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Ten years and onwards
- 1. Ten years and onwards: Moodle at the OU Jenny Gray Open University
- 2. Themes ● What we’ve done ● Learning & teaching tools ● Projects delivered through, or integrated with Moodle ● Range of learning systems for different purposes ● What we’ve learned ● How our thinking has evolved 2 What? How? ● How we’ve done it ● Working with the Moodle community ● Technologies and approaches to operation ● Where we’re going next
- 3. 2005 - 2008 In the beginning: projects ● Presenting content through a study calendar and “resource” pages 3 First fully online courses delivered 2008
- 4. 2005 - 2008 In the beginning: projects ● Limited integration and innovation ● Experimenting with the core tools such as forum, blog and wiki ● OpenMark ● My Stuff 4
- 5. 2005 - 2008 In the beginning: projects ● OpenLearn launched October 2006 5
- 6. 2008 - 2010 Scaling up: projects ● Online content presentation ● Structured content ● Interactives ● Standard layout guidance ● Activity reports 6
- 7. 2008 - 2010 Scaling up: projects ● Lots of integration and innovation ● FirstClass replaced with OU forum tool within Moodle ● Homegrown audio/video conferencing tool replaced with Elluminate ● Second Life pilot ● Online presence and chat through MSG ● Versioned editing in LabSpace ● Audio recording tool ● Shared activities 7
- 8. 2008 - 2010 Scaling up: projects ● Other Moodles 8
- 9. 2010 - 2012 Reflect & industrialise: projects ● Wider use of Moodle activities and personalisation features ● Theme colour & image picker ● Subpage module ● Activity completion ● In-calendar notes tool ● First mobile theme 9
- 10. • OU Students started and remained iOS-centric despite changes in market share • Tablet usage coming to the fore from late-2012, decreasing markedly more recently • Steady-state approached around mid- 2013 • Transactional mode of delivery leading to continued prevalence of ‘handheld’ mobile use Evolution of device use
- 11. 2010 - 2012 Reflect & industrialise: projects ● Other Moodles ● Dividing various content types across multiple Moodle installations ● OpenLearn Drupal hybrid ● OpenLearn Works rebrand & simplify 11
- 12. 2012 - 2014 Settling down: projects ● Syndication ● Mary Seacole style themes ● Vitalsource LTI 12
- 13. 2012 - 2014 Settling down: projects ● Lots of integrations and innovation going live ● OU Annotate ● OU Live ● OU Anywhere ● Stack ● Open Badges ● itunesU 13
- 14. 2012 - 2014 Settling down: projects ● Other Moodles ● Open Science Lab ● Qualifications Online ● Vital 14
- 15. 2015 – 2016 so far Recently: projects ● Online Student Experience Programme (OSEP) ● Rationalised toolset 15
- 16. 2015 – 2016 so far Recently: projects ● Integration and Innovation ● Studio module 16
- 17. 2015 – 2016 so far Recently: projects ● Other Moodles ● Offender learning Prisons VLE ● Online exams 17
- 18. Moving from what to how Doesn’t need a magic wand 18
- 19. 19 People With the Moodle community • Core maintainers • Hosted moots • 1.7 roles & permissions • Postgres & MSSQL support • Accessibility OU developers OU testers OU Online Services
- 20. 20 Evangelism ● You have to keep selling ● People keep having good ideas
- 21. 21 Process ● Data load of users, courses and groups ● Beta releases and backporting Develop Acceptance test Live
- 22. 22 Moving to Moodle 2.x 2010 - 2012 ● New development approach ● No more core hacks ● Make our changes in core wherever possible ● Extend Moodle with additional plug-in types, and use them ● Contractors & outsourcing ● Rigorous hand-over process more rigorous ● Improving our development testing Develop Functional test Acceptance test Upgrade test Live OU developers Continuous Integration
- 23. 23 OU plug-ins 0 50 100 150 200 250 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 Number of plug-ins over time Types of plug-in Local Report Module Block Question Theme Admin Filter Enrolment Authentication Course format Other
- 24. 24 Performance 2005 - 2010 ● 4 Web Servers ● 1 Postgres database (clustered) ● 1 NFS file store Permissions Files CachingSessions Etc.
- 25. 25 Big numbers 2012 onwards ● 100k students on around 500 live course presentation websites and 3000+ historical sites. ● Average 30k students visit per day. ● Over 1 million transactions per day. Peaked to 2.3 million on 5th October 2015 ● Unique users per day averaging 40,000. Peaked at 52,425 on 5th October 2015 ● Forum views per day averaging 175,000. Peaked at 260,000 on 14th January 2014.
- 26. 26 What next? Coming soon ● Direct authoring ● Next generation synchronous collaboration tool ● Pilot more core plug-ins ● Improved media player
- 27. 27 What next? Wish list ● Seamless, reliable, provision ● Search ● Single student profile ● MOOC influence ● Chat & online presence ● In-page discussions ● Analytics ● Progress indicators ● Further syndication ● Consuming content in other OU systems ● VLE in a box ● Student archive
- 28. 28 What next? Process & Technology ● Due diligence: review choice of Moodle more often ● Quicker hosting ● PHP 7 ● Cloud hosting ● Content delivery networks ● Continuous deployment ● Better integration ● Moodle spine ● Web services integrations
Notes de l'éditeur
- 2
- In the early days it was all about presenting content as a Direct replacement for print. We provided a study calendar and our first Moodle module resource page from which we could hang large numbers of PDF and Word copies of printed course materials. In this way we delivered our first fully online courses in 2008.
- In those early days, using Moodle was seen as innovative, and we were very much experimenting with core tools such as forum, blog and wiki. We also integrated OpenMark (java question engine, in-house) which we still use today for the most complex interactive question types. Of course our definition of “complex” has changed over time. Where question types are frequently used in OM, we look to template them into Moodle question types so they’re available without the need for a java programmer. Another early Moodle module was MyStuff – eportfolio allowing users to create portfolios of work, CVs, other collections of learning materials. still in use, but being decommissioned. Likely that there’s a commercial product now which would fit in this space, and/or other Moodle modules depending on the learning outcome required.
- 2006 represents the start of my personal history with Moodle with the launch of OpenLearn our open content initiative site funcded by the Hewlett foundation. This introduce 2 Moodle sites LearningSpace & LabSpace, with learning space providing access to quality assured OU course materials for free, and LabSpace providing a collaborative editing environment for people around the world to create their own open educational resources.
- Moving on in time a little, the next few years were all about scaling up, One key module was Strutured content, xml based content authoring in something like a text editor or xmlspy, then render the same book into a print item and onto the VLE as HTML rather than a PDF. More useable. Allows us to include AV assets, flash (now HTML5) interactivity, self-assessment questions We also wrote reports so that staff had a better picture of how students were interacting with courses and how they were using different tools. This, along with workflows and guidance on what a standard course should look like (which blocks, which resources) allows us to start to roll out consistent courses to every presentation.
- 7
- Off the back of the success of OpenLearn we were asked to host VLEs for others, in this case a CPLD site for healthcare professionals providing training in personality disorders.
- Moving on again in time to when Ross was standing here, Review is Moodle the right tool before moving to Moodle 2. More on that later. Opportunity to uplift the design – now allowing a choice of colour (from a standard palette) and course image to allow course teams some flexibility in look & feel. Subpage is a feature similar to the flexible sections facility introduce in M2.4. ability to nest sections and split your sections across multiple pages. new focus on personalisation (completion, notes). Mobile options for tablet and phone, limited functionality.
- Transactional mode of delivery = small discrete actions like forum post read rather than indepth study
- As well as moving our main VLE to Moodle 2, we split it across 3 separate sites. he main new site holds course presentation websites. Another or student-facing non-course materials e.g. study guides, student union forums third for staff materials e.g. workspaces, staff training Good and bad points. Mutlipe sites harder to keep in sync (e.g. single user profile), and to upgrade, confusing for students to see the url change, lack of navigation, my technical colleagues would say that we shouldn’t do it. BUT, roles & prermissions configuration is simpler, so my business colleagues are more on the fence. OpenLearn LearningSpace merged with Open2.net BBC broadcast smaller lerning objects, creating a Drupal hybrid. Not easy, never again! And the cause of even more of my grey hairs as the integrations between the two are very complex. Probably next step is to move to to a pure Moodle environment again as we’ve proved with other sites that we can do small learning objects in Moodle as well as bigger courses.
- Moving on in time again, things settled down considerably. The focus for our content turned towards syndication… leveraging that XML content through a transformation engine to provide course materials in a range of different formats such as SCORM, IMS Common Cartridge, epub & other alternative and accessible formats so that they can be consumed according to student choice or sold through our Business development unit to other organisations. Another approach to syndicating OU content is to bring cohorts of students into our VLE but in their own branded experience. For example the Mary Seacole programme shown here is an OU collaboration with NHS Leadership academy to provide study to nurses. Basically the same theme but with different headers. Now done for a number of different programmes. First use of LTI (learning tools interoperability) module in Moodle to integrate with VitalSource so students can have their Set Books online too
- At the same time as we were rewriting the VLE for Moodle 2, we kicked off a roadmap acceleration programme to deliver a wide range of innovations which took a couple of years come to fruition. Note the branding – everything is OU something. The idea was to allow us to swap out the technology but keep the name unchanged to avoid confusing users unnecessarily. This is actually something we’re going back on at the moment! Annotate – web annotation, similar to highlighter pens and postit notes Anywhere – mobile app for reading course materials Live – Blackboard Collaborate real-time collaboration Stack – maths assessment Open Badges – OpenLearn (and some staff use) for informal certification iTunesU – connection to the OU’s iTunes channel, part of the OpenLearn family Note, annotate suffers from poor user take-up and is not in active promotion/development at present. Itunes U has closed.
- We also started leveraging our shiny new Moodle 2 environment to create a few extra Moodle installations for different audiences. The open science lab (Wolfson funded) is still running giving free access to a range of science experiements.. Vital – OpenLearn for teachers. DoE funded. We’ve done a number of these kinds of projects over the years providing teacher training, teaching resources for reuse etc. Now closed, showing it was less than vital. This is the time when the OU started to promote registration on qualifications rather than individual courses (in line with government funding changes, student loans) so Quals Online provides a course per qualification to ACCESS quals level information, home for students in between courses etc. Still running but we’re thinking about a better way to do this which may or may not be directly in Moodle.
- That brings us roughly up to date. In recent work, our online student experience program has reviewed the VLE and confirmed Moodle as our platform of choice for the next few years. Again we’ve takent he opportunity to uplift the design, and now have a single responsive theme (offering image choice but only in the one colour), rather than separate desktop, tablet and phone themes. Last year we also worked on conditional availability for activities allowing greater flexibility to create different pathways through a course based on combinations of criteria such as grade in a quiz, group membership, date for a more personalised experience based on your interest or ability. Through OSEP we are looking at rationalising the toolset - about not flogging a dead horse. Turning stuff off that has low use – and I’ve noted a few of those as we’ve gone along. Aim is to streamline on fewer more distinct options so that we can improve quality and ability to support users. Choices are evidence-based, e.g. looking at activity levels through analytics.
- We hae introduced one new module recently though… Open Design Studio was a standalone product for a small number of course teams, now rewritten as a Moodle module. Mimics bricks & mortar design studeio – show your work, comment on other peoples for critical feedback. Lots of course teams showing interest – even things like financial courses for sharing spreadsheets, which is very different to its origins in photography and technology.
- Two more student-facing modules (because we clearly didn’t have enough already). Offender Learning – same as the main vle but walled garden for prisoners, with additional authentication and limited functionality e.g. no collaboration. Online exams – still in pilot. Testing whether we can let students type their exam answers online through the Moodle quiz engine and using a locked-down browser. Lots of work on local storage of answers in case of wifi disruption.
- Back at the start, the development team was very small. 6, rising to a dozen within a couple of years, plus one or two testers. Now around 20 developers plus project managers, analysts, architects in supporting roles. Lots of what we now call online services – people setting up sites, using course editing permissions, Right from the start we worked with the community and saw that as important. In fact some of the key things we needed were done either by funding others more experienced (like Catalyst) or Moodle HQ directly. We’ve also offered our own services back. Tim Hunt has been the quiz maintainer for the majority of the last 10 years for example, and Sam Marshall maintains completion and conditional activities. We average about half a dozen core committers every year and can be frequently seen in the forums and developer chat and online meetings. I Wonder how many people here went to a MoodleMoot at the OU in Milton Keynes? We hosted two in these early years, before the community got too big to fit in our lecture halls and meeting rooms.
- Over time, a fourth role came to prominence – that of the evangelist. Ross said in 2010 you have to keep selling… This still holds true. Need to evangelise to course teams and to students on benefits of tools to aid adoption. He also said that people keep coming up with good ideas. This also holds true. There are still new things that we want to try. The evangelist role has grown over the years, so that now we have a large technology enhanced learning team both shaping our learning tools and encouraging their adoption.
- As well as the broad approach to our people remaining consistent across the 10 years, most of our process is also consistent We deploy in quarterly releases in March, June, September and December. We spend several months in development then 1 month of acceptance testing before going live. We have tried to change that pattern. The chart shows busy periods in the year and highlights how difficult it is to find a quiet time – vertical bars show peak times for courses opening and horizontal bars are different types of exam and assessment period. As you can see, its quite hard to find a gap, so we’re sticking with releasing every 3—4 months. And copy management or ETL (extract, transform and load) as an approach to load our users, their courses & groups into Moodle, On thing that has changed though. In the early days we were always in a rush to get new functionality in front of our users. Sounding a bit like a Freddie mercury “I want it all and I want it now”, we regularly went live with beta releases of Moodle 1.x, and backported changes, even really complicated ones, like quiz engine in 1.9, into earlier versions of Moodle that we were running. This is definitely not a good idea (time consuming, like unwinding a hairball, error-prone) and one we stopped with the move into Moodle 2.
- 22
- So what did we end up with? There are currently less than 20 core customisations in our codebase. BUT, there are just around 240 plug-ins and sub-plugins, about half of these reflecting the number of different “other moodles” that we run from the same codebase all of which have site-specific functionality so it can be configured and enabled for each individual site. The graph on the leFt shows how our plugins grown over time. Big jump around Moodle 2.4 was when we moved the OpenLearn features across, otherwise it tends to be a fairly steady growth with a few new each time and a few being removed The pie on the right shows what types of plug-ins we’ve used. – the biggest ones are local plugins, reports, modules, blocks, and question types. If you look at just our core student-facing system, and ignore the sub-plugins, there are about 100 plug-ins. About a third of those help us cope with automating, bulk loading and standardising sites, 1/6 for monitoring, 10% for integrating with other learning tools. Do we have too many? We can probably argue about that later in the bar – I feel this shows how wonderfully flexible Moodle can be. And if they all come with automated unit and behavioural tests then the overhead to maintain them is not significant.
- So that’s people and process, but as I looked back over podcasts and blogs from the first half of our 10 years with Moodle, the thing I most noticed was the domination of performance issues. One of my colleagues colourfully described it as like whack-a-mole. It’s a period when we rapidly scaled up our experience with Jmeter to load test. Now we load test regularly every release, and we have a bank of “background activity” scripts which allow us to roughly simulate the sort of traffic that we see across the site on a normal day. So when Ross stood here in 2010 he said he’d learned that there was always another bottleneck. Since then things have settled down significantly and I’d say instead we are able to perform cost/benefit analysis on performance issues so we can decide when to spend time on improving performance and when it is “good enough”. By the time we moved to Moodle 2, we had increased from 4 to 5 web servers. We tend to find that is the bottleneck, as we’ve been able to stick with 1 postgres database and one filestore.
- Where are we now? These are our latest statistics on average and peak traffic. To achieve all of that, we’ve just upgraded to RedHat 7 on our web servers, and increased from 8 to 12 for our core student-facing learn2 platform (along with others for each of those other Moodle sites, and Unfortunately there are still some features on 1.9 and the need to provide access to older study materials which mean that we still haven’t switched off our 1.9 servers (but we have reduced the infrastructure that they’re running on). Hope to switch them off real soon now!
- Talking about the future, lets take a look at what’s coming next for us. This screenshot is from our direct authoring proof of concept. We’re wanting to get content in front of students quicker, so this feature will allow editing structured content directly within the Moodle interface. WYSIWYG. Still linked to AAAF for all those lovely alternative formats. Limited tag set. Are we replacing Blackboard collaborate? Don’t know yet. Its out to tender. Piloting more core plug-ins: workshop and assignment first. Aiming to use the core toolset more than just build our own, small course groups initially to gather feedback. Media player: HTML5 based, supporting wider range of AV formats, synchronous transcripts, improved usability. OU-wide so player will be the same across our whole estate, not just Moodle.
- You might be surprised to see some of these. Surely we’d have done search and single profile by now? But no, we’ve got an odd setup that isn’t very joined up or reliable. So we want to improve on that. In-page discussion (forum next to learning material) and progress indicators (showing how far through you are) are mooc influenced. As is analytics (tick that off if you’re playing buzzword bingo). We see that as important for helping guide OU strategy with more evidence based decision making. Recently launched a digital engagement dashboard fed by Moodle logs & others to show more detail than ever before on student activity to identify possible drop-outs / poor performance. We often get asked to provide our course materials or even whole VLE to others, often commercial businesses. VLE in a box is a shorthand for a better way to do content export for these requests, a better way to “spin up” new VLEs for partnerships so that we can bring funds in to the OU with low outlay in effort / infrastructure. When I was a student I took loads of notes on paper and got given loads of books that I wrote on. Nearly 20 years on these books & notes are still in my attic. Now that the majority of our learning is online & collaborative, students want a way to keep their stuff just like I did, so the student archive work is to look at the best way to achieve that.
- World moves pretty fast – if you don’t stop and look around you might miss out - Pace of change is now so fast that waiting til 2020 to review our VLE again is too late. Probably looking at a review point every 2 years. Group of things around speeding up student experience. PHP7 performance promises we want to check. Cloud - – but we said that 5 years ago! Really mean it this time! CDNs to manage all the richer assets now in the VLE and deliver them to students quicker. Continuous deployment isn’t really continuous deployment in traditional technical sense. Our users don’t want to see their learning platform changing in little ways frequently (like we accept on facebook) because learning is important and doesn’t want to be disrupted, and because we have to keep sending out update information, reviewing student guidance etc. This is about deploying with less downtime – sometimes referred to as blue/green or A/B. A way of keeping the system running, and updating at the same time. Hybrid = Core with integrated systems through LTI or other itnegrations all along we’ve used copy management but we’re using SOA (service oriented architecture) more at the OU and are looking to swap over, with added benefit of more responsive to change events rather than waiting for overnight loads.
- Standing on the shoulders of giants. I’ve been one of the lead devs for the 10 years, but just the unlucky one standing up here! Lots of colleagues who know more detail about each topic