meeting+notes

4/13/10: present: Patrick Frontiera, Kyle, John, Michael

AJCU committee report has been produced by Bret. The service of this group has been greatly appreciated (especially comparing to the other groups) :)

Michael will distribute a final copy of the report.

No need for presentation to be worked on. People at the AJCU conference will be part of a panel discussion.

Michael to setup one more call after the AJCU conference just to discuss any follow on items and how the conference went.

thanks!

3/17/10: present: Michael, Tracy, Bruce; (John follow up call);

Do we want to have the "local hosted vs. cloud computing" as a deliverable? Summarize the finding, however small; contrast vs. ASP hosting, vendor hosting and true cloud computing; (Michael, Tracy, Bruce to complete)

Bruce to summarize the survey results; (by next Tuesday);

Tracy is going to the AJCU meeting; Bruce is not; Michael is not; John is going to the AJCU meeting.

Tracy is to lead the presentation group; All are going participate in get the presentation material together.

Tracy to update with Moodle Room option and other hosted options;

All, please check the ASP - Evaluation spreadsheet Bruce has uploaded ( it's in Manage Wiki - documents)

Mobile technologies need to be considered as part of the LMS system.

Executive Summary - Bruce to get started; All to have some input;

3/3/10: present: John; Kyle; Bill, Michael; agenda: deliverables format;

Keep together as one document; Deliver as one WIKI page; Separate sections;

AJCU meeting April 18-21st. Recommend that all members go to the meeting and present the findings.

For the deliverable separate wiki pages w/ top level executive summary:

Executive Summary: (Kyle) LMS survey results summary (Bruce); open source alternatives; (John / Michael / Tracy/ Collette); Blackboard / Angel approach (Kyle); Locally hosted vs. cloud computing (Michael); (shared hosting / institutional hosting);

concern: active participation consortium (funds for moving forward);

Michael will send out reminder of participation to the group;

Next meeting on the 17th; (finalize the deliverable and formulating on the presentation piece);

2/3/10:

John; Kyle; Mary (Holy Cross); Ginny Wallace from USF; Bruce ; Michael

Mary from Holy Cross to talk about their moodle experience, extremely happy. over 150 moodle groups; (no distance learning at Holy Cross); between 7-800 classes per semester;

Ginny from USF (works with John on the Moodle implementation);

MARY on Moodle:

What prompted the change at Holy Cross? (Colleges of Liberal Arts Consortium) meeting buzz to started the pilot going at Holy Cross; 3 faculty to start pilot; 10 faculty & 20-25 courses in next year pilot; students didn't care much about which systems to use; The economic crisis pushed the BB out of the window. (blackboard was internal hosted);

The change over took 3 years (last May was the BB turn off);

On staff support; has an application group took care of BB; one backend person, one business analyst and herself takign care of the moodle;

migration from BB-> Moodle : 2 summers with students help. Many faculty did it themselves (started over regardless), to update the content;

There were people "not happy", but the price change drive the conversation to positive; (no timed release in Moodle 1.95), Moodle 2.0 has it;

Most like about Moodle: easier to get things done; upload documents is more complicated, but easier to edit pages; choice activity (limiting # of people); assignment tool is easier;

Was on BB7.2 before change over;

Was saving from licensing fee realized? No needing to add people. ROI is realized; Different user groups in community is key for the success; surveys in moodle as well; faculty election in moodle;

Reporting tool in Moodle is really easy to use; % of faculty using moodle: close to 50%; USF: 2369 courses in BB;

Test & Dev environment (new modules testing); instance of 2.0 running; load balanced as well; did NOT use consultants during implementation; Bought vouchers for some help; Community is really strong on technical help;

CLAMP-IT.org has technical support as well.

Mary is open to share experience in April AJCU meeting. Not considering hosting outside (moodle rooms);

Mary has a moodle for campus; another one for board of trustees etc. Moodle for alumni; moodle for collegium;

aiming at 6 moodle implementations;

backend : MYSQL; Holy Cross uses virtual servers as well;

Possibly open to help AJCU on Moodle;

AJCU conference: Loyola of Chicago, Kyle;

March 16th for report back to the CIOs. Michael will email group with reminder;

Kyle: ideas put on wiki already; wants feedback from the group; (ask people to review);

John: No updates; waiting for Creighton ;

Bruce: on survey results: good participation; working spreadsheet for LMS evaluation; --; Michael to put the costing model for hosting; -;

1/20/10: Tracy, Colette, Michael, Kyle, John are on the call.

Survey results posted on wiki, thanks to Bruce.

John / Colette/Michael/Tracy to have follow up on the open source initiative. USF had a survey for LMS satisfaction. Mostly strong support of BB, but 50% of faculty interested in alternatives.

John to follow up w/ Holy Cross on Moodle feedbacks.

Michael to follow up w/ CEAI on hosting test environment cost.

Kyle : created initial page, outline. Survey done by Bruce.

All memebers are encouraged to update wiki with progress.

1/6/10: Tracy, John (USF), Kyle, Michael (LMU), Bill (Le Moyne)

Bruce can't make it to the meeting, but reported 15 schools have responded to the LMS survey; (total of 27 AJCU schools) John: Holy Cross is using Moodle ; John is going to contact them on their progress and update the group; (Holy Cross on production with Moodle)

Kyle: Basic outline on the wiki; need to flush out w/ the working group; St. Louis Univ. saved $$ from the last vendor negotiation. There is definitely value in vendor bargaining; It's definitely worth another try;

Tracy: From Loyola Maryland perspective, would be fully on Moodle by Spring of 2011; Datatel school. Datatel is becoming a beta partner w/ Moodle; Haven't done a cost evaluation, but going down the path. Tracy is doing a tools comparison between to BB and Moodle; Licensing vs. man power dollars and support. They have datatel portal (built on sharepoint) and collaborating w/ Moodle; MoodleRooms just released Jewel - using it as a content mangaement system;

St. Louis doing a cost analysis of hosting in BB vs. in-house; They are bring it back in house;

San Francisco State Univ uses cutom CMS and linking out to Moodle; They were pulling echo360 data into Moodle; (DIDA) ([])

USF is not very happy w/ Moodle support; may move to Jewel platforms; Vendor not very responsive; Been working w/ them since Sept.

Any university want to host a shared service of Moodle?

Cloud hosting of Moodle for AJCU schools? How does cost basis work for us. Michael will share the CEAI costing model with the group;

For Moodle, it would be depending on hwo many schools buy into it. Datatel is partnering w/ MoodleRooms;

MoodleRooms is the hosting company for Moodle, but have added functionalities as well.

Bill:

[] is the new coursemanagement. Check it out. (Bill will ask Fairfield and get an update for the group);

Please update the wiki as it's our collaboration foundation w/ discussions and pages.

Next meeting in two weeks.

12/16/09: Only Bruce and Michael are present for the meeting. LMS survey was sent out. There are 8 responses from various schools already. The survey is going to end in early January. We're going to cancel next weeks' meeting. The next group meeting would be on Jan 6th. (should be on your calendar).

Michael shared the idea of a "AJCU LMS sandbox utilizing some cloud computing powers"

Team leads, to be prepared to talk about timelines in the next group meeting for your area. We should re-energize the team next year.

Happy Holidays to all. The meeting lasted only 15 minutes.

11/11/09:

John, Kyle and Michael are on the call.

John has created the wiki page. All should have received the invite to join. Thanks to John.

http://ajculms.wikispaces.com/

John is going to look at Moodle and provide the group of the feedback of experience.

SAKAI.

Kyle has put in some outline into the wiki. Emailed Tracy and Bruce to follow up;

Existing documentation - break out the groups of documentations; Naming conventions- descriptives.;

Searching with in the wikispace does NOT allow search within the document. Please ensure the tags are proper;

Michael to follow up on the list of CIOs and the survey of them; John has the survey they've done for their faculty ; John is going to upload it here.

For our next meeting, Michael to provide an agenda and resend meeting invites.
 * update from three working groups;

Michael to work on the GOALs for AJCU Shared Service Commitee;

Oct 28th:

Attendee: Tracy McMahon (Loyola of Maryland); Kyle Collins (St. Louis U.); Bruce Montes (Loyola Chicago); Bill Thieke (Lemoyne College);

Greg Francis; Bruce (Loyola of Chicago); Tracy McMann (Loyola Mary ) ; Creighton; John (USF); O'Meara, Colette [coletteomeara@creighton.edu];

John: Director of learning technology ; oversees blackboard ; since 2001; pilot of moodle rooms; class in spring; Colette O’Meara (Angel Learning system). Michael is appointed as the chair for group. Meeting minutes approved;

No meeting agenda updates;

On goals: Colette: identified application as a group; didn’t get pricing advantages; solidify as a consortium to bargain w/ the vendor; Open source perspective; Moodle rooms (John, USF); Kyle: contract negotiations; lower by the individual institutions than consortium; Shared support documentation (internal / external); - branding ; John: Sharing of resources / shared experiences; collaboration; Open source support, pricing deduction; Greg: Gonzaga (blackboard 6.3) Hosted vs. internal system convergence; Improve scale and stability (Disaster recovery); Patrick: Shared hosting model at least @ testing and sandbox level. Tracy : Unifying with portal ; looking at moodle (datatel/moodle integration) John: BB8 hosted internally ; access through portal; Bruce: Hosted with Blackboard ; Sakai in the past; looking @ integration and open source; Significant open source initiative from smaller projects; Typo3 (as CMS); open source; Colette; Goals: 1. State of the AJCU LMS systems 2. Open Source Alternatives a. Recommendation / analysis document on approach; b. Development / documentation c. Research /hosting; 3. Blackboard (including Angel) approach; a. Documentation, b. Testing systems c. Pricing / bargaining w/ vendor 4. Locally hosted vs. Cloud computing for LMS; (Bruce) a. What are the factors to consider b. If we were to move forward ; what’s the approach; c. Shared service solution What we need to accomplish these goals? None before March; Survey tools; (Someone); On Communication: USF Wiki: SSO to join, not signed up with; AJCU teaching & technology group (USF setup) ; pbworks (wiki) Wikispace site: (John): 2nd choice; Bruce : Confluence (allow authentication); 1st choice; What are the next steps: John / Colette/Michael/Tracy (open source alternatives): Sub-group: State of the AJCU LMS systems (Bruce / Kyle/ Bill) Commercial Vendor Approach (Blackboard including Angel) Kyle / Tracy / Bruce/ Locally hosted vs. Cloud computing for LMS Leave out till next meeting; Michael to get a list of AJCU cios’

Oct 14th: Attendee: Tracy McMahon (Loyola of Maryland); Kyle Collins (St. Louis U.); Bruce Montes (Loyola Chicago); Bill Thieke (Lemoyne College); Members introduce themselves: Patrick Frontiera: CIO, LMU; on the AJCU shared service committee; starting the LMS shared service working group; Liaison for the working group and the shared service committee; Michael Sun: Director of Enterprise at LMU; LMU went to BB9 this summer; Bruce Montes (Dir of academic technology services): looking after learning services; (Blackboard hosted, so far satisfied); 2007 had a bad start of school w/ Blackboard services; Kyle Collins(St. Louis): Sr. mgr for academic systems; was w/ Univ. of Missouri before; running blackboard for 11 yrs; hosting by BB is not satisfactory, looking forward to bring it back in-house; Tracy McMahon: Dir of emerging technologies, prior to here was a educational consultant; GUI side of blackboard; still doing bb administration; internal bb; having problems w/ bb support; volunteered to the working group; beta test of moodle as well. Bill Thieke (Lemoyne College): looking for alternatives for current BB install; 15-20% increase from BB annually; in BB7, piloting version 9; spring to v9; Looked at Angel before Angel being bought; BB admin and facilitator; Creighton switched over to Angel from BB; Anyone going to Educause? Tracy is the only one going; EduCause ELI in Jan. Chairing : Michael has expressed interest in chairing this. Patrick moved Michael to be the chair, Kyle second it. Q: The other schools not invited? Are they not interested? A: (Patrick) The shared service committee wanted to cap the working group at 8; These are not the only school interested in doing this. Assessment of the various schools in AJCU and what they use and interested are. Susan (Loyola Chicago) spear headed a survey; This is working group is not intended to be Blackboard only. Other LMS : Sakai; Moodle;

Group member Expertise: Background: Michael : Enterprise Systems; Architecture and programming; Bruce: Loyola for 33 yrs. Infrastructure services; application and academic background; Tracy: Instructional design background, looking from faculty perspectives; training and support items. Usage and training. Kyle: More technical side, running servers and AD; Architecture and support to the end users; WebCT side of BB9; work closely w/ instructional designers; Bill: BB training, support and instructions. Know about backend and do the updates; Communication and Logistics Patrick to check w/ Shared Service committee on this and get back to the group; Email for now to communicate w/ the group. Shared Committee set Dates: By Oct 20th, 2009: chair; Nov 2nd : Goals and SOW (if not, Nov 17th); Final report: March 16th (guideline questions and answers) Goals: In early 2000, there was a similar shared LMS reach to the AJCU schools. Possibilities: Group buying power / discounts; Shared service committee did negotiate BBConnect discount; Sharing resources, best practice, support documentation at least; Creating documentation; 1. Contractual and budget considerations; 2. Shared training; 3. Possibly sharing testing environment; 4. Exploration of alternatives;

Meeting every two weeks ; Wed. noon PST ;

Questions for the Hosted LMS workgroup

• What are viable LMS alternatives for AJCU institutions? • What are the commercially available alternatives for LMS hosting? • Is there potential for an AJCU institution to host an LMS for other AJCU institutions? • What AJCU institutions are interested in changing their current LMS? • What AJCU institutions are interested in changing their current LMS hosting arrangement? • Is there interest in an AJCU-hosted LMS sandbox for LMS testing?