Dr. Thompsen

After the general session, the NERCOMP exhibit hall opened. It was larger than I expected, filling up most of a large ballroom. All of the big names were there, including Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and Blackboard. There were also quite a few more specialized vendors, including a couple of clicker companies. I had a nice chat with the folks at the iClicker booth. I’ve had a good experience using the iClickers in my large lecture class, and I was impressed with the new version of the software they are currently testing. They also have a “web clicker” version planned for release this fall, which would enable students to participate in click sessions over any internet-connected device. Since many students bring laptops to class, and many have web-enabled cell phones or iPods, the day may soon come where hardware clicker solutions will largely be replaced by a web-based service.

At lunch, tables were set up for informal “birds of a feather” chats. I sat at the “open source” table, as I’m particularly interested in Drupal, WordPress and Moodle. It was nice to hear from others who used open source software at their universities. I got the impresssion that open source solutions seem to be most popular at schools that value innovation and flexibility.

This morning’s general session began with some announcements from the NERCOMP (Northeast Regional Computer Program) leadership. NERCOMP is an affiliate organization of Educause, and has been for the past ten years. While Educause and NERCOMP are two separate organizations, NERCOMP serves as the regional organization for Educause in the Northeast. This year’s NERCOMP regional meeting of Educause is the best attended so far, with nearly 600 attendees from 18 states. There are also 152 vendors participating in the conference.

The general session program was a panel discussion about how college presidents view technology. Three college presidents were on the panel: Cheryl Norton, president of Southern Connecticut State University, S. Georgia Nugent, president of Kenyon College, and Susan Scrimshaw, president of Simmons College. The moderator was Joanne M. Kossuth, CIO and Associate Vice President for Development of the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering.

Kossuth mentioned that one of the biggest challenges she sees in higher education technology is getting faculty to learn and adopt technology. Norton concurred, saying that it is a challenge to get faculty to keep up with the students in their use of technology. She said another big issue is the tendency for students to want to be connected 24/7 with cell phones and texting, and the problems this poses for some faculty. She mentioned one example of a faculty member who confiscated a student’s cell phone.

To the common complaint of faculty that students’ always “go to google first” when doing research, Scrimshaw said, “get over it…even faculty go to google first!” (Good point.) At Simmons, they have combined IT with library services, and have generally found this has helped keep IT policy more aligned with the academic mission of the college.

Norton expressed a concern with students’ understanding of intellectual property and plagiarism. Students need to understand what constitutes fair use and academic honesty. She also briefly mentioned the need to manage the cost of IT.

Should academic computing be separate from administrative computing? In most cases, probably not. Scrimshaw said that in most cases, the division is the result of personalities and traditions, rather than a particular advantage in keeping administrative computing distinct from academic computing.

IT leaders need to focus on effective communication with administration. Norton argued that too often IT leaders use overly technical language, when they really need to be communicating in plain, direct words. It’s important that an institution’s leadership have a clear understanding of the benefit of IT investments.

It was interesting to hear from this group of college presidents about how they view technology. In particular, I enjoyed their candor in talking about their own personal journey in academic leadership. All of them shared some insights into their personal strategies for dealing with the stress of their position…regular exercise, eating right, keeping job and family in balance. Nugent said the best advice she can give someone who aspires to leadership is to be honest: be honest with yourself, be honest with others, and be honest about what you can do. Norton and Kossuth concurred, saying that a leader should always take the high road. The confidence and trust people have in you are a president’s most important assets.

I’m in Providence, Rhode Island today, attending NERCOMP, the Educause Northeast regional conference. Many of the attendees are blogging the sessions, and in fact, the organizers are encouraging it. So I’ll join the crowd, and blog a bit during each session. (Other blogs from participants at the conference can be found at http://blogs.nercomp.org/blogs/nac2008/.

The first session I’m attending is entitled “An Outsourced Open Source LMS and a Pot of Gold?” The presenter was Clark Shah-Nelson, the Coordinator of Online Learning at SUNY College of Technology at Delhi. Clark talked about his experience in converting his campus from a proprietary LMS (Learning Management System) to the open source LMS Moodle.

In considering the total cost of operating an LMS implementation, open source solutions can save a lot of money. In his comparative analysis of proprietary LMS solutions, like WebCT and Blackboard, versus the open source LMS Moodle, Clark found he could save hundreds of thousands of dollars over a three-year time frame. The most significant cost savings was found with a hosted Moodle implementation through MoodleRooms.

Some of the downsides of the hosted solution include a bit slower response time and some inconvenience in getting support. But upsides include the fact that the system administrator is only focused on Moodle, and campus network outages didn’t affect the availability of the hosted LMS. Perhaps more significantly, Moodle has a large user community that encourages openness and sharing. Unlike proprietary LMS offerings, Moodle is built by the community of users, so it is always evolving, and is quick to adopt new innovations.

In the early stages of the process of converting from WebCT to Moodle, the institution first established a Hostmonster account to set up multiple installations of Moodle for testing and development. During the past year, they have had WebCT and Moodle running concurrently, and this fall, they plan to pull the plug on WebCT. Importing courses from WebCT was simplified with the plug-in on http://www.moodle.org.

Faculty members found Moodle to be much easier to use, more flexible, and offers considerably more features. Clark has developed an iPod-based training program to help faculty get up to speed on Moodle. Students seemed to prefer Moodle as well. They found it easier to navigate, appreciate the social networking aspects, and found it easier to follow the discussion threads. They also liked the dog avatar Clark uses to help give the Moodle site a human touch.

Having used Moodle myself, I agree that it has much to offer. While I think it’s not quite as easy to make the transition from a proprietary LMS as Clark implied, and probably not quite as cheap, Moodle is certainly is worth considering.

More information about Clark’s experience can be found at https://snydelwd.delhi.edu:8443/display/CIS/Moodle+and+Banner. Also, SUNY Delhi is sponsoring an Open Source Conference and Moodle Moot this June 19 & 20.