The Auricle

by Derek Morrison, 30 April 2009

N.B. The following online essay represents the personal views of the author and should not be construed as necessarily representative of any other individual or organisation.

I would prefer to think that technological developments and experience would have, by this time, made the debate about what Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is most appropriate for use in HE in 2009 an expensive irrelevancy. Nevertheless, I am always intrigued to hear perfectly rational and detailed explanations of how, after an impressively rigorous research and commissioning activity, brand X was introduced into institution A. The next day I can be listening to equally rational and detailed explanations of why brand Y was introduced into institution B.

I’ve also posited in much earlier Auricle articles that if, at one stroke, some mythical bolt of lightning was to destroy all VLEs (as we currently know them) that there are now sufficient alternative options for use by academics and students that a process of disseminated self-repair would rapidly occur. Note, however, I emphasise academics and students. Such disseminated systems would, however, be unlikely to align with the expectations of adminstrators who are likely to be more comfortable with the concept of a VLE as a Learning Management System (LMS) that is itself but one facet of a centralised integrated information management system. As a minimum the existence of such LMS’ help convey a reassuring message of a significant online presence, if not actual online activity or some tangible evidence of enhanced learning and teaching.

But the mythical bolt of lightning is unlikely to materialise and so it is probably more useful to view the current situation as more like an evolving ecosystem where formal institution provision co-exists with less formal platforms, tools and artefacts. Some of that less formal provision is explicit and sometimes it forms part of what I’ve previously called the Hidden Learning Environment (HLE). What I want to reflect on in this posting is formal VLE provision in HEIs that have eschewed the proprietary offerings in favour of the open source route or are happy to support both proprietary and open source offerings. Others, for a variety of reasons, may now be considering their positions regarding their original proprietary choices. It is worth noting that some of the institutions that have embarked on this open source route are significant names in the UK HE sector who would not have embarked on this course lightly. They, therefore, perhaps offer useful reference models for those contemplating either commissioning, or migrating to, non proprietary offerings and from my personal perspective would help engender a healthier and more balanced digital ecosystem than we currently have.

Developing this more health and balanced digital ecosystem may be helped by Tom Watson’s, the UK Minister for Digital Engagement recent announcement of a government action plan for Open Source in Public IT projects, i.e. Open Source, Open Standards and Re–Use: Government Action Plan (Cabinet Office 24 February 2009). This opens the way for using open source when it will deliver best value for money. Notably, the Conservative Party has asserted that £600 million could be saved by using open source in public IT projects. See also Can we build a world with open source? (Guardian 5 March 2009)

But we have to stay grounded. There’s a lot of infrastructure and hard and soft investment out there. Hard, because of all that hardware and licences. Soft, because there are those who view their jobs and careers as allied to a particular VLE brand or who shudder at the thought of all that migration effort and retraining. Of course there are also those who would view this as an opportunity for refocusing and refreshment. I explored some of these issues in my ALT-C 2004 paper E-Learning Frameworks and Tools: Is it too late? – The Director’s Cut (Auricle, 15 September 2004). Or, again, way back in 2004 on another “bad hair” day in Clark Kent solutions have super-powers – well sort of! (Auricle, 15 October, 2004) I suggested:

… there’s a lot of e-learning activity in the world … right? There must be! There are thousands of Blackboard, WebCT et al ‘courses’ out there. Now let me pose a really difficult question. How much so called e-learning is really using a proprietary VLE as a content repository with perhaps a smidgen of noticeboard? Go on do the audit!

Warming to my theme I then suggested:

.. in many cases a VLE (as we currently know them) may be expensive overkill (licensing, training etc) for what after all is relatively simple initial requirements, e.g. post up some course content and make a few announcements. Before the hit squad arrives note the emphasis on initial 🙂

Perhaps another useful way of viewing the proprietary/open source VLE debate is to view both as analogous to petrol/diesel variants of the internal comubstion engine. While there may indeed be better solutions earlier investments have now created an infrastructure that makes switching to an alternative, perhaps more approrpriate, solution difficult.

Difficult, but not impossible for those inclined to do so.

There can be multiple reasons given for considering such a migration; including:

• Economic – the recurrent cost of proprietary licenses for the underlying platform or – and – third party extensions
• Economic – equivalency of functionality/usability being offered by non-proprietary systems.
• Control – desire to avoid creating institutional dependence on, or ‘lock-in’ to a proprietary supplier or a single platform.
• Control – the ability to make adjustments or improvements to the underlying platform without breaching proprietary constraints/licensing.
• Ethos – belonging to a support community separated from commercial drivers or influence.
• Ethos – focusing expenditure and effort within the educational community.
• Ethos – sharing information, improvements and artefacts for use by the whole educational community.
• Scholarly – disagreement with the underlying pedagogical model manifested by the design of a proprietary platform.

Equally there can be multiple reasons given for rejecting it; including:

• Economic – Open source is not “free”. The software platform may be “open” but there are still the hardware, software and staff development costs.
• Economic – The investment in the current hard/soft systems is too great – overcoming institutional inertia (or reaction from some) would be costly.
• Economic – Migrating content will take a long time.
• Control – The schedule of proprietary updates aligns with institutional expectations and planning.
• Ethos – Buy in proven 3rd-party solutions – focus is on integrating with existing systems – views “lock-in” as a fact of life (whether that be open source or proprietary “lock-in”
• Ethos – Sees less risk in going along with what many other institutions have done.
• Ethos – May assert support communities are relatively indepedent of proprietary influence.

As I suggested in the opening to this posting, both positions view themselves as equally rational and undoubtedly those at the extreme end of the position poles would defend their beliefs to the end. I suspect, however, there are a significant number who may at least be doing the thought experiment about how to swap VLE horses and managing the risks of doing so. I described the beginning of what eventually became an institution-wide change of horses at an HEI several years ago in Moodling around in anger – some initial reflections (Auricle, 13 January 2005) and never regretted doing. It is to the considerable credit of the colleagues I then worked with, however, who managed so successfully to create a migration process and not a migration event. My view is that such a migration process should be viewed as an opportunity for refreshment and development that engages with an HEI’s various communities and stakeholders rather than a threat.

My views were partially informed by my observations and reflections on how the less than optimum e-learning revolution had arrived in most Higher Education Institutions in the last decade, i.e. a Vice Chancellors, Presidents, Principals or other high-level senior managers became advocates of one or more of proprietatry solutions that had been demonstrated to them as the e-learning solution. Consequently, some solutions perhaps became embedded rather more quickly than, on reflection, they should have done. We should note that the account managers for proprietary systems continue to lobby for their products at such university executive (and executive network) level to this day. I suggest that this not necessarily the best route for generating optimum and informed solutions and necessary changes. It’s rather depressing when I hear accounts of how those responsible for technology enhanced learning in institutions are told about commissioning decisions after the event and with which they have not been involved; that suggests we risk a never-ending “groundhog day” in which recurring cycles of excitement about technology in education always end the same way – in disappointingly little change. Terry Mayes’ addressed this theme in his keynote titled Groundhog Day again? published in the proceedings of the JISC Innovating e-Learning 2007 online conference.

In my own case reaching the tipping point to migration was, however, undoubtedly accelerated by the receipt of an email several years ago now which required that we upgrade our proprietary system or take it off all institutional servers by a specified deadline. Such an email was also received by several other institutions. The effect of said email was perhaps not as the sender intended; it simply helped create a consensus among senior decision makers that it would be better to move to a system which would be less constraining to current and future decision making.

It is also interesting to reflect on, with what we know now, and with the technologies available now, whether we would have made the same commissioning decisions. Embedding technology is the easy bit which is why I always tend to view statements about embedding “xyz” technology as though this was a justifiable objective in its own right with some concern. Like decommissiong nuclear power stations, unembedding can be a lot more difficult than embedding and is seldom thought about at the time of bringing ‘power’ on stream. When embedding technology we should perhaps not forget about the commercial imperative which is seldom articulated as clearly as the following about what a proprietary supplier means by “establishing a strategic relationship”:

… our job is to make sure you choose our platform and not another platform, because once you have chosen another platform, getting you off it is usually impossible. in No longer living in cloud cuckoo land (Guardian 16 April 2009).

The above quote was not about VLEs but was about its potential big sister, developed this time in the so called internet “cloud”. The source of the quote was Marc Benioff, who heads Salesforce.com. Salesforce.com is one of the growing “cloud” businesses that both host an organisation’s data and run software over the net rather than from locally hosted server. It’s tempting to argue that given Benioff et al’s sentiments cloud computing poses even greater risks than some VLEs to an organisation’s future room for manoeuvre.

I also reflect on the irony of institutions being prepared to pay for further third party licenses to implement so called Web 2.0 extensions in proprietary platforms, e.g. blogs, wikis etc. The Web 2.0 ethos of being external facing, encouraging user-generated content, collaboration, and sharing aligns more comfortably with the open source world rather than the “walled garden” model underlying proprietary platforms.

So am I recommending that everyone migrates to open source?

No. That would be naive. It’s highly unlikely that those who have invested considerable finance, effort, and reputations in the construction of a hard and soft proprietary infrastructure are willingly going to change horses. Even if there is an intellectual rationale for migrating, the costs of doing so, they will argue, is just too great. Again, its a bit like fossils fuels, we know that other energy sources would be better for the planet but the costs of changing are just so high. So short of a disaster rewiring everyone’s thinking, the inclination is going to be to support and advocate business as usual. Of course some may construe the creation of a de facto monopoly of any platform as equally disasterous; one in which the scope for rewiring our thinking would then be somewhat constrained by the paucity of choices that would by then exist in the landscape.

But for those seriously thinking about doing so or – and – whose existing hard and soft infrastructures are flexible enough to take the change then I would say yes.

Why?

1. Mainly because I think that public funds are best focused within the sector rather than contributing to the bottom line of for-profit companies who are required to put the expectations of their shareholders first with some of them embarking upon public IPR disputes with competitors. My personal view is that the UK and global HE sector should view such behaviours as a risk and not an affordance.
2. The migration may be challenging but it also offers an opportunity for a high level of engagement throughout the institution. If viewed as a multi-disciplinary project and multiple processes (with a steering group) it could provide a focus for considerable organisational development and refreshment/realignment of thinking.
3. No matter how promising an open source solution looks what matters more for adoption by an institution is the size of the support community. When I initiated the change to an open source solution it was reassuring to see that a few VLE later adopters had occupied the ground before us, i.e. the University of Glasgow and the UK Open University. Since these are not small institutions and quite frankly their provenance caught the attention of those instituion decision-makers I had to convince. The open source landscape today is considerably more occupied and this can only be good thing. For this posting I’ve not looked at Sakai but a quick survey of Moodle territory shows the following installations:
• CALL Centre Courses (Communication Aids for Language and Learning) – University of Edinburgh
• Communications Technology – Glyndwr University, Wales
• Distance Learning Programme in Medical Law, University of Glasgow
• Doctorate In Education, University of Glasgow
• Education by Distance-Learning @ SENR, Bangor University
• Education by Distance-Learning @ SENR, Bangor University
• Faculty of Education, University of Glasgow
• Lancaster University http://moodle.lancs.ac.uk
• Liverpool Hope University – Moodle 08/09 http://moodle.hope.ac.uk/login/index.php
• Liverpool John Moores University
• LTSS @ the University of Bristol moodle.bris.ac.uk/
• Birmingham City University http://moodle.bcu.ac.uk/
• Moodle @ University of Essex
• Norwich University College of the Arts Virtual Learning Environment
• Robert Gordon University Campusmoodle VLE, ABERDEEN http://campusmoodle.rgu.ac.uk/
• School of Education, University of Manchester
• Computer Science, University of Manchester (http://moodle.cs.man.ac.uk/)
• University of Wales Newport, School of Education Moodle
• Heriot Watt University https://www.sbe.hw.ac.uk/vle/login/index.php
• University of Glasgow Moodle http://moodle.gla.ac.uk/
• Southampton Solent
• Swansea University DACE E-Learning Softlab
• Open University
• The University of York. Masters in Public Policy and Management
• University of Bath Moodle https://moodle.bath.ac.uk/login/index.php
• University of Chichester Moodle Pilot
• University of Exeter – School of Education Moodle
• University of Glasgow
• University of Kent Virtual Learning Environment https://moodle.kent.ac.uk
• University of Sussex
• University of Wales, Newport – mLE Moodle site http://moodle.newport.ac.uk
• University of York Mathematics Conferences
• University of York, Department of Mathematics http://maths.york.ac.uk/yorkmoodle/
• University of Salford – Virtual Environment for the Built Environment Research
• James Watt College of Further and Higher Education
• London School of Economics – LSE Moodle http://moodle.lse.ac.uk/
• UCL Department of Geomatic Engineering – Intranet
• UCL Moodle http://moodle.ucl.ac.uk/
• Royal Holloway http://moodle.rhul.ac.uk/
• Staffordshire University http://crusldi1.staffs.ac.uk/moodle/
• University of London, Computer Centre http://moodle.ulcc.ac.uk/
• Yeovil College http://moodle.yeovil.ac.uk/
• University of Southampton – M3 http://www.elanguages.ac.uk/secondlife/index.html
• University of Gloucestershire http://moodle.glos.ac.uk/
• University of Essex http://moodle.essex.ac.uk/
• JISC East Midlands RSC http://moodle.rsc-em.ac.uk/
• JISC RSC London http://moodle.rsc-london.ac.uk/
• JISC RSC Eastern Moodle http://moodle.rsc-eastern.ac.uk/
• JISC RSC West Midlands http://moodle.rsc-wm.ac.uk
• JISC RSC South East http://moodle-rsc.kent.ac.uk/
• JISC RSC North West http://moodle.rsc-northwest.ac.uk
• JISC RSC South West http://vle.rsc-south-west.ac.uk/moodle/
• JISC RSC Wales http://moodle.rsc-wales.ac.uk/

Note that the above overview is informed-by the self-registration system run by Moodle.org, i.e. UK view, Global view. Some of the Moodle installations supplement the “main” VLE but an increasing number are the main VLE, e.g. UCL, LSE, Open University, Glasgow, Bath, RGU. The Sakai project site does provide an equivalent summary of Sakai installations which also includes UK HEIs.

For those concerned about another large scale technical investment (or reinvestment) an alternative approach to migrating to or supporting an open source approach would be to eschew local hosting and opt for a hosting service. There are several options here but under the principle of investing in the HE sector the University of London Computer Centre (ULCC) offers a competitively priced Moodle hosting facility and other ‘e’ services which are already being used by some UK HEIs. I understand from conversations with users of the ULCC service that the hosting service runs on a democratic user-group model with those using the service proposing enhancments which are carried by a majority vote of all being hosted. Such a model may very well suit small institutions that lack significant existing IT infrastructure or support. Those wishing to reflect further on hosting models may find Terry Anderson’s My place or yours? Hosting Web 2.0 Education (Virtual Canuck, 8 April 2009) or the JISC RSC West Midlands’ Introduction to Moodle of interest.

So how sustainable are open source solutions? From my point of view when there is a big national and global community they can be every bit, if not more, sustainable than proprietary solutions. The latter are increasingly vulnerable to the vagaries of the competitive commercial market including takeover and eventual deletion through merger or legislative attrition. Those exploring this conceptual dimension may be interested in the JISC OSS Watch article Moodle: a case study in sustainability (OSS Watch, June 2007 and December 2008) or its other articles relating to Moodle. As regards staff development for new Moodle users JISC Netskills may have something to offer here.

But the big question I posed in my earlier Auricle articles (and again at the start of this essay) is whether what some call a Virtual Learning Environment and others a Learning Management System (as though the internal and uniquely individual but socially mediated process of learning can ever be managed) is actually necessary at all. Some colleagues are still indicating that their institutional VLEs are primarily being used as convenient content repositories for students to access materials. I’m not criticising this because it’s possible to create some pretty powerful learning activities based on making the uploading, sharing and downloading of content as easy as possible. But I do constantly find myself reflecting on whether expensively licensed, integrated and supported platforms are necessary when a simple filestore/filesharing facility would do the same. Again, that of course depends on conceptions of who the Learning Management System is actually intended for.

For some final food for thought I offer the following extract from the 2006 Auricle posting Whose PLE is it anyway? in which I said:

But, it would indeed be ironic, if a large amount of investment was diverted into the institutional palatability option only to find that knowledgeable users have increasingly decided that the institutional provision has ceased to be relevant, voted with their fingers and are off using, or assembling, their own personal learning environments below the institutional radar.