lms

Present: James Fadden, Helen McCullough, Susan Fenton, Linda Bills

1. Faculty Focus Groups. We reviewed the results of the faculty focus groups, using Susan's summary and personal notes. The input we got will be helpful to our examination of the products. The chief observations we want to take forward are

The desire for an intuitive interface
Being able to plug in publisher content is very desirable as publishers get more tuned in to online
Equation editors - there do not seem to be any good ones for the undergraduate level. All
the contenders are aware of this and working on it.
Access to earlier courses, for faculty and perhaps for students
1. faculty want to be able to bring course structures, materials, etc. into a new iteration of a course
2. Students want to "shop" courses based on previous syllabi or course materials by the faculty member
Students may want access to work they did online in earlier courses
3. Do systems allow a storage area tied to users more as well as areas tied to courses?
Email problems. Some faculty are experiencing problems with email communciation with students.
We agreed that any of the products provide tools to substitute for the email uses cited.

2. Student Surveys
We reviewed the student reponses received so far. Some observations.

Students on the whole seem to find WebCT either very/relatively easy, or difficult and annoying.
Students like WebCT because it tends to organize coursework. If they prefer professors' websites it's usually because of the greater freedom these sites have.
Document Sharing, quizzes and gradebooks had high "helpful" scores.
Assignments and drop boxes and Calendars were seen as helpful
Threaded discussions, however were not rated very helpful.

Students suggest that some ways to improve WebCT would be to make it easier to navigate, and to expand the functions used by the faculty. Also strong emphasis on the need for a better equation editor.

James will share more student survey reponses if they come in.

3. Sakai pilot project. James has sent in our application to participate in the project and received good feedback from NITLE staff.

4. Ongoing work. With the reponses of students and faculty in mind, the Committee members will revisit the various products and make note of strengths and weaknesses. Any comments on specific functions can be noted on the comparison sheets and sent to Linda for integration.

Posted by Linda Bills at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Present: Susan Fenton, James Fadden, Helen McCullough, Linda Bills

1. Faculty focus groups. James reported that there would be two meetings. The first would be just himself and two faculty. The second will be on Friday at noon in Murray 120. All the committee members plan to attend to get the faculty input. The group discussed open-ended questions to ask the group.

2. Student survey. Susan and James reported that we have some answers in. We will have a full report for discussion next week.

3. Helen reported that she had some Angel pricing that she will forward to us. James will check on server requirements for that system.

4. We reviewed the draft for the NITLE Sakai pilot grant. James has also sent it to Eric for comment. We agreed that the grant request is in good shape, and James will send it in as soon he incorporates (at his discretion) any comments from Eric.

Posted by Linda Bills at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Present: Linda, Susan, James, Helen

1. We reviewed the student survey that Susan had drafted and agreed that it will help gather some of the information we want. James will set up aon announcement on Inside News and on WebCT. He will also email faculty who have WebCT classes asking them to encourage their students to take the survey. The survey will be open for 3 weeks, though we hope to get most of the responses in two for discussion by the group.

2. There was some discussion about the decision-making process and what infomation we need. We agreed that we were not yet ready to make a decision, though some factors are becoming clear.

Moodle may be a problem because of its mangement style and the need to get contributed modules for some functions, however it is well-liked by faculty in the schools which use it.

We don't know enough about Sakai yet, but the user group meeting in April will teach us a lot.

Desire2Learn is a good program with good support, but the price is currently too high. We will see what the new pricing is like.

Angel has a new version out that we should look at.

3. James proposed setting up faculty focus group meetings on the 22nd in the afternoon and the 23rd at lunch. He will send a message out to faculty. As many people as possible should go from the committee and one person will take notes.

4. James set up the Sakai Pilot project proposal on a wiki. He will send out the URL so we can comment. Please make comments exact and sign them.

Posted by Linda Bills at 1:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Present: James, Susan, Linda

1. Review of the Faculty Survey results
We discussed the survey results and noted that there were no big surprises. We can use some of the responses as a start to conversations with the focus groups.

2. Student input. James reported on his meeting with the Student Technology Group. Their comments seemed to reflect their ideas on what all students want, not just personal experiences. They appreciate the organizational aspects of WebCT and the way it gives them instant access to assignments and handouts – for those faculty who use it. Several had used similar systems in high school.

James asked how best to get feedback from students; they thought that surveying either those who currently have classes using WebCT, or the student body more generally would be good. They suggested some incentive as well. Focus groups are not likely to work for students.

Susan is going to draft a student survey form for the next meeting.

3. Pricing. James had preliminary pricing from Desire2Learn. His sales contact was not clear on how the cost elements inter-relate and also said that there is going to be a new price model for small colleges out soon. However, the pricing we did see is very high, and is a multi server system. We will wait for more price information in is due out in a couple weeks.

4. Narrowing down the choices. The group assembled felt that we could eliminate Angel from the group of choices, but we are not yet ready to move down to two choices.

5. Faculty focus groups. We will ask the faculty members who indicated on the survey that they would like more input to participate in focus groups. We will set up two times and let them choose which to attend. These will occur soon and discuss the elements in the survey to get a more nuanced view of the faculty needs. James will set up dates.

We will have another set of focus group sessions in late March or early April. The important activities before that time will be discovering whether we have been accepted for the Sakai trial and possible attendance at the Sakai User Group meeting. At the second set of faculty meetings we would like to have narrowed the choice down to one or two and get their reactions to demos.

6. Sakai pilot. James is working on the proposal.

Posted by James Fadden at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

1. Susan reported on the Moodle SIG meeting sponsored by Nercomp. She concluded that a meeting like this is very helpful for understanding the user and manager environment; we will try to have someone also go to the Sakai SIG.

Basic observations from the meeting --
Moodle is easy to customize, so it is a temptation to do so, but each change needs to be re-adjusted when you go to the next version. You will need a person who knows PHP and MySQL to handle this, but possibly only part-time. The Core product that is revised and distributed does not include some of the best add-on modules developed by other sites. You have to wait until that site or someone else upgrades the add-ons you most need before upgrading to the newest version.

There are lots of add-on modules of varying quality that would need to be reviewed before adoption. Alternatively you could stick with the core product and minimize customization. The group that controls the Core product seems to be a close-knit club. You can submit change requests to them through a formal process, but there is no direct accountability to the user community. They will develop what most meets their needs and interests; others can develop wha they want and need - and share it -- but outsiders cannot move their changes directly into the Core.

Some noted problems that are not yet fixed in the core are
No way to delete multiple courses at once, except in MySQL, which involves many tables
Gradebook, email and chat are disappointing to the current users

2. Sakai Pilot. James and Susan are completing an application to join the Sakai Pilot project. We reviewed some ideas for the answer to the key question -- how being part of the pilot would contribute to teaching and learning. We agreed with James' ideas and that the chief advantage for us was trying out a key tool in a shared environment.

3. The Sakai Pilot decision will need to be made by us (if we are accepted) in Mid-march. We will therefore work on getting faculty input before that time. Test pilots for the Sakai project have been identified, but if Sakai is not of interest to the faculty at all, we do not want to move forward.

4. Getting student feedback. James will talk with the Student Technology Group and ask them what the best method would be to get input from students.

5. James passed out the results of the faculty survey. We will review and discuss next meeting.

Posted by Linda Bills at 4:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

First, sorry these are a bit late.

We discussed the functions comparison chart and concluded that all the systems have the basic functions we need and that the next step, instead of filling in the function chart details, is to find out what the faculty most care about. Then we will be able to concentrate on function areas that should most effect our decision.

We reviewed the survey document and agreed to send it out with minor changes. We will allow 10 days for responses. In view of this, we decided not to meet on the 23rd, so the next meeting will be on the 30th.

The next meeting will be on Tuesday, Jan 30 at 9:45 in Murray 116

Posted by Linda Bills at 1:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here are the notes from the committee Meeting of Jan 3, 2007.
NOTE: future meetings will be Tuesdays 9:45-10:45

ACTION ITEMS:
Draft faculty survey – Susan and James –draft by Jan. 16 meeting
Find faculty for NITLE Sakai pilot – Susan and James – ASAP
OK NITLE pilot application with Karen and Rick
Send NITLE application – DUE FEB 28
Draft functions matrix – Linda and Helen – draft by Jan. 9th meeting

We worked on three issues in this meeting –

How to get faculty input
Whether to apply for the NITLE Sakai pilot
What else do we need to know about the products

Continue reading "Notes from Jan 3 meeting" »

Posted by Linda Bills at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Today was spent looking at Sakai through two different sites http://sakaisandbox.com and http://www.academusopencampus.com/.

It was really helpful to see Sakai through two different sites as it gave the group a better understanding of what options are available for configuration. The discussion focused a fair amount on usability and completeness of tool sets.

The discussion was led by Linda Bills. Karen Stone and Alla Meleshevich of OET joined the discussion.

Posted by James Fadden at 4:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today we discuss the Desire2Learn platform.

James Facilitated the discussion starting with the questions -

Which tool impressed you?

Which tool was a cool idea but missed?

Please feel free to comment on your take of the meeting using comments.

Posted by James Fadden at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

James, Susan, Linda, Helen and several members of OET joined the discussion today.

Discussion of what to share with Faculty to inform them of our process.
People will email James with their ideas. The general consensus was that the message should be delivered at the faculty meeting and in writing either through email or inside news.

Discussion of Moodle Experimentation.
Susan lead the discussion from http://demo.moodle.org we decided that we would post our thoughts on Moodle and this discussion as comments to this post.

Posted by James Fadden at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Present: James Fadden, Helen McCullough, Linda Bills, Susan Fenton, Matt Engel

We started by each speaking a bit about the LMS we researched since the last meeting.

Angel - Helen got a guest account and played around as a student and as an instructor. She found she could make the pages look nice, and as an instructor appreciated the graphical representation of what students had done on the first page. She thought it was easy to use and that the sales rep she worked with was very responsive.

Desire2Learn - James is concerned about the Blackboard lawsuit against D2L, as well as the fact that most clients seem to be big university systems, with few small colleges adopting it. He liked that he felt connected to educators when looking over the site, and that the features seem user centric rather than course centric. For example, it has a blog that can be fully open or fully private, or something in between. Other tools, like Briefcase, seemed good because you can share files between courses. D2L has standards compliant import/export and foreign language capability. The Quizzing tool can be bought as a stand-alone tool.

Moodle - Susan expressed concerns about the modularilty of Moodle, particularly that it's easy to fall into the trap of installing a third party module to solve an immediate need, even though this action may lead to problems down the road. On a positive note, many of our peer schools are using it and faculty reviews seem to be quite positive. Most of the features faculty expect are present. Moodle is open source, which has advantages of potential cost savings (at least down the road, when we may not feel a need to pay for support) and a large community of developers.

Sakai - Linda noted that Sakai also has the open source advantages of Moodle. She thought Sakai seemed deeper and more complex than Moodle but that it's not ready for prime time. She didn't feel it's a complete package right now, and gave the example of the manual not being finished yet. She felt it was more powerful and likely to advance than Moodle. She noted that it seemed to be used mostly by large universities with some small colleges using it.

Matt raised the issue of Blackboard, and a discussion followed of the cost of Blackboard and the reasoning behind our initial choice of WebCT over Blackboard.

Linda raised the issue of open source development, and in particular how it's decided which features can added to the core product. We felt this was something we needed to look into for each open source product.

James and Susan are going to work on a list of "must haves" - features that faculty are now using and that must be present in any LMS we adopt. We will use this list when evaluating the products further, but should not limit our examinations to just these features.

James reported a conversation with Tim Hunter concerning open source solutions. Tim was fine with us pursuing open source as long as the software works out of the box, without tinkering with the core.

Linda agreed to determine what library services need to be integrated into an LMS. Susan asked that she also define "integration", as it could mean simply adding a link to a library resource, or it could mean having a common logon, or anything in between.

A discussion was held concerning how to go about looking at these products in more depth. It was decided that each week we would pick one product that we should all take a quick look through. At the following meeting one person will present a short demo of the product and a discussion will follow. Linda suggested that the person in charge of leading the demo of each product should also get usernames and passwords for the others to use when taking a look, and should act as a resource when others have questions about the product.

We agreed on the following dates for demo/discussion of the products. These meetings will be held in Murray 116.:

• Moodle - Nov 28
• Desire2Learn - Dec 5th
• Angel - Dec 12th
• Sakai - Dec 19th

James asked that we also start thinking about what faculty to involve in this process and how to involve them. Also that we start thinking of some schools we'd like to contact as part of our investigations.

We briefly discussed the timeline, and concensus was that it's difficult to have a firm timeline more than a month out. It was suggested and agreed that we spend 5 minutes at the start of each minute with a quick review/adjustment of the timeline, to be sure we are staying on track.

The meeting was adjourned at 12:03 pm.

Posted by Susan Fenton at 1:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Organizational Meeting.
Action Items
Schedule: By Friday, Nov. 2, send James any suggestions for changes to the schedule.
System Investigation:
By Friday, Nov. 3, post initial research on the assigned system to the blog
By FRiday, Nov. 10, post any additional research on the system

Discussion included the schedule, stakeholders, roles for committee members and possible systems.
The next meeting will by on November 14th at 11 am. Place TBA

Continue reading "Minutes: October 31, 2006" »

Posted by Linda Bills at 6:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)