It’s all at Moodlemayhem.org which is one of  the best for teachers resources about Moodle on the web: Moodlemayhem.org.  The resources available at Moodlemayhem and the slides below were all shared at the 4T Virtual Con on 5/22/2011 by Miguel.

For all of the great resources (and more): http://bit.ly/4toptimizelearning (links to a page at Moodlemayhem).

La Trobe opted to skip Moodle 1.9 when its previous LMS reached its end of life cycle, adopting an extremely aggressive 10 month implementation timeline with the help of an official Moodle Partner in Netspot.  From April 2010 to February 2011 6 months of beta testing and over 50 bug fixes were performed by the parties involved readying the Moodle 2.0 code for students in Semester 1 of 2011.

The decision to go with Moodle 2.0 rather than 1.9 was critical. Moodle 2.0 was untried and only recently released and Northern Hemisphere Moodle Partners had expressed caution in making the move until 2012. However, La Trobe was able to mitigate the risks involved in such a project through engaging leading Australian Moodle Partner, NetSpot, to support the transition through a range of expert professional services.

Important to note is that Moodle 2.0 was in beta preview release during some of this time which makes the adoption even more tenuous.  What’s clear is that Moodle 2.0 is ready for production at this point, but with caveats according to the white paper published by Netspot. It’s evident that several factors are required for a successful implementation, including

• strong technical expertise and knowledge of the code-base (Moodle Partners can definitely help with this)
• willingness and ability to fix bugs identified by students/teachers in pilot phase
• strong financial support (while the implementation cost is unknown, it seems that a Moodle Partner with excellent understanding of the Moodle 2.0 code base might be required for an aggressive transition timeline such as Latrobe adopted–it may not be something that an institution’s IT department attempts on its own)

To read the full white paper submitted in our comments recently click here for the PDF.

In light of the CLAMP report this begs the question: Is Moodle 2.0 ready for schools?  Seems to be an apples and oranges comparison at the moment and the best answer perhaps is “depends”.  It depends on your current use of Moodle or another LMS, depends on the customizations you may have added to the platform post install, depends on your budget and timeline and a host of other factors.

What is clear is that pioneering organizations such as Netspot and La Trobe are paving the way for future colleges and readying a great product for easy adoption by the masses.  Which ever version you’re using currently, one thing you can be assured of is a bright and inviting future of Moodle.

One key according to Shane?  Start training faculty early and keep it up throughout the process.

Enjoy!

Check out all 4 short (less than 7 minutes each) videos at http://www.city.ac.uk/ldc/learning-technologies/moodle/start_with_moodle.html.

One recommendation that Ian Glover gives resonates clearly with the Moodle Feasibility Study information we received, when asked to provide recommendations for other technology staff in similar migration to/implementation of Moodle at an institution,

the advice that I would give is get the training started as soon as possible and just keep training.

Check out their Moodle at http://moodle.city.ac.uk/.

Thanks to Twitterer @Ajmalsultany for sharing this great resource: http://twitter.com/AjmalSultany/statuses/24655644987

You’ll find a growing conversation of the data at http://www.moodlenews.com/feasibility-study/.  You may also download an Excel file of that data from the Feasibility Study page.

Over the past few weeks I went through my experience of  implementing Moodle into our school district by breaking it down into 5 parts:

• Preview
• Part 1 – Idea to Reality
• Part2- Installation and Modules
• Part 3 – Customization
• Part 4 – Rollout
• Part 5 – Training

Overall, I believe our implementation was successful and a major reason for that was the grant. Of course, the money part helped, but I’m talking about the specific objectives and goals that kept us on track and gave us a focus.

I’ve already talked about those objectives and goal in earlier posts so I won’t bore you with those again. Instead, this wrap up is going to include my favorite tips and a few other links that will help others make their first few years of Moodle successful.

Personal favorite teacher tips

• [teacher tip] Make a “quick links” block…add an html block and create a named link to each section using the anchor names (#section-1) instead of the default “sections” block which only shows the section number. VERY useful for long Moodle courses – scroll of death.
• [teacher tip] Show teachers how to zip their current file directory (where all their current files are nicely in folders and organized) and upload it to Moodle so you don’t have to upload one at a time and you can keep the structure. (someone already mentioned this)
• I’m trying to move the objects in my course by dragging and dropping but they don’t stick after I refresh or I can’t “drop” the object – frustrating! (this is more of an issue with older versions)
  • To stop this frustration go to your profile, click the “edit profile” tab, make sure the “advanced settings” are being shown and change the setting “AJAX and Javascript” to ‘No: use basic web features‘.
  • Now you will see instead of the the cross icon. Click by the activity or resource you want to move. It will load a page with many small dashed rectangles like . Click the  dashed rectangle where you want to move the activity/resource.
• On the bottom of (almost) every page there is a “moodle docs for this page” link that will take you to the specific documentation for the page you are on.
• By every setting there is a which you can click on and it will describe in detail what each different setting will do.

Personal favorite admin tips

• What version of Moodle am I using? Seems like a stupid question to ask but hey it’s useful.
• Ugh, how do I up the ‘maximum upload size’ limit?
• You’re able to edit and change words or phrases by going to Language | Language Editing

Other good resources

• Administrator FAQ
• “3 Things I wish I would have known“

To wrap up – I hope you got something out of this set of posts. I believe how a district implements any kind of program or tool is crucial and having a good plan is where you start. It can be the best, cool program in the world but if the implementation lacks in support, training, etc. it won’t be successful. The great thing about Moodle is the large, friendly community, so it’s fairly easy to do your research and start with a good plan. Feel free to comment or contact me at Moodlerific or @moodlerific

Last, but certainly not least I will be talking about Training. I’ll go over our basic outline of our training and what elements were included that made it successful. I’ll also speak about the importance of on-going trainings and user groups.

My co-worker, Ryan Semans, who was a TICT (Technology Integrative Collaborative Teacher) was the main Moodle Trainer. He developed and conducted the Moodle trainings. I was more of the techy Moodle administrator who worked on backend type issues.

Before a user was given course creator rights in our district they were required to be trained in Moodle. This was written into the grant and in my opinion, it’s a very important and beneficial requirement.

Ryan created a Moodle Training course which outlined a 2-day initial Moodle training. He created the course more as a guide instead of a “step by step” this is how you set up a forum, this is how you set up a chat. He focused on the Blended Learning Model and TPCK instead of bogging down the attendees with one way information that they would forget as soon as they walked out of the door anyways.

Outline of the 2-day training

In the morning of the first day the teachers are put into the student role and they enroll and participate like a student. Teachers need to experience and see Moodle like the student will, right? They use forums, watch videos, do online assignments, etc. In the afternoon they get course creator rights and they start exploring the course as a teacher. We go over course settings, activities, resources and see the teacher view of the course. We actually turned off a few activities like Lesson, Workshop and Compose a Text Page. Text Page because it’s the same as Compose a Web Page, but with less functionality. Lesson and Workshop were features we were not familiar with and thought it was a bit advanced for an initial training. You will have to decide which features you want on and off  but we had the feeling of the less users see, the less they worry and feel overwhelmed. Of course, these features can always be enabled in the future.

The second day we go over enrolling their students using separate enrollment keys automatically putting students into groups (this is a must for secondary teachers!) and a few other advanced things. Then the rest of the day is pretty much work time! Giving staff work time (we told them to bring their files, lesson plans, etc.) where they can actually start creating their course is a great idea and use of their time. I think Moodle is the type of tool that you have to keep using and use right away. It does take a lot of up front time to create a course but if you can enable the teacher to leave with a start on their Moodle course and with something relevant that they will use they are more likely to keep using it and remember more than if they were just getting the information and “how tos” told to them.

I think the most important thing about the training is having a trainer that understands how to use Moodle to create a Blended Learning experience. Ryan did an excellent job of creating the Moodle training course as a guide and not having tons of information on the course. Almost all of the training and things he said weren’t from looking at the Moodle training course, but information from his own experiences and knowledge!

While sitting through the dozens of trainings I picked out a few elements that seemed to positively impact the attendees.

Explain to users that Moodle is very robust and has a lot of features. They do not need to learn and use all the features. They should go through the training with a filter. What is your priority? What works for you? Do you only want to use forums for student communication and collaboration? Go ahead! Ryan spoke about this by having them participate in the “If I had to pick..” activity where attendees chose one of three items and we went around the room telling why they chose that item. After, he asked how each person came to their decision. Everyone had to prioritize and think about what worked for them, what was most important. The same thing happens in Moodle. What works for the teacher, what curriculum goals and content do you have? Go through the training with a filter – throw out the stuff you don’t think you’ll need and keep the things you think you will need. Remember, you can always go back and dig deeper once you become comfortable with one feature or function.

Another piece of information to get across to the staff was telling them that there is no wrong way to use Moodle and it’s features. Use the features however you like and sometimes you can accomplish the same task with more than one feature. Ryan never told staff “this is a forum and this is what it’s used for” because forums can be used for many different things – there is no right or wrong way to use it. The same thing goes for a teacher asking “I want to accomplish this task – which tool do I use?” There is no right or wrong answer (even though some people may want a black and white answer!).

Finally, we found that giving staff time to explore in Moodle and start to become more comfortable with Moodle’s interface was important. It’s impossible to train by lecturing and a giving one way information about each and every Moodle function. It would take weeks and it wouldn’t be effective anyways. Allowing staff to start working on their actual course content and letting them explore is a good use of their time and yours, especially if there are trainers there that can answer any questions as they being their exploration!

The last thing I’m going to discuss is the use of on-going trainings and Moodle User Groups. Moodle is the type of tool that needs some type of on-going trainings, work sessions or focused trainings on specific features. Every one of our teachers started off slow, but now have become more confident and comfortable with Moodle. As they became more comfortable with Moodle they were eager to learn more advanced uses and had more specific questions.

We started doing Moodle User Groups (MUGs) which were 2-hour, paid, after school sessions consisting of a small group (6-10 users) with two trainers. I talked about MUGs in a previous post but basically they are sessions for already trained users to come and have work time and be more 1-on-1 with someone who can answer their questions. Staff loved MUGs and it actually created a snowball effect when teachers from one department in a school got others from their department to attend and they started collaborating on their courses. It wasn’t only beneficial for users but it was awesome for me as well because I learned about minor and major issues that users were having that they’d probably never take the time to email me about or things they thought that just couldn’t be changed.

Unfortunately these sessions were funded by the grant to pay the teachers for their time. Now that the grant is done we don’t have that luxury. However, in a recent Staff Survey about Moodle in our district we had tons of requests for more MUGs and on-going trainings – possibly on specific features or more advanced things. Even though there is currently no funds for paid sessions I’m currently setting up a few MUGs at buildings with a lot of Moodle users. I truly believe trying to find funds for this type of thing would be well worth it. Users who attended gave great, positive responses and not just because it was paid but because they learned a lot from the trainers and their colleagues. It was cool seeing a majority of the high school department subjects come together and collaborate, sharing ideas.

Key Points

• Focus on the Blended Learning Model and the Pedagogy as well as Moodle’s features and functions.
• Put the staff in a student role, so they know how it looks.
• If possible, give them as much work time as you can.
• Provide on-going Moodle trainings and/or Moodle User Groups.

Related

• “How we implemented Moodle” Preview
• “How we implemented Moodle” Part 1 – Idea to Reality
• “How we implemented Moodle” Part 2 – Installation and Modules
• “How we implemented Moodle” Part 3 – Customization
• “How we implemented Moodle” Part 4 – Rollout

Next time on “How we implemented Moodle” – Wrap Up (summary, links to resources and specific tips)

In this post I will be discussing how we put Moodle into the hands of our staff. Who will have access? How was it decided? What was our vision of how Moodle would be used?

First and foremost, we did not force staff to use  Moodle. In my opinion, this was crucial – having people use Moodle and be at Moodle training because they want to not because they have to. My co-worker has this saying “there are 3 types of people at trainings – vacationers, prisoners and learners”. Vacationers – those who just want to get out of the building and don’t really pay attention. Prisoners – those who are there only because they have to and it’s mandatory. Learners – those who truly want to learn about the topic. We want Learners.

For our initial roll out of Moodle we made it available to a certain group of people in a program that we already had in place in our district. This program was the TICT Initiative which consisted of about 500 teachers who applied and were accepted into the program. Without going into too much detail if they were accepted they received equipment (an LCD projector and a wireless mouse and keyboard) and in return they were required to complete 15 hours of training and tech integration learning sessions. The reason we chose this group to be the initial users was because each member had a projector and could project large screen their Moodle course during the school day. We wanted Moodle to be used by teachers in school as well as students having access outside of school.

Our vision of Moodle was not just an online course that students access at home. Yes, we did want to extend the school day and have students work and collaborate outside of school but we wanted our teachers to use Moodle during the school day as well. It could be used for teachers to have all of their links and materials in one spot, showing embedded videos, showing students work, etc.

So TICT cadre members or anyone who supported TICT cadre members were the first to be able to create Moodle courses. Any person in our district’s system could log into Moodle as we use LDAP and active directory for user authentication for Moodle. However, for a user to be able to create a course I would have to give them course creator rights – so it was monitored.

If a staff member was “eligible” to get course creator rights they had to take the initial Moodle training. Mandatory training is very important and it will save you a lot of time answering “how do I” emails from staff. Also, in the training the blended learning model was discussed.  And before I get too far I’m going to abruptly stop because my next post is about training, so more on that later..

As far as the Moodle trainers there was one main Moodle trainer and I was there for more techy type questions. The rollout was further sustained and helped by Moodle Building Leaders. Moodle Building Leaders were staff who wanted to take on the Moodle trainer role for their school. It was voluntary and it was to help create more opportunities to staff to get trained since it was a requirement before creating courses. We made a Moodle Training course template for each school’s MBL and they customized it how they liked. This way there was some sort of consistency in training.

And again we get brought back to the training topic so I’ll sum up the Rollout topic. When we rolled out Moodle we started small but we had nice, quality trainings and we knew the staff wanted to be there and learn. We noticed that Moodle had sort of a snowball affect when teachers who had taken the training showed their Moodle work to colleagues. It perked the interest of their colleagues and created some excitement.

That’s it for now!

Key Points

• Don’t force staff to use Moodle.
• Mandatory training will save a lot of “how do I” emails you get.
  

Related

• “How we implemented Moodle” Preview
• “How we implemented Moodle” Part 1 – Idea to Reality
• “How we implemented Moodle” Part 2 – Installation and Modules
• “How we implemented Moodle” Part 3 – Customization

Next time on “How we implemented Moodle” – Training

In this installment I will discuss the process of installing Moodle and some modules you may want to install from the start.

Before installation I researched the best type of hardware and software to use. After reading documentation on Moodle Docs and looking through the Moodle Forums it was clear that the LAMP configuration was the way to go. Since our district had no other Linux servers it took a bit of convincing to use something other than Windows but after our network guy searched the web he came to the same conclusion we did. Even if your network staff doesn’t have a lot of knowledge of Linux (like ours at the time) I think it’s still a good idea to use a distribution of Linux because (1.) once you have Moodle up and running there are rarely (if ever) issues and (2.) there is a lot more documentation online for Linux vs Windows or Mac. Documentation meaning help if you run into a problem or documentation on performing tasks like tweaking settings.

For the actual setup of the server and Moodle installation we hired a consultant. I will not go into detail about the installation but one thing I will mention is the importance of user authentication, creation and management. Our district uses Active Directory so we used LDAP to connect and use Active Directory for Moodle user authentication and creation. I highly recommend using whatever information system you already have in your district instead of creating local Moodle users. It is so beneficial to use a system like Active Directory because there is only one spot to manage users and Moodle will reflect those changes (ie. last name change). Moodle can also pull information from your information system like building location, position, email address and anything else that you have in those fields. The other key benefit is that users will not have to remember another username and password. You have no idea how grateful staff are when we tell them “your username and password are the same as your network login and always will be.” You will get many “thank you, thank you, thank you!!” responses.

So, you have Moodle all set up – now what? We used Moodle pretty much “out-of-the-box” for awhile because we had to get started with trainings and I did not get ‘back-end’ type access for a long time. I was also not aware of the “I wish I would have knowns”. But I do now and here are some!

Two modules that I wish I would have included from the start are Book and Questionnaire.

Book is a great resource that makes it easy to create multi-page resources with a book-like format. You edit content like you would in a “Compose a Web Page” resource but it allows you to make several pages and it creates an outline on the left which can have indented or “sub” chapters.

Questionnaire is an activity that allows you to create advanced surveys. Moodle has the “Choice” activity which is in the core but it only allows you to have one question. With Questionnaire you can create some pretty nice surveys with several different question types.

Another tip is if you are or will be using Google Apps for Education. There is an SSO plugin for Google Apps which uses Moodle’s authentication. I’m not going to go into specifics but if you will be using both I recommend setting up the SSO plugin part during installation. That way, you won’t have to deal with issues for users when implementing Google Apps after Moodle implementation and you can integrate Google Apps into your training. For example, teach users to use a Google Doc URL instead of uploading a file to Moodle. Why? Because it skips the upload step and it allows the user to edit the file without having to delete the file on Moodle and then re-upload it. We chose to use Google Apps after implementation, so unfortunately we could not do this.

Key Points

• The LAMP configuration is highly recommended for a reason. Check out Moodle Docs and the Moodle forums!
• User authentication and creation is very important. If possible look into using your current information systems.
• Look through the Moodle modules and plugins and install them when installing Moodle, so you can train staff from the start.

Related

• “How we implemented Moodle” Preview
• “How we implemented Moodle” Part 1 – Idea to Reality

Next time on “How we implemented Moodle” – Customization

In this installment of “How we implemented Moodle” I will talk about a “Blended Learning Model of instruction“, “equipment” and touch on the word “sustainability” as it pertains to equipment.

As I mentioned in my preview post this Moodle implementation was guided by a grant which contained specific objectives, goals, budget outline, timeline, etc. Having a well thought out plan was tremendously helpful and allowed us to assess the implementation at the end.

The first thing done was choosing the right program to create a Blended Learning Model of instruction. Moodle was compared with other LMS and was found to be the best fit. I won’t go into deeper discussion about this decision because this type of implementation plan will work for most other LMS, with maybe a few differences in specifics. In later posts I will touch more on the Blended Learning Model of instruction but let’s move onto how we went from an idea to reality with hardware and equipment.

We decided that purchasing our own hardware (server) and housing it in our district was the best way to go. I was in charge of researching hosting options for Moodle. I looked into several types of off-site hosting options like Moodle Partners and another local company we use for our information systems. There are definitely benefits of those options like the ease of having someone else setup and maintain the physical server, software and dealing with any future problems.

The drawbacks were that we wouldn’t have full control over Moodle or the server. It would be more difficult (or not even possible) to customize and tweak Moodle how we wanted. The second drawback was that we would have to pay each year for hosting until we decided not to use Moodle anymore and not using Moodle anymore was obviously not in our plan! Sure, purchasing the hardware for a server is a lot of money up front, but after years of paying an off-site hosting company it will eventually even out and when that time comes you don’t even own the server, you will still have to pay the hosting company! Also, in our situation the funds for the grant were gone in 2 years and it would be difficult to sustain that type of model. As I mentioned before sustainability was part (a very important part at that) of our goal.

I highly suggest a district to purchase their own server. Of course, each district is in their unique situation and has to weigh their options. Our district, being pretty large (20,000+ students), having sustainability an important goal in the grant and having the funds at the time made our decision easy to purchase a server. We purchased a fairly robust server knowing that we will need this server to handle continued growth. I know purchasing a server for Moodle will not always be an easy option for districts but keep in mind the long term implications before making any quick decisions based on up front costs.

Key Points

• Having a well thought out plan with objectives and goals gives you a nice guide along the way and allows you to assess the implementation.
• Make “sustainability” key. One thing I have learned is that staff hate having a tool and then it be taken away after they spent a lot of time and energy on it. In every training we told staff “Moodle will NOT go away. The software is free and we have already purchased a server for it to run on. The only way Moodle will ‘go away’ is if no one uses it.” This will reassure staff that they are not wasting their time creating something that could be taken away and Moodle does take a lot of up front time.
• When deciding to purchase a server verse off-site hosting think long term.

Related

“How we implemented Moodle” Preview

Next on “How we implemented Moodle” -  Installation and Modules