Changing more than the technology...

Hi,

I thought it might be worthwhile giving some of my thoughts about the non-techie aspects of the move to moodle. Most of what I way is geeky/techie so it might be a nice change of pace to step out of those shoes and speak a little about the wider context of moodle, VLEs, IT Systems and their role in the University.

First of all, let me say that a move to Moodle is a big step for us and not just a technological one. If anything the technology is a pretty minor thing - VLEs are pretty much a homogeneous breed. They've all got, more or less, the same tools and support the same formats and so on and so forth. Basically, with minor variations, they're all the same.

So - if ther're all the same - why are we moving to Moodle? The answer, in one word, is "Agility". And now I've made my best attempt to be pithy I'll slink back into my geek-corner and explain.

IT systems are strongest when they can be adapted to the needs of their users (I'm happy to debate this point but I don't think you will shift me from it). Frustratingly, for IT folk anyway, these needs change - sometimes on a daily basis. Consquently what we really want is IT systems that can adapt with us with the minimum of fuss, hassle and cost. This is really the holy grail of IT - having systems that work differently today from how they did yesterday and different for Bob than they do for Sue. Not an easy task and still one that's aspirational on the whole.

How does Moodle fit in with this? Well - Moodle is born out of a collaboritive effort of hundreds if not thousands of academics, techies and enthusiasts. It is Open Source software developed by its community of users. What this means is that there is no central 'owner' of Moodle and no commercial interest guiding the development. As a result adaptability is built in at a pretty core level - it has to be to satisfy that disperate group of people. Not only that but we can be one (or more) of those people. We can adapt it for our use and share those adaptions with the community.

Now - I hear what you're about to say - or at least those of you with your ear to the financial ground (is it paved with gold?). Surely taking something like that and spending time learning it, installing it, tweaking it, modifying it and generally making it into a YorkSJ system rather than a generic one is going to cost time, money, sweat and tears. The bad news is that the answer is "yes" on three of those fronts. The good news is that it is a big fat "no" on the money front. Moodle is actually saving us money over time as, because it is Open Source, it is free.

We do have to buy servers to put it on, backup tapes to store backups, network equipment to connect it up and so on. However, the big cost with our previous VLEs (WebCT and Blackboard) have been the commercial licenses and Moodle is most definitely free in that respect. What this means is that the University saves money whilst still being able to fund development work on Moodle. And in these financial waters we're currrently swimming in, savings + flexibility = WIN!

So - where does that leave us? With a shiny new system and a lot of techie friends accross the world to help us develop it the way we would like it to be. It won't be perfect out of the box and it will probably never be perfect but we certainly have the power in our hands to bring it closer than we have been before. That's where the real change is with Moodle - the power is in our hands.