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.