1. farewell webct, hello moodle:
managing institutional change
Stephen Bruce & James Blair
Information Services
Edinburgh Napier University

2. outline
• project 2 year timeline
• webct to moodle migration
• on the job technical skills development
• maintaining feature continuity
• devolved administration
• value of learning technologists
• involving academics in the change
• institutional benchmark for technology
• upcoming developments

3. project 2 year timeline
Oct
2010
Functional requirements gathering
Feb
2011
RFI issued to suppliers
Apr
2011
Product Focus Days
May
2011
Decision in principle for Moodle
Aug
2011
Decision confirmed. Recruitment process begins
Oct
2011
ITQ Moodle Partner. Synergy Learning appointed
Jan
2012
Staff training server available Online staff development
Apr
2012
Trimester modules migrated from WebCT to Moodle Staging server
May
2012
Staging server moved
to Moodle Live server
Moodle Live for
trimester 3 students
Migration of TR1 modules
to Moodle Live
July
2012
Migration trimester 2 modules and programme sites to Moodle Live
Sept
2012
Moodle Live for all students
Oct
2012
Access to WebCT closes. WebCT Archive server available

4. webct to moodle migration
• migration service provided by the University of Kent
• entire WebCT database migrated to a Moodle 1.9 server (WebCT Archive)
• manually moved ~2500 migrated courses to Moodle Live (backup/restore)
• post-migration course clean up
• issues with 1.9 MYSQL courses restoring to 2.2 MSSQL. Now using 2.2 MySQL
• webct archive server has preserved migrated course from session 2005-6

5. webct to moodle migration

6. on the job technical skills development
• delayed recruitment of system developers
• utilise existing IT staff
• quickly configure multiple moodle environments
• benchmarking server OS and database combinations
• conference calls with moodle partner

7. maintaining feature continuity
• manually convert Learning Modules to Moodle Books
• group sign-up sheets
• grades customisation
• course overview plus
• collapsed topics to manage long scrolling pages of migrated courses

8. devolved administration
• staff enrolment processed by administrators in each school
• move away from SITS & external dB
• accommodate exceptional student enrolments
• create non-standard courses and associated enrolments
• custom moodle roles to control access to the block

9. value of learning technologists
• funded through limited project money
• based within the faculties
• support multiple aspects of the transition to moodle
• deal with a rapidly evolving system
• work with information services
• focussing the university to consider future support

10. involving academics in the change
• vle requirements, product focus days, final vote for moodle
• established local moodle operational groups
• sharing practice and promoting the new benchmark
• moodle advisory forum

11. institutional benchmark for technology
• new university benchmark for use of technology.
to make active use of technology to meaningfully enhance the learning,
teaching and assessment experience across all modules.
• 3E framework of examples to illustrate how technology can be used to across
a range of contexts.
• Published under a Creative Commons license for potential re-use and
adaptation.

12. institutional benchmark for technology
illustrative examples
module mappings

13. upcoming developments
• planning for the academic year roll forward
• upgrade to 2.4, theme enhancements, ePortfolio
• evaluation of moodle and new benchmark
• digital futures working group led by VP Academic
• digital literacies
• digitally enhanced education
• digital equivalence
• digital communication and outreach
• digital scholarship
• digital infrastructure

14. thank you
Stephen Bruce
Academic Development Advisor
Information Services
Edinburgh Napier University
s.bruce@napier.ac.uk
James Blair
Head of Application Systems Group
Information Services
Edinburgh Napier University
j.blair@napier.ac.uk