Working Together: Two Stories of LMS InteroperabilityA key consideration with any learning management system is its ability to work with other critical software on campus, especially the administrative system of record. An LMS that interoperates smoothly with a college’s student information and financial systems, for example, can make for seamless interfaces between the two, saving time and effort for IT, faculty, and students. For two mid-size community colleges, one in Oregon and one in Nebraska, the ability of the LMS to seamlessly mesh with the Datatel Colleague system already in use on campus was a crucial deciding factor in selecting Moodlerooms’ hosted (within the Dell Education Cloud), managed open-source LMS platform, joule. Both colleges rely heavily on Datatel’s popular Colleague system for their student information system, finances, human resources and more; both colleges are now benefitting from having chosen systems designed to work well together. Combined with the enterprise scalability of the Dell Education Cloud, each college has established innovative e-Learning solutions that deliver rich functionality and can sustain substantial growth over time. Southeast Community College For Nebraska’s Southeast Community College (SCC), the move to Moodlerooms joule is just a small piece of their distance learning story. The college, with three campuses and 10,000 students each term — 3,000 of them online — moved to Datatel in 2006, and selected Moodlerooms last year. It is just now beginning to introduce the Datatel Intelligent Learning Platform (ILP), to move its course content into Moodlerooms, and to connect the two systems. Moodlerooms joule, built on the open source Moodle platform, adds tools, functionality, expertise, and a hosted solution for Moodle, making it an enterprise learning management solution. The Datatel ILP, formed from a partnership between Moodlerooms and Datatel, integrates the Datatel Colleague Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and SIS with Moodlerooms. Included is the Datatel Portal, which combines Microsoft SharePoint for business intelligence and shared content management, Datatel Colleague, and Moodlerooms joule. The power of the combined system moves Southeast Community College far ahead in terms of the new sophistication of its integrated software, but getting to this point hasn’t been easy. The college’s LMS path has been full of twists and turns, acknowledges Robert Morgan, who is dean of virtual learning as well as director of SCC’s Beatrice campus. The college’s first LMS platform, implemented for online learning only back in 1998, was Lotus Notes. From there, the college moved to WebCT 4.3 in 2003. Shortly after the college chose Datatel in 2004, Blackboard bought WebCT. Eventually looking for better interoperability with its Datatel SIS, the college then moved to Angel in 2008. That LMS, too, was subsequently acquired by Blackboard, and because SCC didn’t want to make the several required system upgrades, the LMS search began once more. SCC uses Datatel Colleague for its financial and student information system, along with other functions, including HR and the business office. That heavy reliance on Datatel made it imperative that the LMS chosen this time was optimized to work well with the Datatel solution. When Moodlerooms and Datatel announced a partnership in 2009 that offered tight integration between the two systems, Moodlerooms quickly became the college’s choice for its new LMS. Beyond the integration aspects, there were additional clear reasons for choosing Moodlerooms, Morgan says, including single sign-on capabilities, the system’s functionality, a design that seemed built around solid pedagogical principles, and the fact that it could be hosted offsite by the vendor. Price wasn’t incidental – the new system would cost roughly half what a Blackboard upgrade to similar functionality would have cost, Morgan says. But for faculty, interoperability with Datatel got top billing. “Price was [the] last thing [the] mentioned” when polled on their LMS criteria, Morgan noted. Instead, they listed functionality, access to courses from the portal site, and especially the tie-in to Datatel. The close integration between systems brings a portal and single sign-on, along with a student-friendly design, and a vendor-hosted solution with solid support. The new system brings numerous other benefits. Batch loading of courses and students – how the transition of data was handled previously each quarter — is no longer necessary. Faculty and students, whether for online, face-to-face, or hybrid classes, sign on to the SCC portal, dubbed “The Hub,” through a single entry point. “The portal is a gathering place,” Morgan says. “Students or employees will have access to everything. Students can log onto The Hub and register for class online, send email to an advisor, check the calendar to see what might be due, access any class with a joule shell to get their syllabus, and so forth.” Faculty can use the portal to get email for professional development information, items on campus events, and more. Information such as course enrollment and add/drop data is passed in real time between systems. The first 10 to 15 courses are being moved into Moodlerooms as a pilot project in March. Content in all courses will be either imported from Angel or re-created in Moodlerooms by May 2012, just over a year later. With just one week between each term, Morgan says, “we need to move quickly.” Professional development is also an important component of the move. The move to a new LMS is being used as an opportunity to encourage faculty to re-create their courses in Moodlerooms rather than simply import them, Morgan says. Faculty training is beginning with the college’s 24/7 online instructors. The mandatory two-week online training course must be completed at 90 percent proficiency; three course designers are offering the sessions to classes of 20 faculty at a time. The goal: to have all faculty members, both online and face-to-face, trained, and all courses throughout the college converted, by May 2012. Integrating two such critical systems on any campus isn’t trivial; Morgan cites the strong support and teamwork he’s seen from both Datatel and Moodlerooms representatives – “there’s been no finger-pointing; it’s been a team effort.” That’s important, since along with the vendor representatives, the migration team includes the college’s administrators for Datatel Colleague and Moodlerooms, along with the portal administrator and network administrator, a registration expert, and instructional designers. Clackamas Community College Clackamas Community College faced some of the same challenges as Southeast Community College. Located in a suburb of Portland, Oregon, medium-sized Clackamas Community College has the sort of large and diverse student body typical to a community college, with 8,000 FTE students, and atypically, a large athletic program that competes regionally. The college has three campuses and some outreach centers at local high schools. Like SCC, it has been running Datatel for years for its SIS and financial system; the move to Moodlerooms began last spring with a pilot run. After five years with Blackboard, the college let its contract expire in July after learning that Blackboard version 6.3 would no longer be supported. Steve Beining, who is chair of the distance learning department and an instructional designer, was in charge of planning and implementation for the project, and did much of the work on the instructional side. He says that based on a poll of faculty, the college considered Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Angel (both of the former were subsequently acquired by Blackboard), and Moodle. Near the end of the two-year LMS selection process, the integration between Moodlerooms and Datatel was announced. The fact that a turnkey solution for integrating the two systems was now available, Beining says, “was wonderful news. It tipped us fully to Moodlerooms.” Along with the interoperability factor, key considerations for a new LMS for Clackamas included price, ease of instruction and use, and system quality. The college was familiar with the hosted software model since Blackboard was already being run as a hosted solution. The open source component, Beining said, was new and raised some concerns initially for the mostly Microsoft-based college, but it wasn’t critical, largely because the system would be supported by Moodlerooms. Like Southeast Community College, Clackamas has established single sign-on through the Datatel Portal to the remainder of the system, allowing students and faculty to access all components of both systems with a single user name and password. It has also implemented real-time add/drops, grade exchanges, and course creation, along with seamless, real-time updating of users and course sections. Integrating major software systems is always a challenge, Beining points out, but says the process in this case went “remarkably well.” Some Datatel software had to be upgraded first to prepare for the connection between the two systems, along with other customizations and adjustments, most of which were handled during the spring term last year. Beginning with summer term, the college’s LDAP directory system was aligned with the Datatel student database, and students began logging into Moodleroms for the first time using credentials provided by the college. Over the summer, work continued in moving courses from Blackboard into Moodlerooms joule – a total of some 2,300 courses were eventually migrated from the old system — using a third-party tool, and tying student rosters to courses. Once extracted, course content was moved into Moodlerooms shells, and links were manually added to the content. Another third-party tool was used to move assessment exams, and last fall, the college began fully using the new system. “We tried to move things term-to-term to stay ahead of need,” Beining says. The college continued the process, staying a term ahead and gradually moving course content until the project was complete. Students and faculty are benefiting from the new system. For example, previously, new distance learning students had to enter Blackboard, create a new account with a user name and password, find a course from the catalog, and enroll. Now, Beining explains, they simply register for the course in Datatel, and can go from there directly into Moodlerooms joule. The same user name and password works for course registration, financial information, checking grades, and more. “Aligning the systems has been great for us,” Beining concludes. Attend this live webcast to hear university IT professionals reveal why you should consider managed open-source, how seamless integration between SIS/ERP should affect your decision to transition and what special considerations you should take when evaluating a move to Moodle. |
Blog de Octavio Islas 