Last Thursday, we posted answers to many of the questions that our panelists didn't have time to address during our most recent webinar, The Moodle "Top 10." Presented by Campus Technology Magazine and featuring Marsha Beal, director of digital learning and instructional technology for the Andrews University; and Kurt Sussman, director of educational technology for Keystone College, the webinar explored the top ten benefits that each campus experienced after transitioning to an enterprise, fully- supported Moodle platform.
If you didn't get a chance to attend the live webinar, you can view it on-demand, here.
Kurt and Marsha have replied to the remainder of the questions, and their answers are listed below! If you have any other questions, feel free to send them over to feedback@moodlerooms.com.
Q: Kurt's IT staff is 13. What's the composition of that staff?
- Kurt: "About 50/50 between programmers and network engineers, PC specialists, and help desk support."
Q: Did you worry about the loss of control when using outside hosting?
- Marsha: "No, because we didn't self-host with D2L. Back in 2003 we were with WebCT. It appears to work better for Andrews University to have an externally-hosted LMS."
- Kurt: "Not really. We use Adobe Connect as well, and it is externally hosted and has been trouble free."
Q: Kurt, would full integration be possible with Jenzabar?
- Kurt: "The Jenzebar system that we use is a legacy system, no longer supported. The short answer is yes, but the current version offerred by the company would fully integrate, so it didn't make sense to do the work to get it fully integrated, since we are changing SIS systems.
Q: Does anyone have experience with using Moodle for Intensive English Institutes for foreign students?
- Marsha: "Not yet, we are looking into some areas that this will be important."
- Kurt: "We do not."
Q: How many coures/sections does each campus currently offer in Moodle?
- Marsha: "We have Moodle available for every course and in a given semester it could be over 300 courses, but not all instructors choose to use it."
- Kurt: "We have 911 courses in Moodle this semester."
Q: What applications does each campus use to develop content?
- Kurt: "We do a lot of media creation using the Adobe Creative suite, however we also use Adobe Captivate and Presenter, as well as cloud services like Slideshare and Audioboo."
Q: I am new to Moodle...Have you integrated video into any of your moodlerooms? Looking to post/link videoconferences into a moodleroom to ultimately offer CME credit. Is there server space to dump videos or would we need a 3rd party to work in tandem for the solution?
- Marsha: "We have our own media server that we just link to. However, it is not totally meeting our needs and we are looking into a 3rd party like Kaltura (this is high on the consideration list)."
- Kurt: "There are a couple of ways of integrating video, but the easiest is just to add the resource "link to file". Upload the video to the file repository, and then link in the class module. This will upload the video (so it will need to be a progressive download) to Moodle, so if you are using a hosted service and are paying for storage, you may want to watch this, or simply host media on a different server."
Q: Does each campus use any third-party content (McGraw-Hill or Cengage for example)?
- Marsha: "Not directly. We have teachers who get content from publishers and we usually upload the content into Moodle."
- Kurt: "Yes. Most publishers support common cartridge, and it imports as an IMS content package. Cengage has been a little problematic, but they have partnered with Moodlerooms and are currently working out the bugs…"
Q: Do you have any experience and suggestions integrating Pearson's Course Compass online content with Moodle?
- Marsha: "No experience."
- Kurt: "No experience."
Q: Kurt, after you went through the training, did Moodlerooms help you to deliver the information sessions on campus that you spoke of?
- Kurt: "Moodlerooms had several sessions for us, and I could "assign seats" as I saw fit to include participants that I thought were necessary. They also gave presentations to our Academic Technology Committee."
Q: Kurt, are you currently using joule Synchronous' interactive whiteboard?
- Kurt: "Not yet."
Q: Kurt, do you know if Moodle works with Databases other than MySQL? What is the Moodle learning curve for experienced programmers?
- Kurt: "I don't know this; our programmers just run queries to extract data from our SIS and feed it to the Moodlerooms platform via their Conduit administrative tool."
- Brad: "Moodle works with number of databases including mysql, postgreSQL, Oracle and MSSQL. Regarding learning curve, could you be more specific? Email feedback@moodlerooms.com for more info."
Q: Did either of the presenters look at Canvas (Instructure)?
- Marsha: "I didn't get introduced to Canvas until a week after I signed with Moodlerooms."
- Kurt: "We did not."
Q: Is Keystone College integrating Moodle with Microsoft Active Directory (LDAP)?
- Kurt: "Yes we are."
Q: Could you describe your experience implementating Moodle in more detail? How was it different from implementing your previous LMS?
- Marsha: "I was fairly new when we did the migration to D2L. So my knowledge as to what to ask for was limited. This time around, I was better prepared. I cannot say there were big differences, it is just that I had grown."
- Kurt: "I was not a part of the previous LMS implementation, but are strategy was to run both LMS systems for a year, and over 2 semesters migrate faculty and content over, while providing multiple training sessions every month, and beginner and advanced level. We also create visual tutorial media on instructive topics monthly, and publish via our KCEdtech TV portal. If you have specific questions, email feedback@moodlerooms.com and I'll try to answer."
Q: Kurt, what version of Blackboard were you using?
- Kurt: "Blackboard Learn 9.1."
Q: What's your experience with Moodle on e-text book integration?
- Marsha: "If teachers are using e-text books, they have not asked for any special assistance."
- Kurt: "Sorry, I don't have experience with it yet."
Thanks for reading,
- Brad
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