poking around it seems that Desire2Learn Learning Environment is the packaged deal for LMS.

The features include discussion boards, quizzes, grades drop boxes, blogs, and import/export IMS compliant packages. D2L breaks down the features from a student perspective, instructor perspective, and administrator perspective. I will post more about each of those later.

The language that they use in describing their product and features leads me to believe their learning model is learner centric which fits with current trends in web usage and pedagogy.

Posted by James Fadden at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Desire2Learn - Innovative Learning Technology is a company that provides a variety of web-based learning technology.

Their clients include large public universities (University of Arizona and The University of Iowa) and university systems (Minnesota State College and Universities (32 institution system) or The University of Wisconsin System (26 institution system) )and international institutions (Fanshawe College in London, Ontario or University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario) as well as private universities (Marquette University) and institutes (Rochester Institute of Technology). The short list of vendors does not include liberal arts colleges that we compare ourselves to.

Desire2Learn does produce a news feed that provides the latest press releases from the company.

Some Desire2Learn Higher Education Solutions are listed on their site.

The solutions seem to range from portal systems to registration and from eCommerce to LMS.

Posted by James Fadden at 3:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today we decided to divide up the four leading options in LMS with each of us taking one to help educate the group about. Of the various options we chose to investigate Moodle, Sakai, Angel, and Desire to Learn. These were identified as the leading options based on previous knowledge of group members and the NITLE LMS Symposium survey.

We will use this category to share our intital findings and create a common vocabulary and knowledge base of each option.

LMS and Investigator

Sakai - Linda Bills
Moodle - Susan Fenton
Angel - Helen McCullough
Desire to Learn - James Fadden

Posted by James Fadden at 1:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)