Commissioned by the Executive Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs and the Executive Vice Chancellor of Business and Finance, the CSU Learning Management Systems (LMS) Futures Workgroup issued a report, "Recommendations for Future LMS Directions for the California State University System," in December 2009. The LMS Futures Workgroup is made up of four campus Provosts, four CIOs, three faculty statewide senators and Chancellor's Office staff; it met throughout 2009. This report recommends the creation of an array of systemwide LMS Services. These would begin with a centrally-supported LMS "safety net" and grow to provide a "superset" of LMS services whereby campuses could choose to opt-in at any time. The Recommendations report suggests an integrated approach that considers more than just the LMS system by looking at the larger picture of educational practices, support structures, and other aspects of LMS services, as illustrated in this diagram.

This report is based on recent research and analysis in multiple areas:

• External Market Scan of LMS Providers
• Peer Review of Statewide Higher Education LMS Consortia
  
• Critical Elements for Future LMS Directions
  

All reports are available at the CSU DAT website at: http://dat.cdl.edu/lms/lms-futures-group/

The Chancellor's Office has engaged with Moodlerooms to provide hosting, integration, and support services for the Moodle open source LMS. CSU Northridge is also using Moodlerooms to host their campus LMS. Moodlerooms offers both "basic" Moodle and an enriched Moodle platform called "Joule."  Joule provides enriched functionality including:

• Integrations (Conduit-Peoplesoft, Shibboleth)
• Automated course creation, backup, restore
• Course content migration support
• Advanced reporting, automatic notifications, interface
• Optional ePortfolio and Content Management System

If you would like an account on the Joule or standard Moodle server, please contact John Whitmer, jwhitmer@csuchico.edu.

On January 22, Blackboard delivered two webinars to 9 CSU campuses that focused on migration to the new version of Blackboard v9.1, which is scheduled for release in March 2010. The new release has many new features, including an improved interface, instructor and student dashboards, and integration with 3rd party applications including Facebook and iPhones.

As most campuses are aware, Blackboard will be ending support for WebCT CE/Vista in 2013. However, Blackboard is no longer promising a "feature parity" with WebCT within the original timelines, which is a major concern for many campuses. Blackboard is recommending a phased conversion dependent upon the current version of WebCT, as illustrated in the diagram. An "upgrade center" with information for campuses migrating to v9.1 is available at   http://www.blackboard.com/Sites/UpgradeCenter/

Presentation archives are available at the URLs below: 

• Blackboard for WebCT CE / Vista Campuses - http://tinyurl.com/yfmbcqq
• Blackboard Classic Campuses - http://tinyurl.com/yk7t4nt
  

CSU San Marcos

In September 2009, Cal State San Marcos began to seriously investigate moving from WebCT 6 to Moodle. Every group in Instructional and Information Technology Services (IITS) was involved as a server was configured, databases set up, migration issues explored, Peoplesoft integration resolved, a communication plan created and training options investigated. In October, with invaluable input from pre-pilot faculty, the decision was made to move forward with Moodle. Twenty-five faculty members representing all of the colleges will be teaching 55 courses in a spring semester pilot in February 2010. All faculty will be asked to identify archived course content they want migrated to Moodle. A custom conversion tool was created to import WebCT courses directly into Moodle and to free-up instructional developers from manually converting each course.

During spring semester, a rich array of training options will be shared with faculty and identified courses will be migrated to Moodle. By June 30, 2010 all requested course content will be converted. All summer and fall 2010 courses with online components will be offered through Moodle. This aggressive 10-month timeline is possible because of the commitment of all of IITS, support from the CSU Moodle Consortium, and the willingness of San Marcos faculty.

CSU Northridge

In June 2009, after a year-long consultative process, Cal State Northridge decided to transition from WebCT to Moodle during the 2009/10 academic year.  CSUN chose to use Moodlerooms to host their LMS server. A three-workshop training program was developed: Moodle Basics, Moodle Activities, and Moodle Quizzes and Gradebook.  Over 200 faculty have attended. In addition to face-to-face workshops, the campus also purchased licenses to Lynda.com Moodle training for both faculty and students. These same Lynda.com Moodle training modules are now available to the entire CSU, made possible by a CSU systemwide license.

CSUN also created training materials themselves. The first generation were designed totally to support face-to-face workshops. They are currently working on the second generation that will be more useful as stand-alone guides.  The first of three is available at http://www.csun.edu/it/training/pdfs/moodle_getting_started022510.pdf. The second should be available within a couple of weeks and the third will be completed shortly thereafter.

During the fall semester nearly 150 faculty members taught about 300 courses using Moodle. As the Spring semester begins there are about 200 faculty teaching 450 courses. Northridge is also currently migrating content from previous WebCT courses.

CSUN is currently integrating Moodle with their student information system to help streamline course site creation and enrollment processes. Moodle has also been integrated with Turnitin and Elluminate. Integration with additional instructional applications is planned.

Collaboration has begun with the library to embed their services in Moodle. This collaboration includes several components. First, a librarian "role" has been created so that faculty can embed a librarian in their courses to interact with students. Second, discipline-specific resource links are being developed that faculty can add to their courses. Finally, the library has begun to use Moodle to develop online training modules.

3rd Annual Emerging Technologies for Online Learning Symposium, a joint symposium of Sloan Consortium, MERLOT and MoodleMoot July 20-23, 2010 The Fairmont Hotel, San Jose, CA This symposium is designed to bring together individuals interested in the technological aspects of online learning. The symposium tracks focus on the technologies that drive online learning, highlighting research, applications and best practices of important emerging technological tools. Experts, intermediate users and novices are welcome to participate in symposium activities that will include face-to-face and virtual components. Online registration and additional information is available at http://www.sloanconsortium.org/et4online.

MoodleMoot in San Jose, July 20-23

The 2010 West Coast MoodleMoot will take place July 20-23 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, CA, in collaboration with Sloan-C and MERLOT. Staff from CSU campuses that are close enough to drive (Monterey, San Francisco, Maritime) are especially encouraged to attend. We hope that others will be able to participate, as the CSU now has 6 campuses using or migrating to Moodle. Anticipated session topics include: migration, integration, communication tools, mapping WebCT/Blackboard specifically to Moodle tools, grade book, sys admin best practices, etc. For conference details go to http://www.sloanconsortium.org/et4online.

CATS2010, Online April 13-15

The 13^th annual CATS conference will be online April 13-15. The theme is "CATS Be Nimble: Academic Technology in a Challenging Climate." With all the changes taking place on the campuses in terms of LMS, this conference provides a great opportunity for you/your colleagues & staff to share with peers throughout the CSU system how they are addressing transformations, migrations, and other issues. Session proposals are being accepted through February. http://cats.cdl.edu/online_2010.

The Fall semester has been a busy time for updates to the recently refined Directors of Academic Technologies Website at http://dat.cdl.edu. A new section has been added for the CSU Moodle Consortium, and there are additional pages for the systemwide LMS initiative, among others. The latest LMS reports are also available under the LMS Initiatives menu and LMS Futures workgroup option. For the latest information, click on "What's New?" on the home page. 

Note: Some documents and other notes on this web site are password-protected. It's easy to get an account - just click on the "Work for the CSU?" link on the Home page.