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NSO 2006

Academic Computing Center > ACC in the News > New Moodle System to replace WebCT

New 'Moodle' system to replace WebCT
New Learning Management System is less costly, "open-source" software

Source: Outlook Student's Newspaper, Volume XXXVII, Issue 5

Ramsey Nasser and Karim Harmouche

Outlook staff

As of fall 2007, AUB's WebCT system was replaced with Moodle, acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. This serious and difficult changeover is the result of the Academic Computing Center's (ACC) efforts to keep AUB's systems useful and up to date.

Increasing prices and restrictions on Learning Management Systems (LMS) like WebCT forced the ACC to begin exploring better options. More important, the ACC wishes to promote an "open culture" of learning and create a community on campus. To these financial and philosophical ends, Moodle was selected as the best choice for AUB.

Despite the war, the ACC has pushed Moodle forward. Already, 200 course-sections are using Moodle, with positive feedback. Workshops are being provided for faculty to prepare them to use this new tool, and a feature-demo "class" is available online, to all AUB students who want to try out Moodle.

Switching LMS's is not an easy task. The entire system has to be uprooted and rebuilt, resulting in long hours of extra work for the ACC staff. Furthermore, the users (AUB students and teachers) will have to learn a new interface. Despite this, Director of ACC Rosangela Silva, said that Moodle was worth the difficulties the changeover introduced.

The most obvious benefit is the financial one. WebCT is commercial software that AUB purchased. After WebCT merged with rival LMS Blackboard, giving the new company significant control over the market, prices went up. Moodle is completely free software, meaning that money previously used to finance an LMS can be used more productively.

Silva stressed the point that the switch would not be made if Moodle was not equal to or superior to WebCT in terms of quality and features. Moodle has all the features one can expect from an LMS and found in WebCT, such as forums, quizzes, chatting, assignments, albeit with different names, and more. Moodle was ensured to be a step forward for AUB's LMS.

To this end, an important feature of Moodle is the philosophy behind it. Moodle is "open source" software, meaning that the original, internal programming of the product is available to the public and open to modification or expansion. Unlike "closed source" software, like WebCT, whose programming is hidden from users, new Moodle features can be written by anyone with programming experience.

This results in a thriving community of Moodle developers from universities all around the world trading hundreds of modules (small programs that work with Moodle to add new features) that they have written. For example, many people have written language modules, modules that translate Moodle into different languages, allowing AUB's Arabic courses to share in the LMS for the first time. A similar feature in WebCT would have been prohibitively expensive.

Instructional Designer Ghassan Geara ensured that this open source architecture would be used to its fullest, satisfying teachers' or students' requests for new features by searching the community. Silva suggested Computer Science projects that involved writing Moodle modules. With this open philosophy, the limits of Moodle's capabilities are up to its users' imaginations.

ACC hopes Moodle's open philosophy can help create a "community of learning" in AUB. Many of the tools that Moodle comes with are meant to generate dialogue among students pertaining to the subject matter of the class. Features like forums and wiki encourage a give-and-take approach to learning that involves students, as opposed to the more "traditional" passive receiving of information from the instructor.

Silva hopes that teachers will become involved in the Moodle community by discussing the product and teaching methods with instructors in similar fields all around the world.

Many universities are making the switch to open source software for reasons similar to AUB's. Moodle was originally created by Martin Dougiamas as a Ph.D. project while at Curtin University in Australia. He says the project was born out of frustrations with existing commercial LMSs, such as the system he administered WebCT.