LATTE: Moodle at Brandeis University

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• LATTE Moodle at Brandeis University
• Nercomp Moodle User Group SIG
• February 5, 2008
• William Goedicke
• Janet Hill
• David Wedaman

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• Table of Contents
• The Brandeis Moodle Implementation David Wedaman
• Technical and Programming Details William
  Goedicke
• Enterprise-level Product Management
• Janet Hill

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The Brandeis 2007 Moodle Implementation

• David Wedaman
• Director for Research and Instruction Services

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Brandeis University Overview

• Liberal Arts / Research University
• 3000 Undergrad 1500 grad
• 500 courses in CMS (per semester)
• Used WebCT since 1997
• WebCT historically supported by 3 - 4 FTES and 6
  - 10 students.

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State of the Union February 2007

• WebCT decision looming
• Aging home-grown portal
• Needed to amplify support resources
• Willingness to invest in open-source
• Desire to take on a cross-functional project with
  newly merged organization

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LATTE Project

• LATTE Learning and Teaching Technology
  Environment
• Began March 2007
• 60 people on five teams
• functional, communication, technical, content
  migration, training, support
• Implemented July 31

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Key details

• Provost owned the project
• Sophisticated communications and branding
• Weekly leads meetings created high-level
  cross-functional leadership collaboration
• Team membership was highly cross-functional
• Incorporated external goals syllabus feature
  on-demand course video
• Moved content for faculty

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Project Challenges

• Distance Learning courses needed specialized
  feature set
• Needed to show it to faculty before we had it
• Needed to finalize feature set before we had
  thoroughly learned it
• Coordinating 60 people

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State of the Union February 2008

• 563 Moodle Courses 15 WebCT Courses
• 382 of 450 Instructors
• Widely positive reaction
• No downtime whatsoever
• Broad ownership of LATTE throughout Library
  Technology Services
• Very high profile in institution
• Considered a better product than WebCT

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LATTE Technical and Programming Details

• William Goedicke
• Director for Web and Middleware Development

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Development Philosophy

• DO NOT BRANCH
• Weve Done That Before
• Augment Instead
• Model / View / Controller
• moodle API
• Unit Test, Integration Test, UAT

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Release Management

• Automating Promotion Through Development Phases
• ( Ugghh, except moodle Admin Configuration )
• Four Phases
• Coding / Unit Test
• Development / Integration Test
• Test / User Acceptance Test (UAT)
• Production
• ( Oh yeah, YIKES / Rollback )

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LATTE Enterprise-level Product Management

• Janet Hill
• Academic Systems Project Manager

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Product Management Overview

• Product Management vs. Project Management
• LATTE treated as an enterprise system
• Group created to provide technical support for
  all development surrounding academic systems -
  LMS, Course Evaluations, Syllabus Preview Tool,
  and more

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Product Development Team

• Consults university stakeholders to develop and
  maintain LATTE
• Research and Instructions Services
• Registrar
• Deans / Committee for the Support of Teaching
• Graduate and Professional schools

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Moodle Community

• Moodle is community based
• We want to
• Contribute enhancements
• Submit bug fixes
• Join/build local Moodle community

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LATTE Support Fall 2007

• 16 Librarians / Technologists / Managers and 20
  Part-time students
• 3 LATTE Product Management Team members
• 1 PM focused on Distance Learning feature
  development
• 3 Programmers
• 95 hours support open per week
• 1,800 email support tickets since 8/1/08
• (400 content migration related)

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Upcoming challenges . . .

• Archiving course content
• as record of instruction, as instructional
  materials
• Returning content from legacy systems
• Enhancing staff roles in support of faculty
• Formal regression testing process and procedures
• Managing upgrades and long term course access.

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Come hear us at NERCOMP 2008!

• More in depth discussion of
• Enterprise Product Management
• Moodle in a Merged Context
• Content and all its Vicissitudes

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goedicke_at_brandeis.edujhill_at_brandeis.eduwedaman_at_b
randeis.edulatte_at_brandeis.edu
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• LATTE Screenshot
• https//moodle.brandeis.edu/course/view.php?id419
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