Lambda Solutions e-Learning 2.0 Online Training and Moodle Experts

Between our Moodle support services, LMS migrations and other consultations with our education and corporate clients, it’s sometimes challenging to keep up with all of the exciting developments in eLearning in general and Moodle in particular. Based on our conversations with our partners and clients, we know prospective eLearning solution adopters face the same daunting deluge of information.

Here’s a quick roundup of some of the latest articles and resources we’ve found useful and inspiring for the eLearning-inclined, including some of our own recent stuff:

Lambda Solutions Blog

• How an Open Source License for eLearning Works Better Than a Proprietary Solution. Part 1 in a two-part series on the open-source LMS model. We may be biased, but that doesn’t make us less correct in giving a thumbs-up to open-source.
• Procuring an Open Source License for eLearning. Part 2 of our look at this process.
• How Moodle Helps School Deliver Quality Education at Great Value. A great case study – and a great early success story showing how one school is able to improve teaching outcomes while cutting costs.
• Learning Analytics and Reports to Improve Learning Outcomes. A good roundup. Note that the Learning Analytics and Knowledge 2012 conference is about to start!

Around the Interwebs

• Classes still on after water main break. Thanks to Moodle, not even a flood can keep students from their studies.
• The Ever-Expanding School Day. “Byron High School math teacher Troy Faulkner noting that he starts hearing from his students almost instantly if he doesn't meet his 5 p.m. deadline to load a video demonstration of the following day's lesson onto YouTube. They're that anxious to log onto Moodle and watch him solve quadratic equations.”
• Why Change is [very] Good for Education. Inspiring stuff for academic administrators, teachers and students.
• What’s the big deal about online learning? 10 tips to motivate you. Good points all around, from an online student’s perspective.
• Designing online learning for the 21st century. Higher student numbers combined with fewer education dollars allotted per student, plus the move to a knowledge-based society are making blended learning models in post-secondary education a necessity.

Are you a Lambda Solutions client with a success story from using Moodle? Send us your stories and be featured in our blog and the next Moodle Roundup

You’ve decided Moodle is the right solution for your organization. No more license fees, the open source model works for you and you like Moodle’s adaptability. But wait: where do you install it? On your own aging servers? A giant server-farm run by IT guys who aren’t used to managing a system with a ton of users – at least not for that entry-level price they quoted?

It’s easier and more cost-effective to have someone host your Moodle instance rather than setting up your own server to host it. We humbly submit that someone is us.

More and more of our eLearning solution clients are looking to us to host their Moodle installation. We’re and official Moodle partner and certified services provider, so we know a thing or two about getting Moodle hosted with the right level of support; proactive hosting, 99.99 percent uptime and fast response when the system needs tweaking.

Why is Hosting Moodle a Pain for Big Hosting Companies?

General-purpose server farms are not usually configured for Moodle, partly because Moodle is very database intensive.

Moodle logs student activity, records grades, and generally has many people adding content (student posts, assignment uploads, quiz attempts, etc.). This means there is a much higher amount of “write” actions to the database.   

But most commercial severs out there are tuned to handle sites where most of the action is in reading from the database, with only a few users writing to the database. That’s the usual model; there’s just one or two nerds in a company who keep the website fresh with new content. No one else needs access. But in K-12 schools, colleges or companies, you have hundreds or thousands of users.

The deceptively low prices you see at general-purpose hosting companies are possible because running a server where most of the action comes from reading from the database is much easier and less expensive than setting up a complete learning system and tuning a web server that writes a lot to the database.

That takes high-grade hardware, SANs, clustered servers and Virtual Machines  running across multiple machines, and staff experienced with setting up and running these. Good luck getting those bargain-basement prices from a big hosting company when you throw those kinds of requirements at them.

Take the Pain Out of Moodle Hosting for Your Organization

Lambda Solutions is an official Moodle Partner, so right off the bat, you know you’re getting a high level of expertise with regards to Moodle. When it comes to hosting, you get these benefits:

• Our servers are set up and tuned for a high degree of database writes.
• Our IT and Support staff understand the unique challenges of running an LMS. 
• We also believe in allowing our clients autonomy in the true spirit of open source – a customer is free to explore, modify or extend their Moodle system as determined by their needs.  Though you are free to help with development, we are always here to assist you with customization and development of your system.

How Much Hosting Support Do You Need for Moodle

That depends on how you’re going to use Moodle. Here are a few questions to consider just before you give us a call:

• How many Moodle users are you going to have, including students, teachers/trainers and administrators?
• How many people might be on the site at the same time?
• What type of content do you plan on delivering? Will it be media heavy content like video or flash animation? Or mainly static files likes PDF or PowerPoint?
• Do you or any of the other staff have any experience with Moodle?

How you answer these questions will help us figure out how best we can help you. Contact us to learn more about your hosting options for Moodle

For nearly four years, Lambda Solutions has been working closely with BCcampus on their Moodle Shared Service.  This collaboration has assisted twelve B.C. colleges and universities in using Moodle, many with multiple Moodle instances.  The benefits of deploying Moodle through BCcampus Shared Services are numerous, including leveraging existing deployment expertise, significant cost savings, and centralized stable infrastructure.

BCCAMPUS MODEL

A BCcampus program called Shared Services assists B.C. public-post secondary institutions in exploring educational applications for teaching and learning.  By bringing multiple institutions together to pool requirements, it creates a community of support in acquiring and supporting educational technology.  “Shared Services provides post-secondary institutions with a scalable, systemic, and sustainable foundation for e-Learning services,” says Lawrence Parisotto, Director of Collaborative Program and Shared Service Initiatives.  “The cross-institution collaboration assists in reducing software and infrastructure costs by pooling demand and negotiating system-wide licenses and services.”

In March 2008, BCcampus began a pilot project with Lambda Solutions, exploring Moodle as a learning management solution.   Nearly four years later, any B.C. post secondary institution can access Lambda as a dedicated Moodle service provider through BCcampus Shared Services.  Currently, twelve B.C. institutions have various Moodle instances supported by  Lambda Solutions.   

THE LAMBDA EXPERIENCE

Lambda works with each participating institution to ensure they are able to analyze, develop, design, deploy and support Moodle.  For B.C. universities and colleges participating in the Moodle Shared Services, they are treated as unique customers.  “We work directly with the schools participating in BCcampus Shared Services just like any other customer,” says Lambda Solutions CEO Shevy Levy.  “We focus on how Moodle can meet their particular needs and be successfully used at their institution.”
Each BCcampus member follows a business process, from an expression of interest, to drafting a project charter and project plan through an interactive process including evaluation and operationalization.  Our work with each of them includes:

• Installation of Moodle and various plug-ins;
• Training for faculty, course creators, and administrators;
• Integration of existing systems based on the needs of the school, such as Banner, Mahara, etc;
• Assistance in moving from Moodle 1.9 to Moodle 2.x;
• Working closely with schools in developing themes and course templates;
• Hosting of Moodle installations in partnership with BCcampus through Simon Fraser University (SFU).

The scope of Moodle use is controlled by the individual institution on a case-by-case basis.  Some members are only utilizing Moodle in specific departments, or just exploring the possibilities of Moodle.  Other institutions, such as Kwantlen Polytechnic University, are planning on migrating very large Moodle instances consisting of hundreds of courses and thousands of users to Shared Services.  “The scope of use is dependent on the needs of the school,” says Parisotto. “Some are at a boutique level of a single instance; others have four or five Moodle instances.  Through the business process, the needs and expectations of all parties are clearly mapped out with Lambda Solutions.”

EXTRA VALUE TO ALL INSTITUTIONS

The BCcampus Shared Services model creates an additional number of benefits to B.C. post-secondary institutions.  Beyond significant direct cost-savings for participating schools, Shared Services construct a community of support and development.  Lambda has been able to provide a variety of services across all institutions, including professional development workshops, ongoing technical support, and sharing best-practices in using Moodle. This network minimizes the learning curve for all schools and assists them in quickly adopting Moodle as an ideal solution.

Lambda has also worked closely with BCcampus in upgrading the underlying technology infrastructure supporting Moodle for all participating institutions.  Over the last year, Lambda worked with BCcampus and SFU in deploying VMWare, greatly improving reliability and the end-user experience.  Now, each Moodle instance is supported through its own Virtual Machine, using SFU’s “cloud” infrastructure.  By providing a robust single technology solution to support all Moodle institutions, universities save resources through the efficiencies of centralized hosting and support.

The success of this model between Lambda and BCcampus was shared at the 2011 Moodle Moot in Edmonton. “For participating B.C. Campus institutions, Moodle Shared Services provides excellent value,” says Levy.  “This model allows significant cost savings for dedicated support in deploying and supporting Moodle.  Colleges and universities are able to extract the value of Moodle to better meet the needs of their students and educators.”    

The Moodle iMoot is an annual event where the Moodle community—which is now more than 32 million users -- are provided the opportunity to join together on a global scale. This web based event engages a global audience of Moodle practitioners, administrators and decision makers in one online e-conference! 

While many regions hold Moots for people that can locally attend, the value of the iMoot is that it is 100% online – leaders and learners from around the world can connect regardless of geography. The iMoot aims to bring all these people together into ONE PLACE to truly unite the global Moodle Community, to allow both Experts and Practitioners to connect together at a single time to share ideas, thoughts and pedagogy across languages, timezones and borders.

iMoot Details

The iMoot starts today, Friday May 25th, at 2pm PDT (Pacific Time).  Sessions run 24 hours a day, for four days straight, with 6 keynote presentation and 168 hours of sessions.  At any time of the day or night, there will be an iMoot session occurring.  A full list of the sessions are available on the iMoot website, with numerous “How To’s”, “Case Studies” and “Academic Paper” sessions.

All sessions at the iMoot are being recorded, and are immediately available to attendees 12 months after the conference.  With registration at just $80 AUD, it’s a very valuable and affordable Moodle skills development opportunity.

What is Lambda Solutions role?

Lambda Solutions is excited to have two separate presentations at the iMoot this year.  This will be in the popular “Chad and Ben interview” format that is dialogue based instead of a one-sided broadcast.  Each session will be delivered twice to accommodate Moodle users regardless of their time zone:

Activity Completion

·       Completion tracking can be used to report on the students’ progress in a course or if a student has met the recommended prerequisites of a course. The Completion tracking feature works on two levels of Course Completion and Activity Completion.

·       Sunday, May 27, 8 am PDT; and Monday, May 28, 3:30 pm PDT;

Making Your Moodle Mobile

·       Moodle 2.1 introduced the ability to set different themes to be used when different devices are detected. Moodle 2.2 now has a standard theme as part of the core which was designed for smartphone and tablet browsers screens.

·       Sunday, May 27, 9:30 am PDT; and Monday, May 28, 5:00 pm PDT;

We look forward to connecting with you and Moodle users around the world at the 2012 iMoot!