moodle at the ou moodle moot 2010

Moodle at the OU

Ross MackenzieThe Open University

In the Beginning

Before Moodle• May 2005

• Major review of OU learning and teaching systems

Before Moodle• May 2005

• Major review of OU learning and teaching systems

The Big Decision• 6th July 2005

• “A momentous day for Britain”

• “The most fantastic opportunity to do everything we ever dreamed of”

The Big Decision• 6th July 2005

• “A momentous day for Britain”

– Tony Blair

• “The most fantastic opportunity to do everything we ever dreamed of”

– Seb Coe

The Big Decision• 6th July 2005

• “A momentous day for Britain”

– Tony Blair

• “The most fantastic opportunity to do everything we ever dreamed of”

– Seb Coe

The Big Decision• 6th July 2005

• Also the day when the OU decided we could go with Moodle

– it did lots of what we needed– we could make it do what it didn’t – it would scale to our traffic levels

Initial Plans• Formal decision in November 2005

• Initial (pilot scale) launch in May 2006

• Full launch in February 2007• Follow-up release in February 2008

• All developments would be released back to the Moodle community

Initial Plans• Formal decision in November 2005

• Initial (pilot scale) launch in May 2006

• Full launch in February 2007• Follow-up release in February 2008

• All developments would be released back to the Moodle community

Initial Plans• Formal decision in November 2005

• Initial (pilot scale) launch in May 2006

• Full launch in February 2007• Follow-up release in February 2008

• All developments would be released back to the Moodle community

Roadmap 1

OU - Moodle.org developments• OU funded/part-funded several major developments

– Roles & Permissions (in 1.7)

– Accessibility improvements (in 1.8)

– Gradebook (in 1.9)

• In each case we went live with beta releases

OU In-house Developments• ForumNG• OU Blog• OU Wiki

• ResourcePage• Study calendar course

format

• Shared activities system• Newfeed• MyStuff

• Dataplus

• And more

• Most available via Moodle contrib, others elsewhere

Quiz developments• Quiz Module development and maintenance

• OpenMark

– http://www.open.ac.uk/openmarkexamples/

– http://openmark.dev.java.net/

Other stuff…• Elluminate

– Bridged link between Moodle and Elluminate

• Content Authoring– Structured Content– XML-based authoring via Microsoft Word

Changes to Moodle 1.x• In addition to commissioned developments and local

modules/blocks

• In addition to changes to core

• Localisations

– 2000 changes to standard Moodle– remade each time we sync with a new Moodle release

OU Development Model• Parallel Development Model

• Quarterly releases – re-sync with stable Moodle release once/quarter

• Three month development period / two month (two stage) test period ahead of each release

RequirementsGathering

Development

Functional Testing

Pre-release Testing

In Service

Craigellachie

Fettercairn

Knockando

We Are Here

Local OU releases• Annual/six-monthly/fourth-monthly

• Quarterly

– limited changes between releases– regular requirements gathering – regular re-prioritisation

What have we learnt so far• Don’t go live with beta releases

– Resist the temptation

• Release early / release often– Annual cycles don’t cut it / Rolling releases hard to test

• Your VLE is never finished– There’s always more to do

What have we learnt so far• Keep soliciting requirements

– People will keep coming up with good ideas

• Never underestimate the traffic– There’s always another bottle neck

• Keep evangelising– Sell, sell and sell again

Where are we Now ?

Moodle at Scale• 5330 sites on main VLE, 579 currently live

• 648,000 users in database, 168,000 currently active

• In 24h period 35,000 - 50,000 unique users

• Concurrency? – maybe 2,000 – 2,500

OU Moodle Architecture• Three layer architecture – Red Hat-based

• 5 webservers – 4 load-balanced serving users, 1 running cron

• Database cluster – postgreSQL 8.3• NFS cluster

• Storage Area Network

Webservers

Database servers File servers

Storage Area Network

Multiple Systems• Live Systems

• Acceptance Test – near mirror of Live

• Technical Testing system – replica of development

• Development systems – one (or more) for each developer

Multiple Systems• Live Systems

• Acceptance Test – near mirror of Live

• Technical Testing system – replica of development

• Development systems – one (or more) for each developer

People• Development Team

• Support Team

• Testing Team

• Evangelists

Current Developments• Incremental Developments

– Collaborative Tools (ForumNG, OUBlog)– Assessment (new quiz engine)

– Structured Content (richer learning material)– Reporting systems

• Working with Google Apps for Education

• Associate Lecturer Dashboard

Where Next ?

Moodle 2

Moodle 2• Raises lots of questions

• We’ve already working on elements of Moodle 2

– Conditional Activities– Quiz Engine (maybe Moodle 2.1?)

• We’re not making any decisions until beta, and (this time) not doing anything until there is a stable release

Moodle 2• We’re going to be working on migrating the modules

we’ve developed (don’t yet know scale of problem)

• We will be looking at the cost of remaking localisations

• I’ve committed to understanding the costs of moving to Moodle 2 by end of June (beta permitting - )

Moodle 2 options• Ignore it – stick with Moodle 1.9 – and do our own thing

• Adopt it – remaking our localisations

– Likely to be expensive

• Adopt it – but accept many fewer localisations

– Do more the Moodle way / Less the OU way

OU Learning and Teaching Systems Roadmap

Further out• Life in the Clouds

• Already exploring Google Apps

– Initial light integration (SSO)– Later tighter integration (groupings level)

• Cloud Hosting – more likely using e.g. Amazon EC2/S3 than full external hosting….

OU at the MoodleMoot• Sam Marshall

• Tim Hunt

• Jason Platts

• Anthony Forth

• Phil Butcher

• Tim Lowe

Any Questions?

Ross Mackenzie

r.a.mackenzie@open.ac.uk