Extending Moodle Across the Institution: Integration Strategies and Methods Academic Technology, San Francisco State University Andrew Roderick, Technology.

Extending Moodle Across the Institution: Integration Strategies and Methods

Academic Technology, San Francisco State University

Andrew Roderick, Technology Development ManagerClifford Tham, MOODLE Developer Daniel Koepke, Software Developer

Workshop Agenda

• Introduction

• What Is Integration? Worldview

• Case Study – Lecture Capture

• Integration in Practice

Open Discussion, Questions, Comments

About Us

• San Francisco State• 1,500 faculty and 30,000 students• Commuter campus

• Moodle since 2007• Branded as iLearn; customized• Moodle 1.9.9 in Fall• 2,400 courses

Who Are You

• Your name

• Your institution

• Your role

• Why are you here?

• Favorite classic rock song?

Why Integrate?

An Integrated World

• Blackboard buys Elluminate, Wimba

• Moodlerooms releases Joule

• API’s now a selling point• Key purchasing decision

(“will it integrate with my existing environment”)

“Should I be integrating?” is now“What should I integrate?”

Our Worldview

• Choose the best options for our users• Build, buy, and/or download

• Focused is better than monolithic

• Experience, functionality matter most• Is it nice to use?• Does it do what people need it to do?

Design the Experience

• Understand your environment

• Think about the gestalt

• Pick your pieces carefully

• Don’t just choose what’s available, easy

• Don’t let technology dictate the choices

Take control of your design!

Do Not Want!

Integration

• Wire together the pieces we have• Loose coupling

• Choose what to expose, what to hide• Façades hide seams between systems• Not all or nothing: might make it seamless

for students, but show the software to faculty

Integration with the LMS

• Bring content and functionality into the learning context• Courses• Activities

• Not just about delivery of static content• Expose content’s functionality• Expose content to LMS’s functionality

How About A Case Study?

Case Study – CourseStream

How it works

• Faculty presents lecture

• Lecture is processed into multiple formats (rich media (flash), video only, audio only)

• Faculty distributes content

Case Study – CourseStream

Workflow w/o Integration

• Faculty login to Echo360 system

• Copy links

• Distribute – via email, web page

• Other options include rss, publisher plugins

Case Study – CourseStream

Integrate into LMS (Moodle)

• Users already using

• Simplify faculty workflow

• Hide multiple systems faculty don’t need to know about

• Automate distribution

Case Study – CourseStream

Echo360’s Moodle Publisher Plugin

• Publishes to Moodle Calendar

• Out of course context

• Out of faculty’s control

• Calendar may not be heavily used component

Case Study – CourseStream

Integrate into Moodle

• Put it further into context of the learning experience

• Give control back to faculty

• Allow faculty to integrate into teaching

• Focus on teaching and course design instead of technical details

Case Study – CourseStream

SF State’s Echo360 / Moodle Integration

• Resource

• Block

• Management Component

• Administrative Component

Case Study – CourseStream

Use Case

Place in topic w/ other resources

Place all in one topic

Block, populating auto

Block, by topic

Reuse

Case Study – CourseStream

Removed faculty’s necessity to acknowledge the existence of echo360 server

Simplified Workflow

Still allowed faculty flexibility

Faculty can focus on course design

Design of IntegrationResource – Method of distributing content (PDFs, MP3, DOCs, Web Page, Text Page)

Blocks – Method of delivery content, activities secondary to course materials

Management Interface – Method of distributing content (PDFs, MP3, DOCs, Web Page, Text Page)

Resource

Seamlessly integratelectures into course design using the Echo360 Resource

Resource

Integrate lectures into course design

• By topic/theme

• By chronology

• By course materials– Quizzes, Lectures, Assignments, etc

Block

Group several lecture captures together and present as one unit with the Echo360 block

Creating / Editing a Block

Select format to distribute to students Choose the order in which

lectures appear for students

Block

• Group

• Reuse / Repurpose

• Contextualize

Managing Your Lectures

View all the captured lectures available to your Moodle course

Managing Your LecturesView and manage the captures available for your Moodle courseView list of lectures

available for use

Rename lecture captures

Preview lecture format without placing in course

View lecture capture metadata

Managing Your Lectures

• Preview lecture without placing in course

• Lists lectures that are available for use

• Rename captures

• View capture metadata

Integration is like Watercolor

Integration in Practice

• What to integrate?

• How to integrate?

• Application readiness

• Moodle readiness

• Prioritize real, known needs• Improve the things people already do• Software people already use

• Why does it make sense…• In the LMS context?• In your environment?• To your users?

What to Integrate?

What to integrate? Getting Input.• Needs assessments/task analysis

• Governance

• Usage/Impact

• Applicability to teaching and learning tasks

How to Integrate?

• Link to or embed• Content, functionality, interactivity

• Many integrations will mix-and-match• Façade for display, common functionality• Jump into application for more

• Where does it belong in Moodle?• Resources, blocks, activities, etc.

Application Readiness

• What does the application provide?• Application Programmer’s Interface (API)• Syndication (Atom/RSS)• IFRAME• Link

• Authentication/authorization

Moodle Readiness

• Moodle provides most extensibility with• Blocks• Resources

• You may need to change core code to handle more advanced cases

• Moodle 2.0 changes things up• Repository API, more

Taming MoodleOption 1•Limit changes to modules, blocks•Avoid changes to core code, work around obstacles

Option 2•Make wholesale changes to Moodle•Re-architect many underlying structures

Best Option•Minimize changes to core code, but change what is necessary for your campus•Balance between changes to core code and foregoing usability, maintainability

What to Turn Off in Moodle

Integration examples

• Available API or Custom (roll your own)

• SIS, Authentication, other institutional data

• Syndication

• Repository

• Application

How Much Is Too Much?

Issues to consider:

• Interface

• Multiple integrations doing the same thing (ex: repository + library)

• Technical (scalability, performance)

• Security