1	Open Source CMS Pilots Scott E. Siddall Denison University
2	The Denison pilot of CourseWork Gain first-hand experience Involve faculty and students Compare with commercial offerings and unbundled information services
3	Technical detail Sun LX50 running Solaris 5.8 Apache, Java 1.3, Tomcat 3, Oracle 9i CourseWork release 2.1 Linked to phpBB for discussion
4	The Pilot English Political Science Modern Language One 16-week semester
5	The Findings Support Two 1-hr training session with faculty One 30 minute in-class presentation 6 hrs spent in system administration in 16 weeks Faculty perspective Students aren’t well prepared to use CMS Much content is not “CMS ready” What is the value of integrating information services? Student perspective CourseWork was “transparent” See also a presentation at CLAC conference
6	Ohio Foundation of Independent Colleges pilot of CourseWork and CHEF Provide immediate, first-hand experience for experiments and courses Installation, hosting and support by The Longsight Group (http://longsight.com)
7	Technical detail One Dell PowerEdge 2650, dual processor, 4 Gb memory, 216 Gb RAID RedHat Linux 9 Apache 2, Java 1.4, Tomcat 4, PostreSQL CourseWork 2.5; CHEF 1.1.09 For both: load problems with connector between Apache and Tomcat Mod_j2k connector couple of bugs logged with Apache project went with an Apache Reverse Proxy instead
8	Technical experience: CourseWork 2.5 Stanford look and feel Uses pictures of pillars and Stanford colors Not easy to edit: graphics coalesced Used the Cambridge layout instead Cambridge port vs. Stanford code Cambridge port included hacks to handle PostgreSQL and Oracle About 10-12 bugs that we fixed no centralized location to handle bugs, fixes, and patches Sourceforge code managed by Cambridge No discussion board software No easy way to integrate with 3rd-party discussion tools CourseWork creates obtuse passwords (random negative integers) We created Java classes that create "speakable" passwords using only letters Easier to remember CourseWork has no mechanism to send a user a forgotten password We created custom Java code to send a user a lost password We also created custom PHP code that super-users could use to view all user accounts/emails/passwords
9	Technical experience: CourseWork 3.0 Cambridge port vs. Stanford code Needed to re-integrate PostgreSQL functionality back into new Stanford code CourseWork 3.0 is not database-independent like many open-source projects Needed to reintegrate all custom Longsight fixes/features from CourseWork 2.5 Cambridge release of CourseWork 2.x includes features in Cocoon Created our own source repository of clean, PostgreSQL-compatable CourseWork 3.0 No place to report bugs back to Stanford (Bugzilla)
10	Technical experience: CHEF 1.1.09 Stores elements in the database using XML additional level of complexity to debug/add functionality to New terminology realms, sites, workspaces Student self-registration didn’t match small college faculty expectations Passwords are not accessible to system administrator but can be reset CourseTools NG contains some U of Michigan-specific elements creating course sites Look and feel is relatively hard to edit
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17	The Findings Support One three-hour training session for campus support staff Online email helpdesk – 24 hr response time Faculty perspective Enthusiastic and successful without prior CMS experience; want to continue in Fall ‘04 Want more options for assessment Most drawn to CHEF for discussion and interaction Drawn to CourseWork for its interface structure and repository Student perspective Once again – transparent and successful
18	Limitations and needs Some feature limitations, such as: Ungraded assignments Multiple correct responses in multiple choice questions Longer interval for timed activities More categories of copyright status (i.e., TBD) Sought after assessment tools Sakai Assessment Manager
19	Overall Results Very few system issues with these open source applications User problems resolved in 1-24 hrs Relatively low training requirements Basic CMS tools meet high percentage of needs
20	What’s next? OFIC Open Source CMS Pilot Program continues in fall semester Pedagogically-designed features from small colleges Sakai Assessment Manager Combination of Indiana’s Navigo and Stanford’s Assignment & Assessment Manager Sakai Project
21	"Return to home" Return to home