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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
– 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
