A College-wide Migration Blackboard to Moodle in 6 months

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A College-wide MigrationBlackboard to Moodle in
6 months

• Alice Crisp
• Director of Instructional Technology and Distance
  Learning
• David Hutto
• Dean for Technology and Development
• BLUE RIDGE COMMUNITY COLLEGE - FLAT ROCK, NC

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Adjusting to Current Technology

• State license required College to upgrade Course
  Management System Blackboard 6.2 to 7.1
  2007-2008 academic year
• New hardware platform
• New Oracle Database
• Increased costs
• Issues
• Increasing online enrollment
• Growing number of courses for curriculum and CE
• Expanding demands on personnel

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Options

• Upgrade BRCC resources hardware, software, etc.
• External hosting
• Third Party
• Blackboard.com
• Move to Open Source solution Moodle, Sakai,
  etc.

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Long Range Transition Plan

• Use Third Party Provider to host Blackboard 7.1
  for one year
• Convert existing course and develop new courses
  in open source platform
• Move to open source entirely by fall of 2008
• College had been exploring Moodle for about a
  year a few early adopters

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Blackboard Hosting Problems

• Signed contract with Private Hosting Provider
• License issues emerge
• No 3rd party hosting provision in state contract
  nor allowed by Blackboard
• Blackboard agrees to host BRCC courses for
  42,000 per year
• Hosting problems irreconcilable

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Point-of-Paid

• Future of Blackboard at Blue Ridge in doubt
• Dissatisfaction with Blackboard
• Moodle a known entity

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Gathering Resources

• Polled faculty and staff leaders
• Discussed options with BRCC Power Users
• Explained the options
• Openly discussed the process and challenges to
  follow our own course
• Proposed a move to Moodle
• Gathered the Faculty Council
• Unanimous acceptance of the Moodle migration
  option!

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Get buy-in from Stakeholders

• Presented the plan to the BRCC Management Team
  Deans and President
• Business Office support for spending less money
• Provided support for
• Summer Institute (discretionary training funds)
• Funds to outsource 18 course conversions
• Online Instructors to Guide Migration
• Eventual hardware upgrade

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Migration Beginnings

• Small pool of Moodle users
• Early adopters of Moodle and Open Source
• Strong support from IT for Open Source
• BRCC - Flat Rock, NC 9
• Member of NCMUG
• Purchased and Installed Moodle Servers for
  Curriculum and Continuing Education Courses

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Migration Workflow

• Used existing Moodle Dev Server
• Built Templates
• Located Trainers scheduled training events
• Organized Moodle Boot Camp
• Setup online Moodle Development Course
• Discussion Forums
• Troubleshooting of Process
• Investigation of Conversion Tools

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Migration Mechanics

• Install, configure, create course framework
• Determine actual courses to convert (approx 380
  in BB)
• Determine Roles, Admins responsibilities (keep
  Directors in the loop!)
• Schedule Marketing, lock in training

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Moodle Expertise

• D.I. VonBriesen, experienced Moodle instructor to
  provides assistance leadership
• History with BRCC Faculty
• Expert Moodle Developer and Ambassador
• Assisted us in developing the conversion course
  in Moodle
• Then left for Africa

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Basic Developer Server set-up for Fall 2008

• Gateway P4 3 GHz
• Single processor
• 2 G RAM 2- 80 G hard drives mirrored
• IMAP authentication w/ Open Source WebMail
• Moodle 1.5 upgraded to 6 (avoid 7)

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Courses

• 380 courses in BB (spreadsheet)
• Multiple sections reduce to ONE course per
  section developed then cloned
• Total of courses in Moodle 260
• Curriculum 146
• Continuing Education 52 on one server and about
  20 on another
• Miscellaneous and Sandbox Courses 62 (Each
  teacher has at least one and we have some faculty
  training and student demo courses included)

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Project Management

• Locate contract training
• Establish a communication plan
• Prepare Instructors online, f2f, 1-2-1,
• Prepare Students marketing (web, BRCC - Flat
  Rock, NC 16 print), tutorials, FAQs, plan
  orientations
• Prepare Help Desk
• Take Off!

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Project Managementpart 2

• Training Approaches and Calendar
• Humboldt Univ., Moodle book by Rice, Coles
  Manual with local additions
• Sandboxes for each instructor
• Conversion training (bFree and SFSU forget the
  import or do localhost )
• Online instructor and course DEMO course
• In-house BASICS (tools, editing, file mgmt.)

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Migration Tools

• bFree
• http//its.unc.edu/tl/tli/bFree/about.php
• SFSU
• http//welearn.sfsu.edu/ctt/index.html

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Web 2.0 Tools

• Use del-icio-us it will change your life!
• (reference links last page)
• Coordinate using Google docs /spreadsheets
• SKYPE! Works great to Senegal!

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Cost Factors

• Cost Direct and Indirect Total hard cash
  11,175
• 6100 Direct Pay Out for Delivered Training,
  Stipends for adjuncts and 9 month employees,
  Hired Course Conversions for 18 courses
• 675 Printing Moodle Manual for Faculty -
• Time for conversion averaged about 40 hours per
  course (rebuild)
• 4400 Hardware Server upgrade (1st courses ran on
  1 server not redundant)

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Reporting before Take Off 8/23

• As of 8/13/07, we had 41 sections,
• Internet Only, and 35 unique courses.
• Of the 35 courses
• 11 are 100 ready
• 14 are between 50-- 98 ready
• 11 courses (31) are not ready to begin
• classes on August 23 (0-20 completed).

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Reporting Fall 2007

• Distance Education Curriculum
• By Program Courses Students
• ITV 12
  78
• Full Internet Classes 46 550
• Hybrid Classes 48 372
• Online Con Ed 44 1412

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Lessons Learned

• RESET ANY TEMPLATE or COURSE before copying it to
  a new course
• Browsers act differently depending on type,
  version, and operating system
• Running WinXP, SP2 with Firefox 2 cannot
• add a table in html editor but CAN with IE 6
• WATCH your backup configs and monitor
• hardware CLOSELY first 2 weeks after
• classes begin

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Lessons Learned

• START 18 months out
• FLATTEN all previous LMS files as much as
  possible
• Make an outline in BB from Course Files in case
  you no longer have access to BB before conversion
• Locate and utilize a champion with Moodle
  expertise experience
• Give your Early Adopters EVERYTHING they need
  even if running multiple LMS

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Lessons Continued

• UTILIZE Web 2.0 to advantage including
  tutorials in You Tube and Google Video
• Beef up your FAQs
• Build or Remodel Student Faculty Guides

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Award Recognize

• Recognize achievements of participating faculty
  and staff
• Formally award achievements

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Examples of Moodle Resources

• Framework and template
• Faculty experiences
• Moodle course pages
• Integrating communication technology
• Engaging students

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Current Server Specs (2)

• Dual Quad core 1.8 GHz Intel processors with 8MB
  cache (essentially 8 processors)
• 4GB RAM
• 6 250 GB SATA II Hard drives
• Drives are configured in RAID5 (1.5TB total)
• Redundant power supplies
• OS is CentOS 5 (Open Source version of Red Hat
  Enterprise Linux)

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• Entire system is replicated to a second,
  identically configured system each night.
• System is also backed up to an external storage
  (EMC 4 TB) system nightly, along with other
  servers.
• Currently running 8 instances of Moodle, using
  approximately 68GB.
• Current Moodle version is 1.8.3 (2007021534)
• Systems are Gateway/MPC 9525R cost was less
  than 4500 each.

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References

• Eduforge Guidelines for Migrating
• http//eduforge.org/wiki/wiki/eduforge/?pagenameG
  uidelines20for20MIgrating
• HSU Moodle Support Manual
• http//www.humboldt.edu/moodle/instructor/manual/
  index.html
• bFree BB file extractor
• http//its.unc.edu/tl/tli/bFree/about.php

• SFSU BB to Moodle Conversion Tool (new 09- big
  files can take up to 2 hrs to convert!)
• http//moodleconverter.lsu.edu/
• Using Moodle Book 2nd Edition
• http//docs.moodle.org/en/Using_Moodle_book
• Cheap Moodle host Siteground
• http//www.siteground.com/moodle-hosting.htm

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Blue Ridge Community College Flat Rock, North
Carolina Contact Information Alice Crisp
alicec_at_blueridge.edu 828-694-1899 David Hutto
davidhutto_at_blueridge.edu 828-694-1881