A College-wide MigrationBlackboard to Moodle in 6

months

Alice CrispDirector of Instructional Technology and

Distance LearningDavid Hutto

Dean for Technology and DevelopmentBLUE RIDGE COMMUNITY COLLEGE -

FLAT ROCK, NC

Adjusting to Current Technology

• State license required College to upgrade Course Management System – Blackboard 6.2 to 7.1 – 2007-2008 academic year– New hardware platform– New Oracle Database– Increased costs

• Issues:– Increasing online enrollment– Growing number of courses for curriculum and CE– Expanding demands on personnel

Options

• Upgrade BRCC resources – hardware, software, etc.

• External hosting:– Third Party– Blackboard.com

• Move to “Open Source” solution – Moodle, Sakai, etc.

Long Range Transition Plan

• Use Third Party Provider to host Blackboard 7.1 for one year

• Convert existing course and develop new courses in open source platform

• Move to open source entirely by fall of 2008

• College had been “exploring” Moodle for about a year – a few early adopters

Blackboard Hosting Problems

• Signed contract with Private Hosting Provider– License issues emerge– No 3rd party hosting provision in state contract

nor allowed by Blackboard

• Blackboard agrees to host BRCC courses for $42,000 per year

• Hosting problems irreconcilable

Point-of-Paid

• Future of Blackboard at Blue Ridge in doubt

• Dissatisfaction with Blackboard

• Moodle a known entity

Gathering Resources

• Polled faculty and staff leaders• Discussed options with BRCC “Power Users”

– Explained the options– Openly discussed the process and challenges to

follow our own course– Proposed a move to Moodle

• Gathered the Faculty Council• Unanimous acceptance of the Moodle migration

option!

Get “buy-in” from Stakeholders

• Presented the plan to the BRCC Management Team – Deans and President

• Business Office support for spending less money

• Provided support for:– Summer Institute (discretionary training funds)– Funds to outsource 18 course conversions– Online Instructors to Guide Migration– Eventual hardware upgrade

Migration Beginnings

• Small pool of Moodle users– Early adopters of Moodle and Open Source– Strong support from IT for Open Source– BRCC - Flat Rock, NC 9– Member of NCMUG

• Purchased and Installed Moodle Servers for Curriculum and Continuing Education Courses

Migration Workflow

• Used existing Moodle Dev Server• Built Templates• Located Trainers – scheduled training

events• Organized Moodle “Boot Camp”• Setup online Moodle Development Course

– Discussion Forums– Troubleshooting of Process– Investigation of Conversion Tools

Migration Mechanics

• Install, configure, create course framework

• Determine actual # courses to convert (approx 380 in BB)

• Determine Roles, Admins – responsibilities (keep Directors in the loop!)

• Schedule Marketing, lock in training

Moodle Expertise

• D.I. VonBriesen, experienced Moodle instructor to provides assistance & leadership– History with BRCC Faculty– Expert Moodle Developer and Ambassador

• Assisted us in developing the conversion course in Moodle

• Then left for Africa

Basic Developer Server set-up for Fall 2008

• Gateway P4 3 GHz

• Single processor

• 2 G RAM 2- 80 G hard drives mirrored

• IMAP authentication w/ Open Source WebMail

• Moodle 1.5 upgraded to 6 (avoid 7)

Courses

• 380 courses in BB (spreadsheet)• Multiple sections reduce to ONE course per

section developed – then cloned• Total # of courses in Moodle: 260

– Curriculum: 146– Continuing Education: 52 on one server and about 20

on another– Miscellaneous and Sandbox Courses: 62 (Each

teacher has at least one and we have some faculty training and student demo courses included)

Project Management

• Locate & contract training

• Establish a communication plan

• Prepare Instructors – online, f2f, 1-2-1,

• Prepare Students – marketing (web, BRCC - Flat Rock, NC 16 print), tutorials, FAQ’s, plan orientations

• Prepare Help Desk

• Take Off!

Project Management…part 2

• Training Approaches and Calendar– Humboldt Univ., Moodle book by Rice, Cole’s

Manual with local additions– Sandboxes for each instructor– Conversion training (bFree and SFSU – forget

the import or do localhost )– Online instructor and course – DEMO course– In-house BASICS (tools, editing, file mgmt.)

Migration Tools

• bFree– http://its.unc.edu/tl/tli/bFree/about.php

• SFSU– http://welearn.sfsu.edu/ctt/index.html

Web 2.0 Tools

• Use del-icio-us – it will change your life!– (reference links last page)

• Coordinate using Google docs /spreadsheets

• SKYPE! Works great to Senegal!

Cost Factors

• Cost – Direct and Indirect: Total hard cash $11,175

• $6100: Direct Pay Out for Delivered Training, Stipends for adjuncts and 9 month employees, Hired Course Conversions for 18 courses

• $675: Printing Moodle Manual for Faculty -• Time for conversion averaged about 40 hours

per course (rebuild)• $4400 Hardware Server upgrade (1st courses

ran on 1 server not redundant)

Reporting before Take Off 8/23

• As of 8/13/07, we had 41 sections,– Internet Only, and 35 unique courses.

• Of the 35 courses– 11 are 100% ready– 14 are between 50-- 98% ready– 11 courses (31%) are not ready to begin– classes on August 23 (0-20% completed).

Reporting – Fall 2007

• Distance Education Curriculum

• By Program Courses Students

• ITV 12 78

• Full Internet Classes 46 550

• Hybrid Classes 48 372

• Online Con Ed 44 1412

Lessons Learned

• RESET ANY TEMPLATE or COURSE before copying it to a new course

• Browsers act differently depending on type, version, and operating system– Running WinXP, SP2 with Firefox 2 – cannot– add a table in html editor – but CAN with IE 6

• WATCH your backup configs and monitor– hardware CLOSELY first 2 weeks after– classes begin

Lessons Learned

• START 18 months out• FLATTEN all previous LMS files as much as

possible• Make an outline – in BB from Course Files in

case you no longer have access to BB before conversion

• Locate and utilize a champion with Moodle expertise & experience

• Give your Early Adopters EVERYTHING they need – even if running multiple LMS

Lessons Continued

• UTILIZE Web 2.0 to advantage – including tutorials in You Tube and Google Video

• Beef up your FAQ’s

• Build or Remodel Student & Faculty Guides

Award & Recognize

• Recognize achievements of participating faculty and staff

• Formally award achievements

Examples of Moodle Resources

• Framework and template

• Faculty experiences

• Moodle course pages

• Integrating communication technology

• Engaging students

Current Server Specs (2)

• Dual Quad core 1.8 GHz Intel processors with 8MB cache (essentially 8 processors)

• 4GB RAM• 6 250 GB SATA II Hard drives• Drives are configured in RAID5 (1.5TB

total)• Redundant power supplies• OS is CentOS 5 (Open Source version of

Red Hat Enterprise Linux)

• Entire system is replicated to a second, identically configured system each night.

• System is also backed up to an external storage (EMC 4 TB) system nightly, along with other servers.

• Currently running 8 instances of Moodle, using approximately 68GB.

• Current Moodle version is 1.8.3+ (2007021534)

• Systems are Gateway/MPC 9525R – cost was less than $4500 each.

References

• Eduforge Guidelines for Migrating– http://eduforge.org/wiki/

wiki/eduforge/?pagename=Guidelines%20for%20MIgrating

• HSU Moodle Support Manual– http://www.humboldt.edu/~m

oodle/instructor/manual/index.html

• bFree – BB file extractor– http://its.unc.edu/tl/tli/bFree/

about.php

• SFSU BB to Moodle Conversion Tool (new 09- big files can take up to 2 hrs to convert!)– http://moodleconverter.lsu.

edu/• Using Moodle Book 2nd

Edition– http://docs.moodle.org/

en/Using_Moodle_book• Cheap Moodle host &–

Siteground– http://

www.siteground.com/moodle-hosting.htm

Blue Ridge Community CollegeFlat Rock, North Carolina

Contact Information:

Alice Crisp alicec@blueridge.edu

828-694-1899

David Hutto davidhutto@blueridge.edu

828-694-1881