Looking Ahead to Moodle

As many of you are aware, the College's WebCT license will expire after this academic year.  WebCT will no longer be supported by its parent company Blackboard.  Over the past several months members of IITS have met with faculty and staff to discuss our replacement options for WebCT.  In addition, many of you attended our Tech for Teaching Day session in May which focused on choosing a replacement for WebCT and provided valuable feedback to us.  After weighing the pros and cons of several different LMS's (Learning Management Systems) and listening to your opinions, we have chosen Moodle as our new LMS.

Moodle is an open source product that is gaining market share in the higher education field.  It is very robust and integrates well with many third-party technologies and compares very favorably with Blackboard and other commercial Learning Management Systems.   For more information about Moodle, please visit http://www.moodle.com.

IITS is committed to supporting the needs of faculty and students as we make the transition from WebCT to Moodle.  We will continue to use WebCT during the fall 2008 and spring 2009 semesters.  

Below is a tentative timeline for our migration from WebCT to Moodle:

Fall 2008

• We will begin to migrate copies of existing WebCT courses to the Moodle platform. 
• IITS instructional designers will receive Moodle training
• Moodle training workshops will be offered to faculty (late fall)
• WebCT will still be our "live" online course area

Spring 2009

• Faculty will be given access to their Moodle course areas (without students)
• Faculty volunteers will be sought to pilot test Moodle in their courses
• Moodle training workshops will be offered to faculty
• WebCT will still be our "live" online course area

Summer 2009

• All summer online courses will be offered in Moodle
• Moodle training workshops will be offered to faculty and students

Fall 2009

• WebCT server will be shutdown
• All online course activities will be offered in Moodle