e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: Moodle

  • IMS Report on Learning Technology Satisfaction and Trends

    The IMS has issued a new report with the somewhat imposing title, “IMS GLC Learning Technology Satisfaction and Trends, North American Higher Education, 05 February 2007 Update.” You can get it here, but first you’ll have to register with the site (if you haven’t done so already). It’s important to read Section 2 of the report (and particularly the “Survey Approach and Disclaimers” subhead) carefully; it is very difficult to get definitive data for this kind of research, and the authors of the report were very careful to spell out the limitations of their methods.

    Nevertheless, there’s lots of interesting stuff here. Here are some of my own observations, in no particular order:
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  • What the Sakai/Moodle/ATutor Re-Examination Request Really Means

    By now you’ve probably seen that the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has filed a request to re-examine Blackboard’s patent with the USPTO on behalf of Sakai, Moodle, and ATutor. You may have also seen that D2L has filed a different kind of re-examination request with the USPTO. (SFLC’s request is what’s known as ex parte, while D2L’s is inter partes.) I’ll have more to say about the legal maneuvers in tomorrow’s post. For now, I’d like to address a larger context.

    The Sakai/Moodle/ATutor request is generally being characterized as the “Open Source” response to Blackboard’s patent. This is unfortunate, as is the fact that SFLC is perceived to be leading the charge. Because to my mind, the most important message from this filing to Blackboard and the market has nothing to do with Open Source.

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  • The Blackboard Patent Crisis at Two and a Half Weeks

    While marveling the events of the last several weeks, Jim Farmer suggested that it might be worthwhile to pause and reflect back on the sequence of events. I thought that was a good idea, so here it is. I don’t claim that it is any sense a definitive history. To the contrary, it’s just my personal experience of the situation. But it taught me something, so I thought it might be worth sharing. (more…)

  • How to Grow Standards

    Scott Wilson has a terrific response to my recent post calling for “more standards.” To begin with, he articulates one of the underlying issues that I think was bugging Scott Leslie as well. In the abstract, it’s hard to argue against standards. In practice, however, the particular Standards that are Issued from the Official Bodies that Bless Them sometimes seem like they add a whole lot of complexity to relatively little benefit.

    So how do you solve this problem? How do you increase the probability that a given standard is going to have significant practical value? Scott W. offers solid formula which I will paraphrase and expand just a bit as follows:

    1. Identify a user problem that you need to solve.
    2. Check to be sure that you can’t solve it using an existing standard.
    3. If possible, find a few other organizations that have the same problem and talk it through.
    4. Build a pilot solution implementation with standardization in mind.
    5. Test the solution and encourage your peer organizations to test it as well.
    6. Refine based on testing.
    7. When you believe you have a stable, workable solution, then select an appropriate Standards Body to have it live with. In general, avoid having education-specific standards bodies (e.g., the IMS) Bless the Standard unless you are solving an education-specific problem.
    8. Have the appropriate Standards Body examine the proposal, suggest changes when appropriate, and Issue a Blessing.

    In this scenario, the Standards Bodies really act as a quality assurance and dissemination mechanism. While they certainly could assist member organizations in the early stages of preparing a standards proposal, it would be healthiest to cast a broad net and encourage grassroots solution development as broadly as possible. Scott W. holds up JISC’s eLearning Framework (eLF) as good example of that approach, and while the jury is still out on how productive eLF will ultimately be, I agree that it’s a good example of the right approach.

    Here’s an example of how this sort of approach could work, drawing on a discussion that’s happening right now in the Moodle community: (more…)

  • Survey Gives Proprietary AND Open Source VLE Developers Cause to Worry

    IM+M (Jim Farmer’s company) has published some survey data on VLE adoption by higher ed institutions in the UK from 2001 to 2005. Interestingly, the data looks bad for almost everyone. There’s some limited good news for Moodle and Boddington, but as institutions are voting with their feet, the general sentiment seems to be “A pox on all your houses.” (more…)

  • British Columbia Distance Learning Program Recommending Moodle

    According to Robert Fitzgerald, BCcampus, which is an organization that supports distance learning for a number of schools in British Columbia, is recommending that they should support Moodle at an equal level as WebCT:

    We recommend that BCcampus support a provincial implementation of Moodle for all public educational institutions at the same level of support as currently provided for WebCT. Based on the investigations and implementations of Moodle at the local level of institutions involved in this collaborative project, as well as a province-wide Moodle pilot, we believe that Moodle is a viable alternative to WebCT as an on-line Course Management System (CMS).

    Moodle is quickly turning into a juggernaut.

  • Blackboard by the Numbers

    Update: Welcome, Chronicle readers. Since it wasn’t made clear in the Chronicle’s reference, I’d like to point out that the paper I’m quoting was written by Jim Farmer, who is the Coordinator of Georgetown University’s new Interoperability Center, formerly the Sakai SEPP Community Liaison and project administrator for the uPortal project. Jim has pretty impressive credentials across the board, including having served as the CIO for the Cal State University system. You can find his full bio here.

    Sorry I’ve been incommunicado for a while. There’s been lots of stuff going on, both professionally and personally (including a new grandbaby).

    Anyway, I’m going to make it up to you with a special treat. Jim Farmer has a fantastic analysis of how much it costs Blackboard to make a sale, what that means to their overall business model, and how that compares to the cost-per-sale of a commercially marketed open source software product and the cost for community-building the Open Source uPortal project. Some of it may be slow going if you’re not familiar with financial analysis, so I’m going to unpack a few of the good parts and speculate a bit on the implications.

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