TeachOIT: a Blog for People Who Teach with Technology

The campus may be quiet during July… but our planning and preparations for the Fall 2012 Moodle Pilot continue to move forward.

If you are part of our Fall 2011 Moodle pilot, make sure to check out our upcoming Moodle workshops in August. In addition to startup and conversion workshops, we have sessions on setting up student groups, Moodle’s grade book, and it’s communication tools.

Registration for the Fall Moodle Pilot closed on June 27th. There has been more demand for access to the pilot than we can currently accommodate, so we are not able to add any more new classes for the Fall. Moodle will be fully open for business in Spring 2012, so you will be able request your Spring 2012 Moodle course in mid-fall when the official Moodle Spring Request Form is available.

Today we hosted our first Preview of Moodle, UMass Amherst’s new Learning Management System. (We have three more previews in the coming weeks if you’d like to attend one, check our workshop schedule.)

What is Moodle and when do I have to change?

Moodle is a widely-used open source learning management system (LMS), that can be used to deliver course content and host online learning activities. UMass Amherst is transitioning on-campus courses with an online component to Moodle by January 2013. Instructors can begin converting their courses to Moodle as soon as Fall 2011. SPARK will be available for teaching until the end of Fall 2012. More information about Moodle is available on the Moodle site: http://moodle.umass.edu.

Choosing Moodle

The campus did an evaluation of options for a new LMS after Blackboard Inc. announced that it would discontinue support for Blackboard Vista, the software behind SPARK. A committee of faculty and staff made a recommendation to the CIO and Provost in October 2010. The Provost and CIO chose Moodle because it offered more local control and the best opportunity for future growth and innovation. Details of the evaluation process and decision can be found on the Future LMS blog (http://blogs.umass.edu/futurelms).

Note that this conversion to Moodle applies only to on-campus courses at UMass Amherst. Continuing and Professional Education hosts its courses on UMassOnline’s own instance of Blackboard Vista. UMassOnline is currently evaluating its options and has not yet announced what they will be using.

Changing to Moodle

There will be limited spots in the Fall 2011 pilot. You can volunteer for this pilot by submitting a request via your Faculty Center in SPIRE. Courses will be selected for the pilot by the end of April 2011. Throughout the change to Moodle, OIT Academic Computing will be offering workshops and one-on-one consultations to help instructors convert their courses and get started using Moodle.

While we are exploring possible conversion processes for some portions of courses, there is currently no way to automatically migrate a course from SPARK to Moodle in its entirety. Some manual migration by instructors will be necessary in order to best fit Moodle’s unique structure.

In the near-term, OIT Academic Computing staff are available to give demonstrations of Moodle to departments or groups. To schedule a departmental presentation, please contact the Instructional Media Lab (instruct@oit.umass.edu | 545-2823).

Timeline for the Transition to Moodle

2011 Spring Limited pilot of Moodle (8 classes).

2011 Summer Content conversion and training for Fall 2011 Moodle Pilot.

2011 Fall Pilot semester of Moodle (limited number of classes)

2012 Spring First semester on Moodle (voluntary).

2012 Summer Content conversion and training for final exit from Blackboard Vista (SPARK).

2012 Fall Last semester for teaching in Blackboard Vista (SPARK).

2013 Spring Blackboard Vista (SPARK) closed to teaching.

Further Reading

• UMass Amherst’s Moodle Site
• From WebCT to SPARK to Moodle – History of LMS use at UMass Amherst (PDF)
• 7 Things to Remember about Moodle (PDF)

CIO John Dubach has made the formal announcement about our new LMS system to replace the current Blackboard Vista system we call SPARK:

To the Amherst campus faculty:

I am writing today with information concerning an important change the campus will be making in its instructional technology over the next two years. As outlined in previous emails, the Blackboard company will
cease support for the current system behind SPARK, Blackboard Vista, in January 2013. Over the past seven months, a committee of faculty and staff has been evaluating options for the next learning management system (LMS) on campus. Based on their evaluations and further discussion in Academic Affairs and OIT, the Provost and I have decided that UMass Amherst will move to Moodle, an open-source LMS, over the next two years.

While recognizing that the transition to Moodle will be more complicated than moving to the alternative Blackboard product for both the faculty and the support staff, I believe Moodle better positions the campus for the longer timeframe. We did well in WebCT and its derivatives for approximately fifteen years, but the direction Blackboard has taken does not, in my opinion, offer a strong positive future relative to the needs of the campus. Moodle offers us opportunities for more local control and innovation. To use a geographic analogy, I see moving to the Blackboard product as moving deeper into a “box canyon”; going to Moodle may require some effort to get out of the canyon now, but will place us on a more expansive fertile plain for future benefit.

SPARK currently supports more than 1,100 instructors working in over 2,100 classes involving more than 23,000 students (each of whom likely is taking several SPARK classes). Converting to an open-source product such as Moodle will be a lengthy and complex project, requiring some reorganization within Academic Computing and elsewhere in OIT as well as the establishment of new oversight and advisory procedures. We are in the process of developing a transition plan and hope to be able to put out at least the first steps in such a plan to the campus over the next few weeks. Fred Zinn and Bo Mack of OIT will be leading the transition with Fred focusing on the application and Bo on the technical underpinnings.

Blackboard Vista will remain in service until the end of Fall 2012. In Spring 2011, OIT will operate a very limited pilot in Moodle to assess its features and determine what needs to be adjusted in order for it to match, and in some cases surpass, the features of the current Blackboard Vista system. Faculty interested in participating in the pilot and evaluations should contact Fred Zinn via email at futurelms@oit.umass.edu. Updates on the pilot and the development process will be posted on the Future LMS blog
(http://blogs.umass.edu/futurelms).

I recognize the continuing concern over possible divergence of direction between the campus and UMassOnline (UMOL) regarding choice of LMS platforms. Unfortunately, we felt the urgency to make a decision for the campus did not allow us to await completion of UMOL’s review. I am confident that UMOL understands the dilemma of faculty who wish to teach in both systems so that, whatever direction UMOL takes regarding a LMS, they will work closely with us to make the transition between those worlds as seamless as possible.

Finally, I want to take this opportunity on behalf of the Provost and myself to thank the Future LMS Committee for their efforts in our review of LMS possibilities. We recognize the magnitude of the effort and also feel that the level of review was appropriate and highly informative.

John Dubach
Chief Information Officer