Presentation by Kathy Fernandes, Andrew Roderick, and John Whitmer at the US West Coast MoodleMoot 2012 on August 2, 2012. Learning Management Systems have evolved from faculty sandboxes to complex enterprise learning environments. Meanwhile, budgets have plummeted and the LMS market has been undergoing rapid change. Many campuses have moved to Moodle to help stabilize their business and application environments. An important criteria behind this transition for many campuses has been the ability to ‘control their own destiny’ and collaborate with colleagues. In this presentation, we will discuss the experience of campuses in the California State University system collaborating on Moodle technical development, user services, and support. Among the 10 campuse currently using or in transition to Moodle, we have developed a shared governance model with separate groups to administer policy-related issues and technical / UI issues. We will discuss the creation of a Moodle Shared Code base that is being used by several campuses, and the current migration of SCB features into Moodle v2.0. Moodle techincal expertise is shared between campuses, and training resources have been leveraged across the CSU system. We will discuss the process and features that have led to successful (and not so successful) colllaborative activities, as well as the services that have been created.

1. Many Hands Makes Light
Work
 Kathy Fernandes, Director, System-wide LMSS Project,
CSU Office of the Chancellor
 Andrew Roderick, CIG Chair and Manager of Technology
Development, San Francisco State University
 John Whitmer, Associate Director, System-wide LMSS Project,
CSU Office of the Chancellor

2. Outline
1. Moodle in the CSU System
2. Strategic Campus Coordination
3. Services Created / Delivered
4. CSU Shared Code Base
5. What’s next …

3. MOODLE IN THE CSU SYSTEM

4. The California State University
 23 campuses
 427,000 students systemwide
 44,000 faculty and staff systemwide
 LMSS efforts coordinated since 1997, within
decentralized academic technology leadership
 Moodle coordination started with “Moodle
Consortium”, transitioned to formal Moodle
Governance in 2010

5. LMS Applications @ Cal State
Campuses

6. Moodle Campuses & Adoption Date
1. San Francisco State – 2007
2. Humboldt State – 2007
3. CSU Monterey Bay – 2009
4. CSU Maritime – 2009
5. CSU Northridge – 2010
6. CSU San Marcos – 2010
7. Sonoma State – 2011
8. Cal Poly SLO – 2012
9. CSU Fullerton – 2012
10.CSU LA - 2012

7. Diversity of CSU Campuses
 (1,000 FTES)
– Focused on Maritime trades/careers
– take Moodle “on the boat” with them
each summer
– one staff member for Moodle tech support
 (25,000 FTES)
– diverse metropolitan university
– 1,000+ simultaneous quiz attempts in a
single course
– 3 development staff for open source app
development

8. CSU Budget Crisis
 2011-2012 will reduce budget by at least $650M
(reduction to $2.1B), 23% single year cut
 2009-2010 cut $625M (partially restored in 2010-
2011)
 Increased tuition, reduced enrollments,
doing less with more is status-quo
 Synergies, cost-savings, cost-avoidance all
major motivators
Author: CSU Chancellor’s Office
Source: http://goo.gl/GQt2E

9. STRATEGIC CAMPUS
COORDINATION

10. Strategic Goals for Collaboration
1. Leverage CSU scale to reduce costs for AT
services and educational content
2. Facilitate cooperation between campuses to
deliver shared services that reduce costs and
increase levels of service
3. Incubate transformative services that will
enable easier adoption of innovations that
reduce costs and improve services

11. LMSS Environment
LMSS = Learning Management Systems and Services

12. System-wide LMSS Strategy
1. LMS Futures Group (Provosts, CIOs, Faculty)
prepared 4 documents:
– LMS Critical Elements
– External Scan of Market & Higher Ed Systems
– CSU System-wide Recommendations
– LMS Governance Recommendations
2. Organize stakeholders to implement
recommendations, starting with Moodle

13. LMS Futures Recommendations
 Recommendation #1: Provide an “opt-in” services approach to
supporting the LMS with the baseline services being a collection of
bext practices vs. minimal services
 Recommendation #2: Provide a centrally hosted “safety-net” LMS for
campuses that are at risk. A system or consortium LMS service
can result in significant cost savings, especially for small campuses
currently using proprietary systems such as Blackboard
– We recommend having a limited production available by July 2010.
During spring 2010 we will need to determine the specific services
available for this first production.
– Moodle is the first LMS application that would be provided,
followed by Blackboard

14. LMSS Governance Key Elements
1. Standards & Practices Group
2. Common Interest Group
3. Chancellor’s Office Staff

15. Stages of CSU Moodle collaboration
• Competitive
• Cooperative
• Collaborative

16. SERVICES CREATED & DELIVERED

17. Community Building is like Watercolor

18. Moodle Common Interest Group (CIG)
 Open membership - any interested CSU staff
 25-30 attendees per meeting
 Includes Programmers, Sys Admins,
Instructional Designers, Faculty Support
 Campus updates, technically focused topics,
Q&A

19. CIG Website
http://moodle.calstate.edu

20. QuickGuides – Shared Documentation
http://quickguides.calstate.edu

21. Lynda.com system-wide access
 Array of 1.9.x and 2.x learning materials
 For faculty
 Often accentuates local training
resources
 Very important for newly
adopting/migrating campuses
 Single sign-on access

22. CSU Moodle CIG Webinars
 Three sessions per season (semester)
 Nationally and internationally attended
 Topics focused on CSU CIG needs but usually
are broadly relevant
 Mix presenters btw CSU and National Moodlers
 Usually about 100 attendees and archives
available

23. Webinar Sessions
2011 CSU Moodle Webinar Series
 Moodle Administration (held on 02/15/11; SFSU, Cal Poly SLO, CSU San
Marcos)
 Moodle Architecture and Performance Tuning (3/17/2011; SFSU)
 The Road to Moodle 2.0 (05/17/2011; CLAMP, UCLA, Cal Poly SLO)
2012 CSU Moodle Webinar Series
 Migrating to Moodle 2.x - Passing Through the Fire (2/28/12; UCSF, NCSU)
 Bringing the Library Into Moodle (3/29/12) (CSU, CSU Northridge)
 Moodle 2.0 File System Issues and Considerations (4/25/12) (Netspot,
UCSB, Cal Poly SLO)

24. Support for Newly Adopting Campuses
A powerful outcome of the CIG has been
supporting campuses coming in to Moodle.
 Shared WebCT migration tool (CSUSM to
Sonoma and others)
 Migration pilot and communication planning
 Strategies for course migration
 Shared support docs (QG’s and Lynda) as
startup enhancement

25. Working Groups/Projects
 CSU Collaborative Documentation (revise
QuickGuides)
 Quality Online Learning and Teaching (QOLT)
 Moodle Usage Reporting
 CSU Moodle Website
 Accessibility Product Template for 2.x
Outcomes mixed!

26. Collaboration Challenges
 Management – participants have separate
management who lack visibility, buy-in
 Workload – participants have significant local
workload
 Timing – different campuses have different
timing for workloads
 Project Management – lack of PM discipline
 Culture – campus independence

27. What’s Next?
 2.x Migration knowledge sharing
 Examine greater connections with
UC counter-parts
 Promote webinars as Moodle-community wide
contribution (still bound in CSU needs)
 Promote campus-to-campus collaboration (and
use CIG to create visibility)

28. CSU MOODLE SHARED CODE
BASE

29. Collaboration Can Be Hard

30. Shared Code Base Goals
Early on, CSU campuses wanted to be on a
similar version to more consistently share
knowledge; desired SFSU customizations
 Share innovation, customizations
 Reduce redundancy of effort
 Extend other collaborations (support, training)
 Share in a software infrastructure

31. CSU Moodle Features
Built on 1.9.x
 Remote Import – import courses across instances
 Course Life Cycle – access to archive instances
 Gradebook Customization
 Analytics Block
– First iteration
– Still more features to add
 User-level Files Area (de-dupe, access across courses)
 CK Editor – switched out native editor
 For more documentation on each feature,
visit http://moodle.calstate.edu/sharedcodebase

32. Project Details
 SCB released in Fall 2011
 Three campuses in production, a few tested
 Used GitHub for development
 Continued security patches, general
maintenance until Spring 2013

33. What Happened?

34. Moodle 2.0
 Newly joining campuses opted to start on 2.x
 Dead-ending of 1.9 opened investment questions
 Questions of when existing campuses would
move to 2.x

35. Campus Differences
 Mature vs. New Moodle deployments
 Small vs. Large campuses
 Formal vs. Informal IT and other approaches
 Customization vs. Plain Vanilla

36. Project Management
 Communication issues
 Local campus communication
 Who’s in charge?/Decision-making
 Strategy: Goal was for facilitating 100% usable
development solution for all campuses

37. Value in Collaboration
 Was there value?
 Which campuses were in or out
 Capabilities vs. willingness to contribute
 Enlightened Self-Interest

38. Bottom Line
 Value was not there
 Required more formalization and commitment
than was possible
 Common interest happens at a more granular
level (at least in the CSU)
 Local work is usually required (100% solution)

39. What’s Next
 Focus on migration to 2.x across campuses
(focus not on new development)
 Campus-to-campus sharing (enlightened self-
interest)
 Campuses responsible for the last mile

40. Questions & Contact Information
Kathy Fernandes (kfernandes@csuchico.edu)
Director of System-Wide LMS Initiatives
Andrew Roderick (roderick@sfsu.edu)
CIG Chair, Technology Development Manager at San Francisco State
University
John Whitmer (jwhitmer@csuchico.edu)
Associate Director of System-Wide LMS Initiatives