Sloan-C Moodle Moot

I recently attended the Moodle Moot at the Sloan-C conference in Orlando, FL. The focus of the moot was course management system selection processes, and there were a lot of institutions there in the same situation as us. Some were still a ways off from any decision, some where there creating new online programs, and some were, like us, actively working towards replacing our aging WebCT installation.

There were some really big take-away points that were especially useful to me.

1. From North Carolina's Community Colleges Keynote
1. Student orientations are more important for successful use of a CMS than which CMS is used.
   
2. The more comfortable an instructor appears with the CMS, the better student opinion is of the CMS.
3. No one uses all the features in a CMS.
2. University of North Carolina at Charlotte and North Carolina State are both migrating from the WebCT CE/Vista platform to Moodle 1.9.x by summer of 2011.
1. Both are moving from a pilot to a co-production scenario
2. Both are relying on faculty (with staff support) to migrate their content
3. Both are Banner schools and are using intermediary services to collect and manage SIS data before passing it to Moodle for course creation, enrollments, etc.
4. Establishing the scope and role of Moodle is important. Just because to can modify/add modules doesn't mean you should. People will start looking to use Moodle to solve all problems unless you define how it will be used within the institution.
5. Hardware requirements for the LAMP architecture are much smaller and cheaper.
6. UNC Charlotte offered grants to faculty for migration, though the award was in the form of instructional design/support time.
   
3. Robust online student orientations are good, but we've known that.
4. There are 3 migration options for courses leaving CE/Vista. This is largely true no matter which platform you migrate to.
1. Some hosts/vendors offer scripted/systematic course migrations. This assumes use of the Learning Module tool. Can cost as little as $40/course.
   
2. Manual migration services are available at a much higher cost ($120/hr) but often have better results.
   
3. One of the most common methods being employed by Colleges and Universities is a combination of faculty migration and training, which allows you to migrate only important content and gives faculty a chance to learn the new CMS while migrating. This is ultimately what happened for us when moving from CE4 to CE6, despite the "migration tool."
5. Moodle 2.0 is a complete rewrite of the underlying code. Some major feature additions include
1. Conditional Release
2. Improve file handling and security
3. More APIs to interact with external systems like portfolios, web 2.0 sites, web applications, etc.
4. well, there's lots more. See the Roadmap for more details. Beta is due presently.
6. Perception of Free - "Free like Puppies"
   
1. The selection of Moodle for UNC Charlotte was not about saving money
2. Focus was on quality of CMS, content and instruction
3. Supports common tools but has flexibility of add-ons
4. Significant need to establish "module" policy for determining need or reason for adding modules.

Now to incorporate this info in to our Moodle Pilot, which is slated to start for Winter term, 2010.