Delivering e learning at large scale - final

Delivering e-learning at large scale

Dr Ross MackenzieThe Open University, United Kingdom

International conference on e-learning and e-teaching (ICELET2010) Tehran December 2010

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Outline• The Open University

• Learning & Teaching Online – OU Virtual Learning Environment

• OpenLearn– Open Education Resources

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Dr Ross Mackenzie• Lead the team that develops

and supports systems for online learning at The Open University

• Have been at The Open University since 1995

• Previously at Oxford University and at Cornell University in New York.

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The Open University• The OU is the biggest university in the UK with:

– more than 250,000 students– more than 7,000 tutors– more than 4,500 academic/support/admin staff

• Since launch in 1969 more than 2 million people worldwide have studied with the OU

• Headquarters in Milton Keynes (80 km north of London)– Regional Offices throughout the UK

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The Open University• Distance Learning / Supported Open Learning

• Technology Supported Learning– Always using new technologies

• TV & Radio in the 1970’s• Personal Computers in 1980/1990’s• Online in 2000’s

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OU/LTS image

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Learning and Teaching Solutions• OU Media and Learning Systems development house

• Produce and deliver all the learning materials used on OU courses

• 400 staff – editors / instructional designers / software developers

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OU VLE• Based on Moodle

– open source learning management system

• Scale of Activity– 24 x 7 operation– More than 1M transactions/day– More than 50,000 students/day

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OU OpenLearn• Freely distributable learning materials

• 800 study units– Drawn from across OU curriculum– Study time 3 – 30 hours

• OpenLearn platform also based on Moodle

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Moodle

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Moodle• Originally launched in 2001

• Recently (this month) updated to version 2.0

• Used by 50,000 organisations in 212 countries, and in 82 languages

• Estimated 40,000,000 users20

Moodle – Open Source• Distributed under a GNU General Public License

– source code is always available

• Gives the ability to any organisation to modify Moodle to meet their own needs, and if they wish to share developments back with the community

• Moodle is PHP-based which means it is relatively easy to modify

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Adopting Moodle for use at OU• Adopted by the OU in mid-2005

• Didn’t do everything that the OU needed, but were able to modify it as needed

• Established a development team in Milton Keynes to allow Moodle to be developed for use at the OU– all OU modifications shared back with community

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Extending Moodle• Authoring Learning Materials

• Collaborative Tools

• Online Assessment

• Portfolio

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Learning Materials• Authored in XML – using Microsoft Word

– OU custom module allows authors to create learning materials with embedded• Images• Videos• Quizzes

– Don’t need specialist web authoring skills– Aligned with OU print production processes

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Collaborative Tools• Key to much of the OU learning experience

• Forums – Allows dialogs between students and learners

• Blogs– Personal web log – can be limited to OU community

or made open to the outside world• Wikis

– Collaborative working environment 26

Forum• Threaded discussion environment

• Groupings can be limited to tutorial groups, whole course or entire OU community

• OU rewrote forum to ensure that it would be able to handle very high traffic levels

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Blog• OU enhanced standard moodle blog to allow comments

to be added

• Can be set up within the context of a course or as a personal tools for students to use

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Wiki• Original Moodle wiki had lots of functionality

• OU use indicated that this overhead was distracting students from their learning activity

• OU Wiki is a ‘minimalist’ tool tuned to the needs of the learner

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Online Assessment• OU has invested heavily in the assessment elements of

Moodle

• Re-engineered Moodle Gradebook

• Have redeveloped Moodle quiz engine (for Moodle 2.1)

• Developed an extension to the quiz to allow richer question types (OpenMark) 33

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Portfolio• Tools to allow students to

– Store– Save– Share documents

• Initial version had too steep a learning curve, later simpler version had better adoption

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OU Moodle Architecture• Three layer architecture – Red Hat-based

• 5 webservers – 4 load-balanced serving users, 1 running cron

• Database cluster – postgreSQL 8.3• NFS cluster

• Storage Area Network 37

Webservers

Database servers File servers

Storage Area Network 38

OU VLE - More than Moodle• Real time collaboration via Elluminate (now Blackboard

Collaborate)

• Google Apps for Education – providing email and other collaborative and storage facilities

• Assignment Handling – document tracking and handling movement of assignment between students and tutors.

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Elluminate/Blackboard Collaborate• Real time collaborative tools – audio / video / whiteboard

• Tightly integrated with Moodle

• Used with c. 12000 modern language students

• Trial use in most areas of the University

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Google Apps for Education• Being introduced for all students to provide

– email

– large storage capacity

– collaborate document authoring environment

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Assignment Handling• Much of the OU’s continuous assessment is based on

essays – almost all students now submit electronically

• Handling system relays essays to correct tutor

• Returns to student after marking

• System handles over 1 M assignments / year44

Supporting Users• Critical in

deploying e-learning at scale

• Learners

• Teachers

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Moving to Moodle 2.0• Will be moving to Moodle 2.0 over the next 12 months

• Taking the opportunity to re-engineer and improve a significant number of elements of the OU VLE

• Adding new functionality to improve personalisation, support for user generated content, mobile devices

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More Information• About The Open University

– http://www.open.ac.uk • About Moodle

– http://moodle/org• About OpenLearn

– http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn/ • My Work blog

– http://bit.ly/rossmac47

Any Questions?

Dr Ross Mackenzie

r.a.mackenzie@open.ac.uk 48