NERCOMP 2008 Blog

If anyone would like to listen to Clark’s presentation, I’ve included a rather low-quality recording here:

An Outsourced Open Source LMS and a Pot of Gold?

Tim Lindgren

I attended another session at Nercomp 08 in which some folks from Brandeis presented info on their move from WebCT to Moodle. They noted that they had not hired any extra staff members in their move to an in house Moodle server. They did have a lot of restructuring and reassignment of responsibilities, however, like us they did not end up needing to hire more developers, DBAs, SysAdmins or other personnel, which seems to be one of the key myths of open source LMS solutions.

-Posted by Clark Shah-Nelson

Thanks to all who came to the session! For those who missed it or wanted to review it below is the presentation, and at the bottom are links to more information:

| View Presentation |

Our LMS Migration wiki page
2-3-98 Open Source Conference and Moodle Moot
@ SUNY Delhi (June 19/20, 2008)

Hosting with Hostmonster - easily set up Moodle, Drupal, WordPress, Joomla, and many other open source software systems for testing, sandboxes, etc. for about $75 a year.

Posted by Clark Shah-Nelson

According to a recent article in Campus Technology, “From a financial standpoint, open source applications offer reduced total cost of ownership (TCO), but they offer even greater intrinsic value.”

This article is quite complimentary to the presentation I’ll be giving tomorrow (Tuesday) at 8:30 a.m. While the TCO is quite important, there are many other factors. At a recent conference, someone asked “If you have the money, wouldn’t you just buy the commercial enterprise system?” I guess the idea is that you might as well spend it, because it’ll be worth it for the “better” product. But how is the product better, and where does the value reside? What are these intrinsic values that might exist in going with an open source product? In my mind, these include:

• more flexibility in working with the software
• more accessibility
• more community connectivity, assistance
• ability to participate in software enhancements and iterations
• more customization and control
• the instrinsic value of getting more for your money, not paying more money for less functionality

Posted by Clark Shah-Nelson

While sitting 10 days in silent meditation in January 2006, it occurred to me that I should get into higher education, using my online teaching and development skills to assist other instructors. I began applying, and a couple months later (after returning from the LMS user’s conference I mentioned in Part 1), I had a job supporting instructors at a small college with about 2,000 students in Manhattan. I had recently played around with installing an open source LMS, Moodle, onto my wife’s PC at home. I was thrilled that I could actually download, install and run it, (and I am not a programmer by any stretch), with full access right down to the source code, on my own. This came up during my interview, and the college was in the process of purchasing its own new LMS server. However, they ended up going with a US market-leading commercial enterprise LMS.

I have to admit, I was pretty appalled after seeing over $30,000 go out to purchase a nice new server, software and license, that aside from adding a logo I wasn’t even able to customize the login page. I even figured out enough to edit the login page, putting in the text I wanted, but somehow it prevented me from even replacing the file. I see both sides of this - on one hand, it’s protecting the school from having to fix what I might break. Or perhaps it’s protecting the company from having to fix (under warranty) what I might break. On the other hand, it’s preventing me from doing something even as simple as changing “username” to “ID number”, which would help my users and create less help call volume. Furthermore, it didn’t seem to come with any of the features I was yearning for in an LMS at the time - RSS feeds, blogs, wikis, instant messaging, and so on. Or perhaps these modules existed, but we’d have to shell out even more money for that. But for 2,000 students? This seemed a bit steep for what we got.

Soon thereafter I moved to the Catskills, SUNY Delhi, where I was faced with deciding what to do about the old WebCT server. We had to migrate to something, but what?

This might be something that could help institutions determine part of their risk factor in going with an open source vs. a commercial enterprise LMS solution:

• How much is it worth to you to be able to customize your LMS?
• Is the security and/or stability worth not being able to edit even the simplest parts?
• Is it possible for the LMS to be safe and stable and still have that capability?
• Can it be as secure and stable as a commercial enterprise solution?
• If you do go open source - do you have to hire a developer?

At the end of the day, what matters most: is it up and running? Does it have the features that meet the business, technical and functional requirements of your institution? Can equivalent or better service, stability and features be had for less than you are paying now? On Tuesday morning I’ll lay out the facts and figures for SUNY Delhi as we grappled with these very questions and chose to outsource Moodle.

Posted by Clark Shah-Nelson

The Disclaimer:
When I start to talk about learning management systems, I get a little passionate. I talk about names, prices, and some things that may make some people uncomfortable. Obviously, my comments come from being an end user, not the owner, CFO or CTO of a massive software company. They have their own things to worry about, and I have mine. I understand there are *thousands* of happy users of many of these software systems, but in case there are users who share my concerns, I’m putting this out there.

The History:
My experience with educational technology began quite by chance, when I started teaching high school German in the Denver Public Schools, and, like every other teacher in the district, was given a Mac Classic to use with my class and/or take home. This was the early 1990’s, and DPS was pretty advanced, in that it had passed a bond and put the infrastructure for voice, video, and data (as well as the portable Mac Classic) into every classroom. The following year I applied and was hired to create a cable television and telephone-based (one-way video, two-way audio) distance learning pilot program to teach several high schools German. This then grew into an entire distance learning network focused on elementary programs in art, science, geography, Spanish and French. Ok, right, this has nothing to do with an LMS. Flash forward.

Enter the LMS:
In 1999, I began teaching online, adapting the materials and techniques I had developed in distance learning via TV for distance learning via the web. At the time, the consortium I worked for (now Colorado Online Learning), used Jones e-Education Software Standard (JESS) for course management. It did the job, mostly. A couple years later, we moved to eCollege. It did the job better. I used it for several years, but I started to feel limited by the software, and started sending wish lists to tech support fairly early on. As a teacher, I had little control over many variables and features I wanted, and even my tech support person had little ability to do much more than create new course shells for me and move content from term to term. I found there were some very repetitive tasks and setups that took the majority of my time and repeatedly asked for changes. I kept thinking, ‘can’t someone just go in and change the code a little bit to do this…” Nothing. I went to a user conference and sat in a room with some 30 other users and came up with a list of desired changes and new features. Still Nothing….

To be continued…
In the next episode: The Tech Support Specialist Perspective.

Posted by Clark Shah-Nelson

The whole Blackboard patent claim against Desire to Learn seems a pretty apropos topic for the session I’ll be presenting at Nercomp Annual Conference 2008. The latest news report is that Blackboard has won a patent suit and will be awarded $3 million by Desire to Learn. Could this have a ripple effect on other LMS’s out there, such as Angel and eCollege? For those considering open source alternatives, keep in mind that just over a year ago, Blackboard pledged not to sue open source LMS projects. What effect does have on schools who are in the process of migrating or searching for a new LMS? Does it make them more inclined to go with Blackboard, perhaps out of fear of selecting an LMS that won’t be around in a few years? Or more inclined toward open source alternatives such as Moodle and Sakai?

- Posted by Clark Shah-Nelson

Track 1
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
8:30 a.m. - 9:20 a.m.
Room 553 A/B

Presenter: Clark Shah-Nelson, SUNY College of Technology at Delhi

Like many WebCT campuses, SUNY Delhi must select a new LMS and complete migrating to the new system in the next year. The total cost of ownership comparison led us to adopt a remotely hosted open source solution. We’ll examine the facts, figures, and progress of moving from WebCT to Moodle and integrating with Banner.

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