Selecting A Content Management System For Athabasca University
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Transcript of Selecting A Content Management System For Athabasca University
Rodger GrahamManager, Course Design
Athabasca University
Distance delivery to 30,000 + students per year
Undergraduate courses Continuous enrollment Self study
Graduate courses Semester based
Course materials include Textbooks Lab kits CD ROM Audio/video material Material published in house
2004 – we started to move toward more online delivery
Selected a single LMS to replace WebCT, Bazaar, Lotus Notes, and other systems
Convert print-based courses to online delivery Content for printed courses mainly stored and
output from print publishing system (Interleaf)
Needed a CMS that would allow us to publish to the LMS as well as to the web, to print, and to mobile devices
The CMS would also manage collaborative development, storage, and lifecycle
Course packages Textbooks Study Guides Student Manual Other physical Resources Electronic Resources Assessment (formative and summative)
Student/institution interaction Student/teacher interaction
Mail Telephone Email Course mail
Student/student interaction discussion forum Wiki Course mail
Other social software
Little previous experience with CMS’s Committee struck June 2006 out of
Educational Media Development Committee grew to include key stakeholders
from across the university including: EMD Other course material developers Records management Training Web development and delivery Registrar Library
Looked at a wide variety of management systems.
Two main types emerged in varying degrees: Web Content Management Systems (WCMS)
Designed to manage and expose content solely through a web site(s)
Content Management Systems (CMS) Sometimes referred to as Document MS Manages content creation, storage, publishing Includes workflow, extensible roles and permissions May include Records Management features
After extensive investigation the committee developed a list of contenders: RedDot Rhythmyx Documentum ThinkingCap Docushare Cascade Server Plone Alfresco Joomla
To help compare products we developed a list of criteria through interviews with various stakeholders
Each product was measured against this list
Vendors for proprietary products and application developers for open source products provided demonstrations
Each committee member conducted a SWOT analysis of each product
Analysis led to two contenders Cascade Server by Hannon Hill (proprietary) Alfresco (open source)
User trials Installed both systems rather than use a
hosted service Set up accounts and permissions for
committee members Developed simple workflows Simulated course content publication process
including creation, editing, approval and publishing to LMS
Cascade server: Proved difficult to install Technical help was inadequate Users found the interface difficult Unable to publish to the LMS
Alfresco Installation was successful Technical support from open source
community adequate Users found the interface intuitive Publishing to LMS, at a basic level, was
achieved
Alfresco Open source a good fit institutionally Development ongoing in the Moodle
community to integrate Alfresco Local resources available (OA Solutions) Opportunity to contribute to the open source
community Development of in-house expertise Scalable to handle other institutional
requirements like records management
Alfresco was installed on a temporary server in September, 2007
Implementation committee struck 4 sub committees
Course content management Web development Records management metadata
Inevitable delays: Server expansion New releases of Alfresco Internal resource shortages
Developing use cases around content Contract with OA Solutions, an Alfresco
partner, to develop a course tracking system and copyright database in Alfresco as well as basic infrastructure for housing content
Developed several web sites driven dynamically from Alfresco
Develop workflows in CMS to manage content creation, design, and publishing to LMS, web, and print
Track course development in Alfresco using a combination of metadata and hierarchical structure
Migrate current copyright database to Alfresco Employ lifecycle tools to manage copyrighted
materials Migrate content from print publishing system
to Alfresco Investigate Common Cartridge for export Integrate Learning Design
Presentation wiki at http://tinyurl.com/45vnzv Presentation References Questions/Comments/Discussion