Multi-institutional Moodle Shared Services in BC

About BCcampus

• Supports BC’s public post-secondary institutions in meeting students’ needs through innovative and effective uses of educational technologies

• Provides ICT infrastructure for secure data exchange, shared services, online learning and distance education, communities of practice and online resources for educators.

• Connects BC’s public post-secondary institutions and supports multi-institutional partnerships with learner support services to facilitate and enhance online learning opportunities

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BCcampus Strategic Plan

• BCcampus Strategic Plan 2010-12; three key interdependent goals:– Goal 1: Create a secure and trusted data network among BC’s

post-secondary institutions for real-time student information transfer.

– Goal 2: Foster and support the formation of collaborations and partnerships between institutions that leverage knowledge, reduce costs, and generate benefits for students.

– Goal 3: Provide educator support through online communities of practice, reusable tools and resources, professional development strategies, technology training, and online program development.

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About Lambda Solutions

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• Moodle Authorized Partner

• Working with Moodle since 2003

• Develop and contribute to the Moodle community

• More than 100 Moodle installations hosted and supported

• Supported 300,000+ learners in 2009

• Instructional Design services for online learning

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Lambda Clients

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Education

Healthcare

Government

Compliance

Corporate

BCcampus – Lambda Partnership

• Agreement for services to support Moodle shared service

• Collaborative arrangements with closely integrated project management and work

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• BC Government Shared Services – Provides innovative, responsive and cost-effective

services to the public sector– Shared Services BC

– Technology– Procurement

o Spaceo Purchasingo Accounting

Characterizing Shared Services

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Characterizing Shared Services

• IT Shared Services – services and applications required by more than

one enterprise partner, and managed by one entity to improve service and efficiency. (State of Minnesota)

– consolidation of operations in publicly funded colleges and universities spawned IT shared services for:

• cost and efficiency– e.g., data centers, email, telephony, ERP

• Educational Shared Services– ‘…institutions cooperating in the development and delivery of services, so

sharing skills and knowledge, perhaps with commercial participation‘ (JISC Briefing Paper, Shared Services in UK further and higher education ,2008)

• Characteristics of instructional shared services:– Collaborative service development– Partner participation in governance– Sharing of fixed costs associated with the service delivered

• E.g., LMS

• Value added benefits to educational shared services– User Communities– Collaboration– Systemic needs

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Characterizing Shared Services

Drivers, History

• Recommendations to the BCcampus Task Force: Systemic Support for the Delivery of Online Courses in British Columbia, (Ambler, 2006)

• Institutions asked what circumstances they would consider participating in a shared service model: – Proven and significant economic benefits– Proven benefits to sharing expertise– Flexibility for institutions– Sufficient autonomy for institutions– Accountability of providers– Reliability/Stability– Responsiveness, 24/7 support– Collaboration “not contracting out”– Instructor training provided

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Drivers, History

• Results favourable toward the shared services model– Over 70% of respondents indicated shared services would

result in reduced software licensing and hardware costs – Over 60% of respondents indicated would result in a

reduced cost of creating training materials.– Over 50% of respondents expected would provide some or

large improvements in LMS as a platform for innovation. – Over 65% of respondents expected some or large

improvements in their options to technologies

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Drivers, History

• The BCcampus task force recommended that the BC post-secondary system invest in implementing a shared services approach

• Successful implementation of the shared services model could support delivery of high quality educational technology to institutions in an efficient manner:– continued growth of online learning in BC, – critical nature of LMSs in delivering education– pressure to control costs

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Benefits

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Benefits

• For smaller institutions, potential benefits:– access to educational applications might not otherwise

afford – higher reliability rates– knowledge sharing with other institutions– access to support expertise– lower costs

• For larger institutions:– potential to achieve some of the same benefits– provides choice of ET at local use levels

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Strategy

• BCcampus role in shared services:– connect, collaborate, innovate– centralised hosting, support, negotiation for licenses – offering the technical development and expertise such

as integration with SISs

• Note that shared services support:– academic– career– technical and – trades programs

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Strategy

• Tactics– Expand the number of online educational tools

and resources available to BC educators at low or no cost.

– Facilitate a shared services approach to the provision of educational technologies.

• Learning management system hosting services• Web-conferencing systems• User-generated video-hosting and streaming

media services

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Evaluation

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• BCcampus Shared Services Review (Holley, 2009)

• Stakeholder Satisfaction - institutional clients are satisfied, some very much so. BC Government prefers broader rollout and greater financial impact

• Variety of operating models- range from pooled licensing to centrally-hosted, supported system with standard operating procedures

• Operating Processes- business processes defined and documented but are not applicable to all operating models

• Operational Issues- value realization difficult to measure- no sunset provisions

Evaluation

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• BCcampus Shared Services Review (Holley, 2009)

• Recommendations:

- Define shared services ‘metamodel’

- Define the vision of the future state

- Develop a shared services business model

- Operational reviews of each current shared service

- Apply updated models and processes to new and existing shared services

Model

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Operational Models

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Life Cycle

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Value Added Aspects

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• Shared Services integrate with other BCcampus strategic directions, goals and tactics to support:

• departmental, institutional, collaborative program and systemic needs

• Also supports:• open source user community• inter-institutional collaboration, connectivity• shared delivery and development • enterprise, local use of ET

Moodle Shared Service

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• Centralized infrastructure and hosting– Separate instances per institution

• Contracted administration and support provided by Lambda Solutions– System expertise and best practices– Integration with other services (open-source or

otherwise)– Course Migration services– Hosting, support, custom development and

training

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Lambda Service Streams

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Hosting

Support

Theming

Instructional Design

Integration w/ other

technologies

Configuration

Environment Analysis

Training

Infrastructure Support

Moodle Shared Service

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• Participating institutions– Smaller, Enterprise:

• Selkirk, NVIT, COTR, CNC

– Larger, local: • UNBC, UVic

– Medium, Enterprise: • VIU - migrating • Capilano - planning migration • Kwantlen - considering migration

Lambda Services

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• Services provided– General

• Deploying test, production instances

• System administration support

• Basic themes and customization• Administrator training and support

– Meeting individual institutional needs• Institutionally specific training programs for faculty and Moodle

administrators

• Technical or process solutions that benefit a specific institution rather than having systemic benefit

• Course migration from other LMS to the Moodle Shared Service

Moodle Shared Service Future

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• Expansion of service through increased institutional participation– E.g., VIU, Capilano

– others

• Moodle 2.0 migration– pilot and production environments starting soon– institutional migration by July, 2012

• SIS Integration (Banner, Colleague, SRS)– Datatel portal integration at NVIT– Banner integration at Kwantlen

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Integrated LMS Shared Service

Infrastructure, Architecture

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Case Examples

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• College of the Rockies– Long term participant – since 2008– Enterprise deployment

• 482 courses • 4132 users

– Stable, reliable LMS

Case Examples

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• Nicola Valley Institute of Technology– Enterprise deployment

• 69 courses• 1504 Users

– Datatel portal integration

Case Examples

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Case Examples

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• Vancouver Island University– Returning to shared service– Enterprise deployment

• About 2000 courses• 40k Users

– Migration underway to new Linux servers• Over 200 GB data• Database size of about 4GB

Closing Summary

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• Questions

• Discussion

Closing Summary

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• Thank you

• Contact Us:– lparisotto@bccampus.ca– jim.yupangco@lambdasolutions.net– scott.tearle@lambdasolutions.net