Hi Heather, You've put you finger on a really important issue. First some background. The “M” word (Mandate) is seldom used at UCLA - the one exception possibly being legal compliance. Decisions about technology and funding to support those decisions are made at the level of academic units. UCLA's Common Collaboration and Learning Environment will be successful if it has value. Opt-in was a very important aspect of the FCET's vision. They believed that value should be the driver of choice. The buy-in since the decision has been even greater than anticipated. Given the potential for a distributed implementation (a federated architecture with llots of Moodles running in local units), the challenge ahead will be to indeed implement a common experience for the end user. We will provide a common service and anticipate that many academic units will choose to use it, rather than run their own. Others may make that choice later when they have confidence that the common service provides the customization and autonomy they currently value from a locally provided service. Other units may continue to run their own Moodle service. UCLA, in short, has made two big decisions at the same time - Moodle and the provision of a common service.
- 863 reads
