course management software
EDTECH Editor-Jones
Can anyone recommend Course Mangagement Software for an on line course?
Aviva Wasser
Doctoral Fellow
Azrieli Graduate School of Yeshiva University
aviva...@gmail.com
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SIGNOFF EDTECH
EDTECH Editor-Jones
Aviva:
If you're looking for something you'll host yourself, Moodle seems
to be the most popular. I'm a Windows guy, and I had a Moodle site running
on a WAMP platform (Windows/Apache/MySQL/PHP) in a matter of an hour or
so. I used WAMPSERVER as the install for the platform -- a simple
executable which installs all of what you need for WAMP -- and the Moodle
install went in fairly easily after that. Moodle.org represents a pretty
extensive community, so there is lots of help if you get stuck. Our
district has been hosting its own Moodle courseware system for quite a
while now (http://ischool.fcps.net), with over 8,000 users and 700+ course
shells), so it scales pretty well.
If you're looking for a hosting servce (a pay service which hosts
your course for you), look at Moodle.com for a listing of services using
Moodle. Since the platform is free, these services tend to be a lot
cheaper than the commercial players like Blackboard. There used to be some
free services out there providing content sharing for a class, but I don't
know of a full-blown courseware system online for free.
Good luck!
Jeff
Jeffrey L. Jones
Coordinator, Virtual Classrooms and Connections
Fayette Co. Schools
Lexington, KY
http://ischool.fcps.net
EDTECH Editor-Jones
Aviva:
Howdy! I have to echo Jeffrey Jones' recommendation to use Moodle. There are
many resources on the web for Moodle; here are some of the ones I like that
are free:
http://mguhlin.net/moodle
Other choices include Sakai (http://sakaiproject.org/), Blackboard (not
free)....
Wishing you well on your Moodle implementation,
Miguel Guhlin
Phone: 210-617-3330
Email - mgu...@gmail.com
Blog: http://mguhlin.org
Portfolio: http://mguhlin.net
EDTECH Editor-Jones
If this..."I had a Moodle site running on a WAMP platform
(Windows/Apache/MySQL/PHP) in a matter of an hour or so. I used WAMPSERVER
as the install"... makes little sense to you, but you want an easy,
reliable, robust and FREE way of hosting a class on online than you have to
check out www.edu20.org <http://www.edu20.org%20> I've been using this site
for over two years and it just keeps getting better and better.
Check it out and let me know what you think?
Matt Henchen
> From: Aviva Wasser <aviva...@gmail.com>
>
> Can anyone recommend Course Mangagement Software for an on line course?
>
> Aviva Wasser
> Doctoral Fellow
> Azrieli Graduate School of Yeshiva University
> aviva...@gmail.com
--
Matt Henchen
EDTECH Editor-Jones
Aviva:
Matt's point is well taken, and his link (and several others posted
to this thread) to free online class hosting services is a great addition.
Whether any school or district wants to take on the task of self-hosting a
courseware system will depend on whether its tech support office will step
up, or whether anyone on staff has the interest in spending the time to
build and support such a system. If the answer is no, you should
definitely explore the free services.
There are, however, a list of advantages a self-hosted learning
management system (especially an open-source one) brings to the table.
-> Account management. Our system is tied to our school network, which
means that the business of creating, managing, and insuring the
"acceptible use" compliance of its users, through network login accounts,
is someone else's problem. This also reduces account sharing (the
biggest threat to online course security), since a student would be
sharing more than just their course credentials.
-> Templating, learning object integration, and other low-ability user
support. Besides the issues of account management, the scariest thing
about integrating online learning to a traditional teacher is the fear
that they've doubled their teaching materials development time, not to
mention the demands on their tech abilities. We've tried to reduce that
fear by providing content (and, more importantly, interactive activities)
developed elsewhere and delivered through libraries for instant
deployment, sharing content and activities development between teachers in
our own district (I'm presenting on this at ISTE 2010), instant course
templating, even whole courses we've obtained elsewhere. Moodle will
accept imports in a variety of formats, including Blackboard. You can also
quickly and easily import question banks for quizzes from ExamView and
several other formats, reducing the labor-intensive process of building
online assessment.
-> Flexiblity, power, integration. I have few experiences with online free
courseware system hosting, so this is a guess...but we've found that the
development of system improvements and add-ons is pretty high, perhaps
higher than what can be expected of a proprietary free servce. There are
several interactive activities Moodle has I haven't seen elsewhere. So far
we've added plugins in support of mathematical/scientific symboling,
podcasting/vodcasting, and native languages (our latest language addition
is Latin). We are also piloting a full ePortfolio and social networking
plugin with full "single-sign-on" integration with our Moodle system, an
addition we'll be pushing to our full user base next month. Besides
providing a development community, Open Source provides developers the
ability to quickly integrate their own plug-in ideas, as well as providing
a platform for their free distribution.
-> Security, acceptible use. If anything goes wrong in the human end of
things (the system is compromised, or a user does something stupid), or if
some hiccup in the system causes a problem requiring immediate
intervention (student content exposed to the public, for instance), you
don't have to depend on an external support structure to make things
right.
Again, all of this advantage comes at a cost, and without
dependable tech support, you're kind of working without a net. But our
install was a computer club project 3.5 years ago for a single interested
high school student. It is still student-supported (with me and a
benevolent high school LAN tech looking over the kids' shoulders). We are
a district of 55 schools, and our Moodle install now has something like
9,000 registered users and 700+ course shells. Our system provides public
web pages, blended instruction, and closed learning community support
between teachers as well as students. You would be very suprised at how
little direct support work we actually have to do - it's amazingly stable.
I do hope this helps.
Jeff
Jeffrey L. Jones
Coordinator, Virtual Classrooms and Communications
Fayette County Schools
Lexington, KY
http://ischool.fcps.net
On Mon, 21 Dec 2009, Matt Henchen wrote:
> If this..."I had a Moodle site running on a WAMP platform
> (Windows/Apache/MySQL/PHP) in a matter of an hour or so. I used WAMPSERVER
> as the install"... makes little sense to you, but you want an easy,
> reliable, robust and FREE way of hosting a class on online than you have to
> check out www.edu20.org <http://www.edu20.org%20> I've been using this site
> for over two years and it just keeps getting better and better.
>
> Check it out and let me know what you think?
>
> Matt Henchen
>
>
> On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 8:10 AM, EDTECH Editor-Jones <
> edad...@mail.h-net.msu.edu> wrote:
>
>> From: Aviva Wasser <aviva...@gmail.com>
>>
>> Can anyone recommend Course Mangagement Software for an on line course?
>>
>> Aviva Wasser
>> Doctoral Fellow
>> Azrieli Graduate School of Yeshiva University
>> aviva...@gmail.com
>
> --
> Matt Henchen
EDTECH Editor-Jones
In response to Jeffrey's Discussion of Moodle, from the developer of
edu20.org...
"At a high level, EDU 2.0 has been designed based on my belief that
education, like most other things (search, documents, sales, etc.) is moving
quickly to the "cloud". Cloud platforms are scaleable, reliable, and
typically add new features on a regular basis. I think the idea of schools
running their own servers is a bit old-fashioned, as well as costing quite a
bit of money especially if you want to do proper backups, upgrades, bug
patches, etc. In addition, if the traffic goes above a certain level, a
school needs to install a cluster which I think is beyond the resources of
most smaller schools.
As far as Jeff's points go:
Account management - we're adding LDAP support soon that will allow schools
to integrate EDU 2.0 with their existing account systems if they have them.
RIght now, most schools either use bulk import of accounts or issue
registration codes.
Templating - we're releasing SCORM 1.2 support in January and will also add
a variety of import formats (including Moodle) soon. It's already easy to
share existing content between teachers and we're about to add support for
district-wide sharing as well. As you can see from our Resources section,
we're very keen on allowing teachers to share their resources on a
world-wide basis.
Flexibility/power/integration - EDU 2.0 is evolving faster than Moodle and
this will accelerate in 2010. Contrary to what Jeff says, our development is
actually inexpensive due to our choice of technology, architecture, and
development methodology.
Security, acceptable use - We usually fix issues within a day or so, far
faster than the Moodle community. In addition, there are no patches to
download and install.
I think Moodle is a fairly nice system, so I'm not putting it down. But
I also think that the philosophy behind EDU 2.0 is better suited for 21st
century education. Both systems are getting a lot of users (EDU 2.0 grew
from 30,000 to 120,000 users in 2009) and I'm a big believer in choice!"
More food for thought.