Proposal
Proposal for a Moodle Server at Edna Manley College for the Visual and Performing Arts, Jamaica
The Edna Manley College needs a Learning Management System (LMS) and a supporting server. For the past six years, individual lecturers have taken the initiative to develop an elearning program. They have been working, however, as “Lone Rangers” (Bates, 2000) each developing his own course site, and materials, mostly by trial and error, and in isolation. At a recent campus-wide faculty and staff meeting, there was a unanimous vote to make learning with technology a priority in the college’s Strategic Plan. With the commitment of the faculty already in place for technology-based teaching and learning, the time has come for the college to support a LMS that will develop these efforts and provide sustainability to this venture. I recommend that the college install Moodle on the college’s server.
Why Moodle?
The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE, 2008) identifies five qualities of a 21st-century educational professional, which places the student at the center of the learning environment, and requires the teacher to model skills such as creating digital learning objects and spaces which promote active, collaborative learning. Significantly, Chickering and Gamson (1987) foreshadowed ISTE when they advocated active, student-centered learning, where student/student, student/teacher, and student/subject matter interactions were paramount. With the college’s chronic lack of office, classroom and meeting spaces, quality interaction remains challenging. Students must depend upon lecturers’ limited office hours, which are often inconvenient to students.
Both ISTE and Chickering and Gamson emphasize teaching styles that prepare graduates to function in a knowledge-based society that emphasizes critical thinking, analysis, synthesis, collaboration and decision-making. Moodle supports these skills because the platform is designed for interactivity and collaboration through forums, blogs, and wiki spaces, which “can emerge as a critical backbone for student-to-student and student to professor interaction” (Panettieri, 2007).
The platform is easy for faculty and students to learn how to use. Faculty will be able to mount their courses quickly, and make adjustments during the term as needed. With the plethora of teaching styles on campus, Moodle offers lecturers the flexibility to use the platform to suit their particular needs. Additionally, Moodle integrates well with the college’s existing resources. Students, for instance, will require just one username and password to access their courses on Moodle and Ralston, the existing student manager.
Perhaps the greatest attraction towards Moodle is that it is an open source platform: the college will not have to pay licensing fees to the company. If the college chose a closed source platform such as WebCT it would have to pay a licensing fee which could become quite costly, especially if LMS companies merge and prices rise due to decreased competition within the industry. In such a scenario the college may find itself unable to sustain learning technologies in the long run (Panettieri, 2007).
Method for Evaluating LMS
In searching for an appropriate LMS for the college, I used Bates and Poole’s (2003) SECTIONS framework. SECTIONS is an acronym, where each letter of the word represents an aspect of the LMS that must be considered. Significantly, the first letter stands for “Students,” and is consonant with a student-centric teaching approach advocated by ISTE and Chickering and Gamson. Under this part of the acronym, accessibility is ranked important, and Moodle works across the major platforms used on campus by students and faculty: Windows and Mac OS. All of the students at the college are computer literate, and an unofficial poll indicates that over half of them own computers. The college’s computer labs will provide additional access. I have already mentioned “C” as in Cost and “T” as in Teaching and Learning in connection with Moodle’s affordances for collaboration and interactivity above. I’d like to briefly mention the other letters in the acronymn: “E” for Ease of Use, “O” for Organizational issues and “N” for Novelty and Speed.
Not only is Moodle easy to use, it is a reliable platform; but its reliability is greatly enhanced if we can host and maintain it on our own servers. It is not a novel platform. It has been around for quite a few years, and has been tested thoroughly. It is the LMS of choice at The University of Montana, Ohio State University, and École Polytechnique de Montréal. Not much organizational changes need to be made should the college adopt Moodle. The college’s centrally located IT department makes it possible for all four schools to benefit from Moodle.
Resources Needed
For lecturers and students to maximize Moodle’s affordances, some resources are necessary, including a server and learning and design support.
Moodle can be hosted on a third-party server. I strongly recommend, however, that the college hosts the LMS on our newly-acquired server. By hosting on our server, we will not be limited by disc space or bandwidth. We can always adjust space as the demand requires. Also, we will have IT staff on site who will be able to maintain the server and troubleshoot as the need arises. The IT department will need
a) A web server that supports PHP
b) 1 GB of RAM for every 50 concurrent users (Installing Moodle 2.0)
c) 3 months (approximately) of time needed for members of the IT department to get acquainted with Moodle, configure the site and administer the system. It will also need to train the help desk team to provide technical support for students and faculty (Penney, 2008).
Although Moodle is a fairly easy program to use, lecturers will need learning and design support—a team that will show them Moodle’s possibilities, and help them design learning spaces that support active learning. This could be provided easily at no extra cost to the college as there are lecturers with Moodle experience. They could be enlisted to serve in this capacity in exchange for a reduced teaching load.
By supporting Moodle on campus, not only will the college join the ranks of universities world-wide who have upgraded their approach to teaching and learning in keeping with 21st century ideals, but will support lecturers as they design digital learning experiences.
References
Bates, A.W. (2000). Managing technological change. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Inc.
Bates, W.A. and Poole, G. (2003). Chapter 4: a Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. (pp. 77-105). New York: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated.
Chickering, A.W. & Gamson, Z.F. (1987). Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin. Retrieved from http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples1987.htm.
International Society for Technology in Education (2008). NETS for teachers 2008. Accessed May 18, 2011 from http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-teachers/nets-for-teachers-2008.aspx
Moodle. (2011). Installing Moodle 2.0. Retrieved from http://docs.moodle.org/20/en/Installing_Moodle
Panettieri, J. (2007). Addition by substraction. University Business: Solutions for Higher Education Management. Retrieved from http://www.universitybusiness.com/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=845
Penney, M. (2008). Response to query on Moodle re: Moodle Hosting Cost and Time. Discussion Forums. Accessed June 6, 2011 from http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=97713