Moodle Transition Plan

Moodle transition plan

1)    How many faculty & courses do we anticipate for the Fall 2012 transition?

Number faculty not on leave = XXX

Number of courses expected = XXX 

Fall 2011:

Courses = 407

Instructors = 241

 

[JSM1] 

Can we identify intensive users in the anticipated set of courses (i.e., typical fall courses)?

**Kathleen Goff says that the Registrar won’t have any data on these questions until December when ADCs begin work on the schedule.

 

2)    What SIZE do we want the Moodle pilot to be in Spring 2012?

How many people can IT support?  From my conversations with Scott, this may not be an important question given that most faculty are “minimalist” users of learning management systems like Blackboard & Moodle. 

If the number of faculty is NOT an issue for IT, then do we want to go as big as possible to smooth the “live” transition in Fall 2012?

  •  All current Blackboard users (approx. 25)
  • All Foreign Language faculty

3)    Which faculty indicated an interest in the Spring 2012 pilot?  Are there particular courses that we want to include in the pilot?

List of invited/interested faculty and particular courses (from 9/16 meeting)…

  1. Heidi Gilpin
  2. Boris Wolfson
  3. Rick Lopez
  4. Lucia Suarez
  5. Jack Cheney
  6. Tekla Harms
  7. Wako Tawa
  8. Mohammad (sp?) Hussein
  9. Carol Clark (team teaching with Sam)
  10. Trent Maxey (Sam will approach him)
  1. Biology 18 (Miller / Clotfelter / Emerson)
  2. Chemistry 161 – VCL (Ampiah-Bonnet / Hebda / Leung / Young)
  3. Psychology 122 – VCL use of SPSS (Demorest / Mendoza / Schulkind)

Are there other intense users that we should invite?

  • Javier Corrales (Bb user, lots of content)
  • Matt Schulkind (variety and volume of content in CMS, very tech savvy)
  • Physics dept. (Bb users, with lots of content - Jonathan Friedman, Larry Hunter, Jagu, David Hall)
  • Econ dept. (Jessica Reyes, Christopher Kingston, Jun Ishii)
  • Martha Umphrey

Shall we invite ADCs to be involved in the pilot; if so, how to select ADCs and proceed?

  • Black Studies courses (ADC posts most content in CMS)
  • Austin Sarat (ADC posts most content in CMS)

 

4)    Smooth & painless transition

Can we decide on particular items in the list below & then integrate them into our timeline (see 6 below).  Should we recruit point people to move forward on specific tasks?

Ideas for bringing people along & making the transition as smooth as possible (from 9/16 meeting)

  • Message from FCC/Scott about the pilot and asking faculty to prep for fall
  • Engage the ADCs to help avoid faculty not being ready for fall 2012
  • Propose that the student newspaper publish something on Moodle
  • Put everything on the web
  • Put a banner in Blackboard announcing the demise of Blackboard (only for faculty)
  • Put a banner on CMS course pages too (April)
  • Poster board sessions outside Lewis-Sebring

Strategy for introducing Moodle to the faculty (from 9/9 meeting)

  • Information including help documentation and screen casts on Moodle home page and in ATS site in CMS
    • Help documentation created and accessible from anywhere in Moodle; planning for screen casts.
  • Poster information booth in foyer of Lewis Sebring two days per week during lunch hour.
    • Don't schedule these sessions until course content has been migrated
    • Frame poster as recruiting faculty 
    • Maybe wait until the beginning of spring semester
  • Group public presentations on Moodle (ideas needed here)
  • Individual training sessions with faculty by appointment
  • Make list of issues for trouble-shooting, faculty and courses that are good targets for the spring -- discuss in next meeting (note that we did the latter, see 3 above)

 

5)    Technical issues  [JSM2] 

E-reserves

Permissions & “role” issues in Moodle

  • Course roster in CMS to go away / ADCs need access to participants in Moodle

Data integration

  • Calendar integration between CMS & Moodle

 

6)    Specific timeline:

If possible, I think we should put together a timeline for implementation of all the ideas above…

  Activities
Fall 2011  
October
  • Meeting with ADCs
  • Export to Moodle module for CMS
  • Migrate courses for Spring pilot
  • Put everything on the web
November
  • Migrate courses for spring pilot
  • Having all course content migrated by before Thanksgiving break.
  • Sample courses: Bio-106 (why sex?) Jill, Sacred images, sacred places in Art (Sam).
  • Announcement from FCC: courses for spring are ready, schedule for training over Interterm.

December

(Early December; classes end Dec. 14)
  • Migrate courses for Fall 2012 
   
Spring 2012  

January

(interterm - Jan. 3-21)
  • Migrate courses for Fall 2012 
February
  • Migrate courses for Fall 2012
  • Announcement at Faculty Meeting asking faculty to prep for fall 2012, include screen capture movie.
  • Lunch poster sessions in Lewis Sebring
  • Faculty training sessions (Fall 2012)

March

(Spring break; Mar. 17-25)
  • Article in Amherst Student
  • Lunch poster sessions in Lewis Sebring
  • Faculty training sessions (Fall 2012)
  • Migrate courses for Fall 2012
April  
  • Lunch poster sessions in Lewis Sebring
  • Faculty training sessions (Fall 2012)
May  
  • Lunch poster sessions in Lewis Sebring
  • Faculty training sessions during week between finals and commencement.
   
Summer 2012  
 August
  •  Faculty training sessions prior to start of the semester.
Fall 2012  

 

 [JSM1]Can we get these numbers for this semester (or further back) to get an idea of the scope of the transition?

 [JSM2]Scott, can you identify any issues that may be holding us back in terms of making decisions or moving forward with the transition (or planning for the transition)? 

 

Also, in the 9/9 meeting minutes there is a list for “Moodle work in the fall” – could this be updated or otherwise amended?