OERS AT RRU: CUSTOMIZING AND SHARING MOODLE CODE

Emma Irwin and Mary Burgess

RRU Open Educational

Resource Initiative

How? Kind people at

BC Campus.How?

Support from staff.

How? Support

from senior executive.

What? Moodle training

materials.

Why? Marketing.

Why? Faculty

Recruitment

What? Moodle Code.

Why? Open Source

products we’ve used.

What? Courses with pedagogy

Why? We have useful resources.

What? Multimedia resources.

Why did Royal Roads share?

Our use of open source software.

Faculty recruitment

We have created some useful resources.

Marketing

What are we sharing?

Customized Code

Instructional Multimedia

Moodle training resources

Courses with pedagogy

How did we do it?

Moodle code – some extracted, some newly written, shared back to Moodle community

Moodle training resources – posted on our public Moodle site for anyone to download and use

Instructional multimedia – posted in SOLR (BC Campus repository)

Courses – hosted on our public Moodle site and include the pedagogy

Open Source

CommunitiesOpen Source Software communities are DIFFERENT. Get to know yours!

SocialConferences (Moodlemoot)Meet-ups (start one!)Twitter

ContributionCode contributionsBug Fixes /PatchesForumsTest PlansFeedback!DocumentationTranslation

ChampionShare the enthusiasm, grow the project

1.95 (Default Courses) The process …

• Created Patch from Vanilla Moodle w/ our Default Course code• Tested code & patch• Documented • Conformed Moodle Standards• Created Moodle Tracker Task for Contrib• Reviewed by->Fr. Anthony Borrow• Created Moodle Plugin Entry• Added to Moodle Docs• Told the world! -> Forums• Respond to requests/bug reports and maintain• Now a part of core functionality in 2.0

Sharing CodeOur Experiences

2.1 (Team Assignments)

• created patches to support team assignment• Through test plan & documentation• Submitted it via Moodle tracker as a ‘new feature’ in core.• Very well received, needs for this functionality was echoed by many other institutions.• Functionality slated for 2.3 core assignment functionality

Sharing CodeOur Experiences

Lessons Learned/Next Steps?

• Start the conversation early• Check in often• Contribute Contribute Contribute