Moodle Transition Information
As you may be aware, last year the Tri-Colleges conducted a major product review comparing Blackboard with a popular alternative called Moodle.
- Blackboard is the dominant commercial software company in higher education.
- Moodle is free, open source software that has been adopted by many institutions of higher education, including many liberal arts colleges.
After a thorough investigation, the three schools decided to convert from Blackboard to Moodle over two academic years.
This coming academic year, you will be able to use either Blackboard or Moodle for your courses. Fall 2011 course shells are now available in Blackboard. We will have course shells available in Moodle within a month. Blackboard will continue to be available and fully supported for the 2011–2012 academic year. However, Blackboard will no longer be available after the Spring 2012 semester.
We want to make this transition go well for you. This summer and through the academic year we will be offering one-on-one assistance, “Getting started with Moodle” workshops, as well as Moodle documentation and tutorials.
Blackboard or Moodle? – How and why the decision was madeThe cornerstone of the review was a test/pilot project across the three schools. The test group of 30 faculty and 200 students used and reviewed Moodle and a major new version of Blackboard. A review team of IT, library, and language center staff investigated the features of the two products to determine that both met our requirements. An assessment team conducted interviews and surveys with pilot participants, which they compared with some existing baseline data about LMS usage and satisfaction.
In brief, although they may look a little different on the surface, Blackboard and Moodle have a very similar set of features and capabilities. The review committee and pilot participants generally thought both products were good and sufficient for our needs. With there being so little difference in their usefulness, the long-term costs of Blackboard became a major factor in the decision. After the initial costs of transition, the decision to move away from a commercial product that annually increases its subscription costs at rates well ahead of inflation was seen as a major financial sustainability advantage in switching to Moodle.
Will I be able to move materials from Blackboard into the new system?
In most cases, your syllabus and readings can be moved relatively easily. However, materials in blogs, wikis, discussions, assessments, and other Blackboard tools will take more work and may not be able to migrate fully. We will work with you in discovering what tools in Moodle best fit your needs, as well as course design options since Moodle does have a different layout than Blackboard and more tools and options to customize your courses.
When do I have to migrate to Moodle?
You will be able to use Blackboard during the 2011-2012 Academic year. However, after Spring 2012, Moodle will be the only option available on campus. At this point, you will have to transfer all of your courses and documents out of Blackboard and into Moodle. We will be happy to help you through this process in order for it to be as seamless as possible.
Where can I get help with transitioning from Blackboard to Moodle?
We would like to help you with the transitioning process as much as possible. If you would like to begin using Moodle and would like assistance with transferring over your materials from your courses in Blackboard, email moodlehelp@brynmawr.edu, include your information and information on the course(s) you would like to move, and we would be more than happy to assist you.
