Presenter:
Marsha Leeman-Conley, Ph.D.
Instructional Technology Coordinator
American River College
Sacramento, California
ARC Instructional Technology Center
Eenie, Meanie, Ready, Go!
How to Choose a
New Learning Management
and Make the Transition
Brief History of our LMS Usage
Los Rios Community College District
Made up of FOUR Community Colleges
in Sacramento, California
American River College
Cosumnes River College
Folsom Lake College
Sacramento City College
Original Selection Process
• Selection process was brief
– Two vendor presentations
– One “home-made” option from ARC
• Faculty compared features and completed
a survey
• Blackboard chosen because it seemed
more user-friendly for instructors
• Adopted Blackboard in Spring 2001
• Self-hosted system at district
• All four colleges share one server array
–
–
–
–
–
13 web servers
1 database server
1 file-sharing server
1 chat server
Database server is physical. Others are virtual.
• Blackboard administration handled jointly by
coordinator at each college and district staff
Experienced Rapid Growth in Use
Number of Course Sections per semester
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
Blackboard Utilization District-wide
Spring 01
Fall 2001
Fall 2002
Fall2003
Fall 04
Fall 05
Fall 06
Fall 07
Spring 08
1
Experienced Rapid Growth in Use
Number of Student Enrollments per semester
Growth in Online Courses at ARC alone
9836 students
90000
80000
300
70000
250
60000
200
50000
40000
150
30000
100
20000
50
10000
0
Blackboard Utilization District-wide
Spring 01
Fall 2001
Fall 2002
Fall2003
Fall 04
Fall 05
Fall 06
Fall 07
Spring 08
0
Total ARC Online Course Sections
Spring 01
Fall 2001
Fall 2002
Fall2003
Fall 04
Fall 05
Fall 06
Fall 07
Spring 08
Growth and Use Biggest at ARC
Summary of Growth in use of LMS
• ARC made a big commitment to training
faculty to use technology
• 80+ technology training workshops per
semester
• Over 500 faculty have completed an 8
week series to be certified to teach online
• Over 1200 per semester attend workshops
• Extensive website of resources
• One-to-one support and help
• From 31 course sections in Spring 200l to
over 2,500 course sections in Spring 2008.
• From 1,800 student enrollments in Fall
2001 to over 73,000 student enrollments
using the system in Spring 2008.
• Online and hybrid classes are only 35% of
use of LMS.
• Others are web-enhanced face-to-face
classes, not distance education courses.
What led us to look for a new LMS?
Overview of Process
• For several years we experienced serious
performance problems on our system.
• Most serious related to students being “kicked
out” in the middle of quizzes or exams.
• We tried many things to fix these problems and
worked with Blackboard for solutions.
• Pressure from faculty and admin led us to review
our options.
• We needed to ensure that our LMS could cope
with our high level of utilization currently and
allow us to continue to grow.
Phase 1
Gather
Technical
Data
from
Large
Institutions
Phase 2
Identify
Viable
LMS
Options
Phase 3
Test
Conversion
Process
from
Current LMS
Phase 4
Compare
Features
and
Functions
Phase 5
Rank
Options
and
Build
Consensus
2
Phase 1:
Phase 2:
Gather Technical Data from Large Institutions
Identify Viable LMS Options
• Identified other large educational institutions with
strong distance education programs
• Contacted them personally to gather info on what
LMS they used and their data
• Minimum of 2 yrs experience with current LMS
• Data gathered included:
– # courses, # active students, max. page hits/min
– # concurrent users, # concurrent test takers
– Support history, upgrades, problems, and more
Created LMS Evaluation Task Force
• 3 Faculty from each college familiar with
teaching online, hybrid or web-enhanced
• 1 classified staff member who works in a
support role with students using LMS
• 1 technology dean from each college
• District IT staff worked with the group as
resource support
• Based on data received from other
large institutions, identified five options
for further review:
–
–
–
–
–
Angel Learning (US vendor)
Blackboard (current vendor)
Desire2Learn (Canadian vendor)
Moodle (Australian open source)
Sakai (US open source)
Activities of the Task Force
• Meetings conducted using CCC Confer
(web conferencing)
• First task was to develop criteria to be used
• Link to Evaluation Criteria
– Technical Viability
– Transition Issues
– Must have features for faculty
– Must have features for students
– Cost
Phase 3:
Phase 3:
Test Conversion Process from Current LMS
Results of Conversion Processes
1. Obtained demo site for each option
2. Developed a “sample class” to use to test
conversion tools in each system
– Samples of all types of documents
– Samples of many different types of media
– Using different methods of course creation
– Using different sets of Blackboard tools
– Different types of exams and question types
3. Imported same class into each system using
conversion tools available in each
• Timed the process of modification after import until
course is ready for use in new system
• Time needed to prepare to use “sample class” in
new LMS
– Does not include learning to use the system
• Times varied from 30 min. to 8 hours
• D2L had easiest conversion process
• Some products did not have import or conversion
tool from our version of Blackboard to their system
– Moodle had tool for different version so did a partial job
– Sakai had no conversion or import tool at that time
• In those cases, had to recreate content from
original files and rebuild connections, etc.
3
Phase 4:
Phase 4:
Compare Features and Functions
Compare Features and Functions
1. Task Force Members reviewed each
option individually for two weeks
2. Separate web-conference to demo and
discuss each LMS
3. Compared notes and findings
4. Each member rated each product on each
of the criteria using survey form which
auto-tabulated ratings
4. Sought input and feedback from other
faculty members interested in decision
5. Link to demo site sent to ALL faculty who
also completed shorter survey to gather
their impressions
6. In all 120 faculty responded and rated the
different systems
Phase 5:
Final Rankings Table
Rank Options and Build Consensus
1. Task Force Members reviewed ratings and
feedback from faculty survey
2. Each member rank ordered the 5 options
3. Task Force created Report making
recommendation and showing all data
gathered
4. Report presented and endorsed by districtwide Educational Technology Committee
Recommendations of Task Force:
1. Switch from Blackboard to Desire 2 Learn
– 18 of 21 members ranked D2L #1
– D2L also received highest ratings from
120 general faculty surveys
2. Set timeline for transition within one year
3. Explore options for monitoring progress
with open source products for the future
First
Second
Third
Desire2Learn
18
3
1
Angel
3
17
1
Fourth
Moodle
10
5
Sakai
7
9
Blackboard
1
Fifth
20
Phase 5:
Rank Options and Build Consensus
5. Recommendation Report distributed to all
faculty
6. Task Force co-chairs presented
Recommendation and Report to Academic
Senate at each college
7. All four senates endorsed Report and
Recommendation
8. Feedback about the process used has
been extremely positive
9. Clear to all that it was a data-driven
decision with lots of sources of input
4
Key Factors in Our Decision
to Choose D2L
Open-Source Option Issues
• Great interest and support for philosophy of
Open Source options
• Felt they did not meet our needs now
• We have a mature LMS utilization
• Without conversion tools available, switching
did not seem possible
• Concern at district about needs for extra staff to
support open source
• Not as many large enterprise installations with
record of 2 yrs of use
• Plan to continue to monitor progress in these
options --- some faculty already using Moodle
Features we are looking forward to
with D2L
• Flexibility in customizing learning environment
– Folders or outline view
• Update widget shows faculty and students what
has happened in all their courses
– For faculty: # new discussion postings, # ungraded
quizzes, # new submitted assignments, etc.
– For students: unread postings, assignments due, new
content available, etc.
• Can email from many different locations in
course
• More flexible discussion tools
• Integration of calendar with other functions
• Integrated rubrics and competencies
Scalability
Ease of
Conversion
D2L has
many large
clients –
bigger than
Los Rios
D2L had
quickest
and best
conversion
tools
Stable
performance
even with
high volume
tasks
With 2500+
courses to
convert,
this is major
issue for us
Features
Flexible
environment
Learnercentered
Features
SLO tools,
& rubrics,
Web 2.0
tools
Client
Support
Other
Good
support
history
Complies
with IMS
standards
Positive
ratings by
current
clients
SIS
integration
Small
Responsive
company
Additional
tools and
services
available
Transition Plan
• Develop comparison table showing
differences between Blackboard and
Desire2Learn
• Identify “early adopters”
• Choose faculty carefully
– Those who will be enthusiastic supporters
– Those willing to mentor colleagues in their
discipline areas
Transition & Training Timeline
To Switch or Not to Switch?
• Took 7 yrs to train all to use Blackboard but now
have 3 semesters to retrain thousands of faculty
• Focus on existing Blackboard faculty and
converting existing content
• Begin training workshops in April
• Continue through summer using online courses
and web-conferencing
• Live classes pilot D2L system in Summer 2008
• Estimate 50% of Bb courses delivered on D2L
by Fall 2008
• All courses on D2L beginning in Summer 2009
Many good products are available
and they are changing all the time!
Which one best meets the needs of your college?
5
Questions to Ask for Step 1:
Gather Technical Data
LMS Evaluation Process
Step 3
Step 2
Conversion
Testing
Step 4
Feature
Comparison
Identify
Viable
Options
• What is the current level of utilization of your
LMS?
– More than just # active courses, # active students
– Page hits, concurrent users, concurrent test takers
• Do you need an enterprise level system?
• What rate of growth can you expect for the
future?
Consensus
Decision
Gather
Technical
Data
– In DE courses, in hybrid courses, in web-enhanced
Step 5
Step 1
Questions to Ask for Step 2:
Identify Viable Options
• Do you need the support of a vendor?
• Is open-source an option for your college?
• What support staff do you have and would that
need to be modified for different options?
• How big an issue is cost for your college?
– What are you paying now and would that change
substantially with some options?
– Most enterprise products priced based on FTE but
they use different methods to calculate that number.
• Are there other special needs at your college
that would make one product better for you?
Questions to Ask for Step 4:
Feature Comparison
• If you have gathered the data in Step 1, you know
what features matter most to your instructors.
• Do functionality testing on all features in each
option
– Not all gradebooks, discussion boards, etc are the same
– How well do they really work?
• Which options have the features that instructors
want but don’t have now?
• Plan for the future as well as the present
• Is there a history of feature enhancement requests
being implemented in a timely way?
• Do new features cause performance problems?
• What tools are faculty and students using the
most?
• What tools do they NOT have that they want?
• Do you want to be self-hosted or not?
Questions to Ask for Step 3:
Conversion Process
• How much time and effort have your faculty
already invested in creating their materials?
• Was the course content created inside the LMS?
– If materials are PDF or other standard format
uploaded to LMS then conversion will be easier than
docs created in the LMS.
– If content is housed outside the LMS (external web
pages) and links are placed in LMS, conversion will
be easier.
– Test banks from publishers or home grown quizzes?
• Do the options have a conversion tool from your version
of the current LMS?
• How many faculty use publishers’ course cartridges for
their content? How many have modified that content
and interwoven their own materials?
Questions to Ask for Step 5:
Reach Consensus
• Who needs to have input on the decision?
• Where will there be resistance to change?
– How can you get buy in from those sources?
• Seek input from many sources
• How will you gather input and get feedback on the
options?
• What data will be distributed?
• Identify Pros and cons of each option
• Build consensus and enthusiasm for the change
6
Positive signs in the LMS world
• Industry standards are making it easier for
content to be portable
• No longer trapped in your first choice of
LMS
• Switching will be a big project but it can be
done quickly and without too much pain
• Stay positive and think of all the reasons
that you chose to change as you go
through the transition.
Thanks for
coming
And
Good Luck!
Questions or Comments?
7