LMS Project

Goals and Success Criteria

• To select the best LMS for Dickinson
  • As good as it needs to be, but not less so
  • As cheap as possible, but not less so
• To select an LMS that
  • Goes beyond file sharing and integrates LIS services
    • E.g. a content system to integrate Library Services subject guides and information literacy
  • That faculty like, can use easily
  • Whose advanced features faculty can and will use
  • That will improve the student learning experience
  • That will fit with LIS's infrastructure of hardware, software, and system admnistration

Milestones (Fall 2008)

Define the purpose of the project

This has been accomplished, more or less, through the Stakeholders meeting held in September. The idea is pretty simple: we want something better than Blackboard Basic, with at least the following features:

• Integration with Banner's registrar data, to automatically create courses and populate with students
• Importing of existing Blackboard courses
• Less expensive than Blackboard Enterprise (although we are considering it)
• Close wikis and blogs (to complement our open versions, and to support collaborative group work currently supported by Agora)

Define a realistic field of choices

We are pretty much committed to the following choices:

• Angel
• Moodle
• Sakai
• Blackboard Enterprise

We need to provide explanations for this field. Among the reasons are the following:

• The field can't be too big.
• We want to consider open source options, and NITLE provides two options -- Moodle and Sakai -- by virtue of our membership.
• We need to consider Blackboard Enterprise because we already use Blackboard. It's expensive but also the path of least resistance (which isn't always a bad thing).
• That leaves 3 options -- already quite a bit for a comparison involving faculty input, etc. Angel has emerged over the years as a great choice. Ryan Burke and Rafael Alvarado have done research in comparison to other options and have found it to be a leader. But this needs further justification.

Create a Comparison Matrix

• The terms for this matrix have already been defined.
• Members of the project team have already researched the info to populated this matrix.
• We need two matrices:
  1. A presence/absence matrix that shows if a product just has a feature
  2. A more detailed one that compares features. Maybe this is just an expansion of the first. For example, both Sakai and Angel have a wiki -- but Angel's is a lot easier to use.

Information

Moodle

Comments

Westmont

• Have been using it for 3 years
• integrated with openLDAP, soon to be transferred to eDirectory/LDAP
• hosted locally on Linux/mySQL
• How many staff? I usually spend a couple days before each semester testing out scripts, it takes about a week each summer to upgrade versions and test conversion of the old database, and one of my computer support staff answers the occasional question from faculty and the very rare question from students. Perhaps 1 hour every other week?
• Custom programming: Westmont staff have written about 4 scripts that pull demographic, course and enrollment information from the MSSQL 'data mart' from our student information system (Datatel). One of these scripts is run each night to update enrollment information.

Macalester

• Starting its fifth year
• For authentication it is integrated with our eDirectory/LDAP environment
• It is hosted locally on Linux & mySQL
• Our networking and enterprise staff have also done excellent custom work to integrate it with Banner (through Luminis) to automatically create classes, enroll students, etc.. This takes a couple of days to set up before each semester, but then runs without much administration for the remainder of the term.
• See above.

Sakai

• NITLE's Sakai Portal
• Contact: Karen Davis, Managed Technical Services, NITLE

Usage Info

To create a course, click on Site Setup on the left > New at the top and enter the appropriate information on the pages found there. Look for small, blue buttons with question marks to access Help along the way, and there is full online help and search available in the instance; look for Help in the links on the left.

Your campus may create up to 10 courses with up to 100 users (combined faculty and students) in the Basic Service. This shared Sakai instance requires NITLE to add all of your faculty and student users. Please send me the first and last name of each user, and his or her campus email address. Please send as many as possible at one time showing the three separate fields, perhaps as an Excel or CSV file. I will indicate when they have been added and then you can notify your users they have access to NITLE’s Sakai Basic Service, to change their temporary passwords of <OMITTED FOR WIKI>, and they may join courses that have been created.

You will be added to the NITLE-Sakai listserve email list, and we are gradually transferring all of this collaborative interaction to our Sakai Community Project Site where you will find tips, techniques, forums, messages and eventually training material.

https://sakai.nitle.org/osp-portal/site/65545717-f7e0-41b3-00bd-1e838c272b60

More detailed info on how to create a course

1. Once logged into the Sakai instance, My Workspace, click Site Setup on the right.
2. Click New at the top of the Site Setup page.
3. You have the choice of course website (and the academic term), project website or portfolio web site.

Select course website, the academic term from the drop down and click Continue. NOTE: to back up in the course creation procedure, click the Back button at the bottom of the page, not the browser’s Back button.

1. On the Creating a New Course Site page, enter the course name following the standard naming

conventions of your campus. You must supply information in the fields with red asterisks. Your course identification Subject may have eight characters including spaces, your Course may have three, and your Section may have three. Use the drop down to Add More Rosters.

1. On the Class Information page, enter a Description of the course which will be displayed on the site’s

homepage. This will help orient your students. Enter a Short Description which will appear on the public list of all sites. Change the Appearance from the drop down if allowed. Enter your name and email address as Site Contact if necessary. Click Continue.

1. On the Tools page, select and deselect the tools and modules with which you would like to start your

course. You may modify this later. Scroll down to choose whether you want to Re-use Material from Other Sites You Own. Click Continue.

1. Customize offered tools, for example, change the name and add the URL of a Web Content link you

want to have available for your students. Click Continue.

1. Prepare to Publish site by leaving the check mark in place. Under Global Access select the Role for

people that join site from the drop down. Click Continue.

1. Review your site setup, scroll down and click Request Site. Wait for processing.