Transcript An Evaluation of the Supporting Infrastructure for Deployment of the Moodle Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) at 8 African Universities Brenda Mallinson and Greig Krull e/merge.

An Evaluation of the Supporting
Infrastructure for Deployment of the
Moodle Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)
at 8 African Universities
Brenda Mallinson and Greig Krull
e/merge online conference
11 – 13 July 2012
Background - *PHEA ETI
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This initiative aims to support interventions in universities to make
increasingly effective use of educational technology to address some of the
underlying educational challenges facing the higher educational sector in
Africa.
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The proposed strategic objectives of the PHEA ETI are to:
– Support teaching and learning initiatives which integrate educational technology;
– Promote collaborative knowledge creation and dissemination;
– Get core institutional systems to work so that they support teaching and learning more
directly; and
– Research and report on educational technology activity in African universities by means
of a long term project.
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26 distinct sub-projects across 7 HEIs over 3 years
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The Partnership for Higher Education in Africa (PHEA) was a joint project of Carnegie Corporation of New York, The
Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the William and Flora
Hewlett Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Kresge Foundation.
Participating Higher Education Institutions
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Kenyatta University, Kenya (KU)
The University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (UDSM)
The University of Ibadan, Nigeria (UI)
The University of Education Winneba, Ghana (UEW)
The University of Jos, Nigeria (UJ)
The Catholic University of Mozambique, Mozambique (UCM)
Makerere University, Uganda
The *Open University of Tanzania (OUT)
* OUT was not part of the PHEA ETI, but were included in the Moodle survey.
Motivation for survey – Risk mitigation
• In order for the Educational Technology Initiatives to be
sustainable, appropriate supporting technologies needed to
be successfully implemented
• Failure to correctly implement and optimally maintain these
systems would result in initiatives not succeeding
• Each institutional Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) provided
supporting technology for the deployment of online courses
Implementation of Virtual Learning
Environment (VLE)
• A pre-project implementation baseline survey on the state of
educational technology use at each participating HEI was not
undertaken
• During the project planning phase, it was agreed to adopt or
migrate to the open source VLE, Moodle
• Enabled the Saide project support team to draw on previous
experiences in order to support implementation, maintenance
and end use of this system at each participating HEI
Use of Moodle
• Free, open source (OSS) e-learning platform
• A vibrant user and developer community (http://moodle.org)
– The Moodle Community is an network of over one million registered
users who interact through the community website to share ideas,
code, information and free support Currently 66,617 active sites
registered from 215 countries
• Typical features
– Learning activities types include forums, quizzes, assignments & wikis
– Communication tools include journals and instant messaging
– Access to Resources include embedded web pages, internal linked
files, external links to web sites
– Administration tools include user authentication, grading, learner
enrolment
Research Aim
• Collect and evaluate data concerning the respective
site deployments of the institutional VLEs
• Establish the associated strengths and weaknesses
• Collate lessons learned into a set of guidelines
relating to implementation and maintenance
procedures
Data Collection
• Instruments for data gathering were developed within the
identified focus areas for evaluation
• Evaluation consisted of:
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an analysis of policy documents
structured interviews with relevant university staff
as well as reviews of the system infrastructure
and general site observations
• Used follow-up email questions for additional information
required
Evaluation Focus Areas
1. Server hardware and software including security, network
access and end-user devices
2. Server maintenance and backups
3. Approaches to updates and upgrades
4. Institutional policies and procedures
5. Staff and student user support and training
Evaluation Findings
Note: The data was gathered over the period September 2010 – October 2011
by James Swash of NBA, a project partner.
General Findings
• Previous experience of using technology to support teaching
and learning varies considerably
• Some institutions were early adopters and others only
recently starting to engage in e-learning practices
• Resulting in a wide range of general status of the various
Moodle installations
• Ability exists to share the specific server and infrastructure
successes and failures of the early adopters with the more
recent ICT adopters, thus providing the potential for fast
tracking uptake
1. Hardware, Software & Network Findings
• Hardware and software:
– Two institutions had insufficient memory to support the growing
number of student users
– Data redundancy not always built in (i.e. lose data if hard drive fails)
– Sufficient hard drive space available for course files
• Network access and end-user devices
– Universities did not factor in additional internet usage for practical
sessions in campus computer laboratories
– Connection via fibre optic trunk is more stable than via relaying
switches, although does require costly expertise for initial installation
– Wireless hotspots – routers overloaded if maximum users connected
– Insufficient lab space for all students
2. Maintenance and Backup findings
• One university only conducts backups on a monthly basis
• Backup servers not in place at the majority of institutions at
that time
3. Approaches to updates and upgrades
• Updates and upgrades performed at different timings across
institutions
• Usually lag behind latest available version of the VLE
4. Institutional policies and procedures
• Only one (of eight) institution has a comprehensive e-learning
VLE policy
• Several institutions were in the process of drafting a policy
• Considerable time is taken for policies to be drafted and
adopted at an institutional level
• Policies are not always disseminated and understood by staff
• Institutions with more mature installations may share lessons
learnt with institutions with more recent deployment
5. Staff and student user support and
training
• Initial staff training performed by external providers
• External project support team focused on staff capacity
building
• Further internal support team training for staff and students
• Only 4 out of 8 institutions have dedicated e-learning support
centres / units
Suggested Guidelines
1. Hardware, Software & Network Guidelines
Suggested Optimal Server Specifications
Example Server
Operating System
Any 64 bit Linux distribution
Processor:
2 Intel® Xeon™ DP 5620 Processor - 2.4GHz Quad Core
RAM capacity
32 Gigabytes
Number of Hard drives:
6 Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) - 16MB 15000RPM hard disk drives
Hard drive Raid Level:
5 or 10 depending on Administrators preference
Total Hard drive capacity:
Over 500 Gigabytes
Backup storage
Enough storage to store backups and archives
Optical media:
DVD-ROM
Number of network adapters and
speed:
2x1000 Megabytes
Server Casing
Rack mount chassis
2. Server Maintenance and Backup Guidelines
• Maintenance policy in place should include:
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HDD & DB defragmentation
Checking logs
Optimizing server performance
Monitoring server usage and free resources
Plan for upgrades, installing updates etc
• Backups:
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are tested for their integrity
to be restored in the shortest time possible, minimise downtime
stored on writable DVDs
performed nightly
3. Update and Upgrade Guidelines
• Updates / upgrades should be done on a monthly basis
• When installing / upgrading Moodle, the latest “stable”
versions should be used and not the development versions
• Consideration is given to the consistency in the use of themes
that influence the look and feel of the website
4. Institutional Policy & Procedure Guidelines
• Comprehensive VLE policy needs to cover:
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Dedicated systems administrator
User groups and permissions
Staff support and training
Fair usage regarding band with
Establishment or management of E-learning Unit / Centre
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Complete and comprehensive policy for VLE server
Easily accessible
Policy should be enforced by the institution
Policy creation & update process defined & implemented
5. Staff and student user support and
training
• Adequate support setup for different users
– Staff to be able to create and maintain courses
– Students to be able to interact with platform
• Technical staff capacity (e.g. administrators) need to build
sufficient skills
– Linux, PHP, MySQL, networking, website hosting etc
• Moodle Platform capacity
– Website administrator & assistants, course creators, eLearning unit,
academic staff, students, training staff
Conclusion
• While the number of HEIs participating in the PHEA ETI
project increased the planning and implementation
complexity, the benefits of gathering and sharing information
of this technical nature across institutions were noteworthy.
• It is anticipated that these guidelines could lay a foundation in
the provision a robust, stable, secure and sustainable hosting
environment for the participating PHEA ETI HEI campus VLEs
and would also be relevant to other HEIs in Africa.