the free LMS- should it be yours?

1. the free LMS- should it be yours?

2. Sharon Boller BLP president Shelby Watts Multimedia Director Kelly Davis Multimedia Developer first…who we are

3. Let’s start with a poll: Take the poll you see on the right-hand side of your screen so we can learn about you, your organization, and the training you do. Now, use the chat to tell us: What motivated you to sign up? Finally, raise your hands: How many of you have heard the term “Moodle” but really didn’t know what it was? How many of you currently have an LMS? How many of you feel you need an LMS? How many of you just like the LOL Live sessions we do and are okay with whatever we talk about Now…what about YOU?

4. What Moodle is – and isn’t 3 stories about Moodlers Demo of the Moodle experience for: Learners Course creators Administrator(s) The data you can track The costs (soft and hard) The decision: to Moodle or not? now…an agenda Quick look at the data you can track Demo of Moodle experience – learners, course creators, admins Stories about Moodlers What Moodle is…and isn’t To Moodle…or not? The REAL costs Any questions about what we’ll cover? Write them in the chat box. Shelby’s watching and jotting them down.

5. What it is…and is not

6. It IS…. A top LMS tool used by millions Optimized for “course management “ Ideal for building a learning community; very learner focused Flexible Free to download It is… • Top LMS tools (marketshare) • Moodle (18.6%) • Other (16.6%) • Developed in-house (14.8%) • SumTotal (14.6%) • Saba (12.5) • Blackboard (8.9%) • Oracle (7.9%) • Plateau (7.5%) • Learn.com (6.7%) • SkillSoft (6.2%) • Organizations with MORE than 10,000 • SumTotal (22.3%) • Saba (20.4%) • Developed in-house (16.8%) • Plateau (14.1%) • Oracle (10.9%) • TIE: SkillSoft and Moodle (7.9%) • Blackboard (7.6%) • SAP (4.6%) • Learn.com (4.3%)

7. A development tool - it has no “C” as in LCMS Something you have to learn all at once…before you implement anything A commercial product - there’s no vendor behind the scenes to install, train, and support you…unless you hire a “Moodle” partner. Super-quick to figure out/learn – it’s not HARD, but it does take time. Completely without costs Optimized to generate lots of system-wide data It is NOT…

8. What it looks like today: What it looked like at install:

9. Moodler stories – 3 of them

10. Stories 1 and 2: Other folks • Farm Bureau • ~1700 employees – lots in the field • No budget for LMS • One person in training with a technical bent • Need to verify passing and completion • Huge desire to enhance informal learning • Sleep Train • 230 stores; 4 states, 1 training person, no $$ for an LMS. • LOTS of turnover – continual new product info to share • Need to verify people “passed”

11. Story 3: us! • 16 employees…but mostly scattered. • Constant need to learn new techniques, tools, technologies. • Huge need for informal learning • Desire to offer training to external customers – and charge them for training. • Desire to learn Moodle so we can help small organizations implement it for themselves. The bottom-line (no pun intended): Moodle can – and does – work for lots of different organizations who want/need to connect learners to resources and each other.

12. There are six possible roles: Student (i.e. learner) Course creator Editing teacher Non-editing teacher Administrator Guests The Moodle Experience: learners, course creators, administrators

13. Let’s start with the “learner”

14. Course Creators

15. Responsibilities • Verifying whether Moodle is even the right answer • Installing the site on a server • Configuring the site • Uploading and maintaining users • Creating courses • Supporting users (HUGE) system administrators

16. Knowledge assets PHP (installation) CSS (graphical look, positioning, etc) MySQL (installation) HTML (installation) SCORM (course configuration) Course design/development (course creation) Social media savvy (informal learning) Personality assets Patience (installation, configuration, development) Confidence (i.e. can’t be afraid to try stuff and see what happens) installation and configuration

17. What questions should an admin be asking before even deciding on Moodle? Does a resource exist who is willing to learn an open-source software application? Will my organization support open-source software? Will I have any IT support? Do I have the money, time, and expertise to host Moodle on my own internal server OR should I find an external host? If I decide to have an external host, should I get a dedicated server or a shared server? Who will be the system administrators? How will admins divide responsibility? moodle experience for admins

18. Hardware Requirements Minimum 150 to 200MB disk space Network or standalone Software Requirements Database – MySQL is recommended Web server – Apache is preferred PHP – PHP 4.30 is required to run Moodle 1.9. It is advisable to use PHP 5.24 or higher for Moodle 2.0. PHP Extensions Moodle Packages Standard Mac OS X - local Windows – local Moodle Requirements

19. more on configuration…

20. The data you can track

21. What reports can you get? Site level: All/Individual activity logs across entire site or by course Course level: All/individual participant activity logs All participant grades Individual participant reports What do these reports tell you? Activity logs: what the user did, not how they did. Grade and participant reports: completion, score, and activity. reporting

22. What if you want more? Add-ons are available. Here are a few we have found but not tried: Category Activity Reports Completion Report Moomis reporting

23. The costs…really

24. “Soft” costs (translate to personnel to make Moodle successful) can be more than people think. Hard costs – pretty minimal

25. Or not?

26. It depends ….: What are your needs? Why would you use it? What tracking do you HAVE to have? Can you get the server space you need? Do you have a resource to support it? is moodle for you?

27. sharon@bottomlineperformance.com shelby@bottomlineperformance.com kelly@bottomlineperformance.com