KU: Although increasing numbers of colleges and universities are adopting open-source applications to support their online teaching and learning, there are still a lot of myths about the benefits and challenges of open-source software. What drove you toward considering and selecting an open-source learning-management system?
RS: We looked at this decision as being a lot more than about selecting a technology it was about a new direction for UCLA. First, it was a commitment to becoming part of a larger community of educators and institutions; second, it was about open source; third, it was about a common toolbox to support teaching, learning, AND collaboration; and fourth, it was about UCLA units and individuals working together to provide a common service that supports rapid innovation. Our goal is to benefit through contributing to and learning from a global partnership that holds values of access and cooperation matching those of UCLA.
KU: What are some of the opportunities or benefits that you see open source providing your program and how are you ensuring that they can be realized?
RS: This is a hard question to answer right now because we are very new to this. As mentioned earlier, we see real opportunity and benefit from working with a global community on an open project that will also work with other open projects (for example, Sakai AND Moodle). We have little interest in being tied to large commercial vendors who are guided by larger market forces that have little to do with UCLA teaching, learning, and collaboration needs. It is our belief that other individuals and institutions that gravitate to open-source communities will share some common set of values. We found that Moodle had a particularly strong, mature, and sustainable community whose culture and processes were consistent with our own.
We are planning on becoming active members of the Moodle community once we have the expertise to provide value back to that community. We think this is a good start to realizing the potential of open source. We are also planning on working with institutions and organizations that share a commitment to interoperability.
KU: What are some of the challenges that you anticipate coming with your selection of an open-source platform and how are you addressing them?
RS: Like a lot of universities, we are fiercely independent at every level - as individuals, as departments, as schools and divisions. It is part of our culture and we have had success with it, seeing it as fundamental to innovation. We have not had a lot of experience collaborating with open-source communities. We have much to learn about being good collaborators internally and externally. Once again, we thought that Moodle was an open community in which we could actively participate.
KU: As you might be aware, the State University of New York 1 (SUNY) just went though a process where they identified a “preferred” LMS vendor. During the evaluation process, all open-source software options were flatly rejected by SUNY System Administration and many of the SUNY campuses. Why do you think that UCLA was willing to select an open-source option? Do you think that UCLA is particularly well positioned to take advantage of the benefits of an open-source application? If so, why?
RS: This is an interesting question. I think that we were at home with the fundamental values of open source, particularly in the instructional arena, where local developers work with faculty to build custom solutions to meet discipline and pedagogical needs. We know that making a good decision about open source is really the same thing as making a good decision about commercial software or any other major investment. You need to understand your requirements, understand how the software will meet them, and evaluate your options based on those criteria. Open-source and commercial software have different characteristics that you evaluate, but it is all a matter of understanding your own requirements and then exercising some discipline and rigor in your evaluation process. We also learned that you need to understand your institutional culture and technical expertise and evaluate your own capacity to achieve success. Fundamentally we saw opportunity with open source and unacceptable risk with a proprietary option. We have confidence in mature open-source software, a strong community, and our ability to make our choice successful.
KU: What was it that you and the evaluation team really liked about Moodle?
RS: First, it is important to recognize that there are things that we liked about a number of opensource applications including Sakai, and there are things that we saw as disadvantages with Moodle. On the aggregate through, we felt that Moodle was a better choice for us and how we want to leverage the benefits of open source and the community that surrounds a project. We really liked the fact that Moodle was a mature project with a robust community and is a richly featured application. We decided that Moodle could quickly meet many of our teaching, learning, and collaboration needs in its current form and would likely be adopted reasonably quickly by our faculty. We also liked the Moodle community, which functions in part as an established hierarchy, similar to Linux, with the core design group identifying priorities based on suggestions for changes through informal discussion and community contributions. It is active, responsive, and robust. An overview of some of the benefits identified by the evaluation team include rich and stable functionality in the tools most commonly used and valued by instructors, a rich set of administrator tools and user documentation, and a community that has a proven track record of timely bug fixes and development of new features. In addition, UCLA has some experience with Moodle with at least three UCLA units already using it for instruction.
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