A College-wide Migration
Blackboard to Moodle in 6
months
Alice Crisp
Director of Instructional Technology and
Distance Learning
David Hutto
Dean for Technology and Development
BLUE 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
• SFSU BB to Moodle
Migrating
Conversion Tool (new 09- big
files can take up to 2 hrs to
– http://eduforge.org/wiki/wiki/
convert!)
eduforge/?pagename=Guide
lines%20for%20MIgrating
– http://moodleconverter.lsu.
edu/
• HSU Moodle Support Manual
nd
– http://www.humboldt.edu/~m • Using Moodle Book 2
Edition
oodle/instructor/manual/inde
x.html
– http://docs.moodle.org/en/
Using_Moodle_book
• bFree – BB file extractor
– http://its.unc.edu/tl/tli/bFree/a • Cheap Moodle host &–
Siteground
bout.php
– http://www.siteground.com/
moodle-hosting.htm
Blue Ridge Community College
Flat Rock, North Carolina
Contact Information:
Alice Crisp
alicec@blueridge.edu
828-694-1899
David Hutto
davidhutto@blueridge.edu
828-694-1881