Upcoming Events
Past Events
Media Archive
Registration History
|
|
NERCOMP EVENT
Commercial to Open Source: Making the LMS Leap
 Printer Friendly Version
|
Have you, or are you currently, considering making a Learning Management System (LMS) switch? Open source software is becoming more popular in higher education, and adoption rates for open source learning management systems are no exception to this trend. If you are like many other colleges and universities across the country, you have, or maybe are, considering making the leap from a commercially available LMS to an open source product such as Moodle or Sakai. However, this consideration brings with it many questions:
• Is an open source LMS as functional, reliable, and secure as my commercial LMS?
• Will migrating to an open source LMS really save me money?
• What happens if our open source LMS implementation has difficulties? Who do I contact?
• How do I migrate all of my users from one system to another?
The answers to these questions and more will be answered throughout this workshop. Spend the day engaging with other institutions from around the area that have made, or are in the process of making, the LMS leap to an open source solution. Implementation case studies will be presented demonstrating why and how these universities made transition as well as how the LMS migration was presented to the campuses at large.
Workshop Organizer/Host: Jessica Caron of Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Date/Time:
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
9:00am - 3:00pm
Registration begins at 8:00am
Location:
College of the Holy Cross
Hogan Campus Center
Third Floor - Ballroom
Worcester, MA
Click
Here for a Map
Click Here for Directions
Special instructions:
Parking is at the Hogan Campus Center
Pricing:
NERCOMP Members: $91
Non-Members: $216
By clicking on the "Register" button below, you are indicating a commitment to attend and will be held responsible for the registration fee.
Your fee can be refunded if you notify us of a cancellation at least 8 days prior to the event via email to nercomp@nercomp.org.
|
Additional Information
Event Schedule:
8:00am – 9:00am Registration & Coffee
9:00am - 10:00am Potential Impact, Possible Pitfalls and Tremendous Possibilities: Framing Clark’s Transition from Blackboard to Moodle
Speakers:
Cheryl Turner Elwell, Director of Academic Technology Services, Clark University
Joe Vieira, Manager of Systems Administration, Clark University
Who designs your open source implementations? You do. As your institution considers the switch to open source solutions, there are foundational questions that will help you design a system which ensures smooth transition and ease in future expansion. How should you and your teams be interrogating yourselves when considering a monumental switch from a commercial system, like Blackboard, to an open source one? In this session, members of Clark's implementation team will explore guiding questions that are helping us realize our project’s tremendous potential rather than succumb to the tales of peril many feared.
10:00am – 10:15am Break
10:15am - 11:15am Moving from Blackboard to Moodle, The Whole Process
Speakers:
Joanne Cannon, Asst. Director, Educational Technology Service, Smith College
Caroline Moore, Moodle Administrator, Center for Media Production, Smith College
We will give an overview of how the decision to move to an open source CMS was made, why we chose Moodle and how we actually achieved the move. Faculty and student comments about the move as well as more current feedback will be discussed.
11:15am – 12:15pm Lessons Learned from a Successful Migration to Moodle
Speaker: Mary Morrisard-Larkin, Director, Educational Technology, College of the Holy Cross
Even though Moodle has been available at Holy Cross for more than two years, it was only this past summer that Blackboard was officially discontinued. As our first formal open-source software project, we carefully planned each step and exhaustively tested the software to make the transition as flawless as possible. Moreover, we leveraged existing and built new partnerships with faculty testers who often took the lead in identifying features that have encouraged others to embrace this new technology. This presentation will describe the project plan that was used during the Moodle implementation and discuss some of the lessons learned which are currently being applied to several new open-source projects at the College.
12:15pm – 1:00pm: Lunch
1:00pm – 2:00pm Sakai on a Shoestring: Mount Holyoke College's Integration of Sakai into a Small Liberal Arts Environment
Speakers:
Mary Glackin, Instructional Technology Consultant, Research & Instructional Support Library, Information, & Technology Services, Mount Holyoke College
Ron Peterson, Network and Systems Manager, Mount Holyoke College
Yes, it is possible for a small institution to successfully implement Sakai. Mount Holyoke College has employed Sakai as the primary Learning Management System, electronic reserves delivery and collaborative space for faculty, administration, staff and students since Fall 2006. Ron Peterson, the systems lead for the implementation, and Mary Glackin, one of the user support leads, will discuss Mount Holyoke’s successful transition from WebCT to Sakai. This transition has resulted in a marked increase in curricular and co-curricular uses of the LMS environment for teaching and collaboration. A very robust, if unanticipated, administrative adoption of the LMS will also be discussed.
2:00pm – 3:00pm Wrap Up Panel Discussion and Q&A
3:00pm Evaluations and End
Speaker:
Caroline Moore
Caroline Moore is the Moodle Administrator at Smith College. She has been helping faculty integrate various types of technology into their pedagogy for the past five years, and appreciates that her current job allows her to wear the hats of both a teacher and a programmer. Caroline enjoys finding creative ways to use Moodle to meet her faculty's needs, and tweaking Moodle's code to make it even better.
Speaker:
Cheryl Turner Elwell
Cheryl Turner Elwell is Director of Academic Technology Services at Clark University. With a background in educational theory, Cheryl has more than 10 years experience partnering with faculty to enhance teaching, learning, and scholarship through the use of technology. At present, she oversees the Academic Technology and Media Services organizations in a range of activities aimed at providing support to faculty including facilitating workshops, shepherding course-based projects from development to completion, and oversight of “smart classrooms”. Current initiatives in her group include completion of the campus’s recent Blackboard to Moodle transition, campus-wide implementations of WordPress and dSpace, as well as ongoing support for blended learning initiatives.
Speaker:
Joanne (Jo) Cannon
Joanne (Jo) Cannon is currently the Assistant Director of Educational Technology Services (ETS) at Smith College, but amongst her previous positions served as the Blackboard Administrator and Smith's first Moodle Adminstrator. She worked with a faculty committee and the ETS staff to bring Moodle onto campus.
Speaker:
Joe Vieira
Joe Vieira has 5 years of Linux infrastructure administration experience and is currently the Manager of Systems Administration at Clark University. At Clark, Joe focuses on the campuses' open source infrastructure including OpenLDAP, BIND, ISC-DHCP, FreeRadius, and Postfix. Joe's team currently supports these infrastructure components as well as Clark's growing portfolio of open source, client facing applications: Moodle, Sympa, SquirelMail and WordPress. He is also responsible for providing server-side support for Clark's research computing environment, in particular for faculty members whose research involves high performance computation. He is an advocate for, and a regular contributor to, open source technologies and ideals.
Speaker:
Mary Glackin
Mary Glackin is an Instructional Technology Consultant at Mount Holyoke College and served as one of the project coordinators for Mount Holyoke's migration from WebCT to Sakai. Mary continues to serve on the Sakai project team where her current interests include the implementation of the Open Source Portfolio tools in Sakai to support new college initiatives. Prior to coming to Mount Holyoke, Mary worked in computational biochemistry and taught at University of Vermont Medical School. She holds a BS in Biology from the City University of New York and a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology & Biochemistry from Wesleyan University.
Speaker:
Mary Morrisard-Larkin
Mary Morrisard-Larkin serves as the Director of Educational Technology at Holy Cross. Her responsibilities focus on supporting faculty who use technology in their teaching and research and collaborating with other departments on campus-wide initiatives. She has worked extensively on developing faculty technology training workshops, particularly for faculty who deliver course content via the web. She has also managed labs for Audio-Visual Services and the Library, assisted Public Affairs with the maintenance of academic department websites, and administered computer-based language placement testing for the Dean’s Office.
Mary has a M.A. in French from Penn State University where she first began experimenting with technology-enhanced instruction. Originally, she was the Director of Holy Cross’ Self-Paced Language Program where she worked with a team of Spanish faculty to create hybrid courses which offer students an alternative to traditional language instruction.
Speaker:
Ron Peterson
Ron Peterson is a Network & Systems Manager and one of the project leads for Sakai at Mount Holyoke College. At one point, MIT saw fit to give him a degree in Architecture; and in a different millennium, he worked as an architect in Boston.
Related Media Files:
Dec1-LMS-MtHolyoke[1].pdf
Moodle120109Mary.pdf
Contact Information:
Lisa DiMauro
860-345-2081
ldimauro@nercomp.org
Hotel Information:
Rooms are available at the Comfort Inn, 426 Southbridge Street in Auburn, MA.
Please state that you are with NERCOMP and you will receive the reduced rate of $85, includes continental breakfast & internet access.
Call the hotel directly at: 1-508-832-8300
The room block will be held until November 20, 2009.
Technical Requirements:
|
|
NERCOMP reserves the right to use any photographs or other mechanical recordings taken at NERCOMP events in promotional materials.
No mechanical recordings of any kind may be used at NERCOMP events without the prior written consent of NERCOMP organizers and presenters.
The views and opinions expressed at NERCOMP events do not necessarily reflect those of NERCOMP, nor does NERCOMP make any representation regarding the information presented at NERCOMP events.
|
|
|
 |
|
EDUCAUSE
Read more about our affiliate organization, EDUCAUSE
and how we all work together to further the cause of using technology to
improve academia....
|
|
|
|
Board of Trustee Election
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
The Board of Trustees election is complete. We are happy to announce that the following people have ...
|
|
|
|