101 Uses for Moodle at the
University
Thomas Gillespie - Instructional Technologist
Chris Lewis - Information Systems Manager
About NMU
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9,400 Students
300 Faculty
One of the largest
notebook computer
campuses in U.S.
Largest educational
WiMAX network
~1200 course sections/
semester utilizing
EduCat (Moodle)
History and Decisions
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Began Using Moodle during the 2008 school
year
Became the primary LMS in 2010
Prior to our selection of Moodle we decided to
refer to it as EduCat
o In the event we change to another LMS in
the future, we can still refer to it as EduCat
o We knew we would want to use Moodle for
other purposes, and could avoid confusion
by having different names.
Why Have Separate Installations for Different Uses?
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Support from Different Areas
Current Courses and Archives - Center for
Instructional Technology in Education
o Share server - Information Services
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Different time frames for updates/
maintenance
Support for non-NMU users
Current Servers for Courses (EduCat)
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Production - Current courses in session
Test - Exact Duplicate of Production for testing
upgrades, security patches, plugins, theme
changes, code that has been reviewed on Dev
Development - testing ground for all new code
Archive - Read only versions of previous
semesters with student data (submissions,
posts, grades)
Other Current Moodle Servers
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Share - collaboration site for faculty/staff
committees, student groups and organizations not
necessarily tied to semesters or courses
Online Orientation - New student orientation for
those who can’t attend an on campus session
Math Placement and Chemistry Readiness Testing Removes holds and inserts scores into Banner for
course prerequisites
Usage Stats by Server
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Share
o 381 Groups (courses)
o 9580 Users
Online Orientation
o 4 Sessions
o 780 Users (Freshman)
Math Placement and Chemistry Readiness Testing
o Just a pilot right now
Share Server Details
Faculty/ Staff Committees
Student Organizations
Accreditation
Department Sites
Campus Wide Discussions
Grant Writing/Projects/Reporting
Board of Trustees
Curriculum Change Documents
Training
Top 20 Share Groups in Cloud Form
Top 50 Share Groups (based on views over a three day period)
Unintended Benefits of Multiple Uses
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Notice something that was missed in testing on
non-mission critical “Share” server before it
impacts “EduCat” server
Non credit courses can be offered on a
machine that will not impact credit earning
courses.
We can offer collaboration with off-site
vendors (building and trades, Johnson
Controls)
Possibility to Virtualize smaller instances
More streamlined servers (Oracle, etc…)
Challenges, Issues, Limitations
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Read-Only instance of Moodle can be tricky
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Exporting Gradebook (writing temp files)
Hiding items after the semester backup/archive
Support for non-NMU users
Support for new first-time freshman who
are not familiar with Moodle.
Updating
Increasing # of courses outside the usual
semester dates
Potential Future Servers
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HR/Safety Training
Continuing Education
Online course training
Internal Department Training
What are your non-course uses of Moodle?
Freshman Advising
Nursing Practicum (Feedback from clinical
sites)
Pre-test for Nursing Majors
New Employee Training
Course Material - from previous courses for
new faculty
Contact Information
Thomas Gillespie
Instructional Technologist
Chris Lewis
Northern Michigan University
Information Systems Manager
Northern Michigan University
tgillesp@nmu.edu
clewis@nmu.edu
http://goo.gl/UZhDh2