Common Wisdom “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM” –Google:5930 hits “Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft” –Google:9650 hits

Copyright … “SCO lawsuit” -Google: 42,800 hits

Course Management Software

Commercial Vendors Market leaders –WebCT –Blackboard –Angel License costs from $50k to 6 figures Outsourcing of core university business

Open Source Course Management Software LON-CAPA = Learning Online Network with Computer-Assisted Personalized Approach

“To repeat what everyone in the Open Source community understands - it's free as in speech, not as in beer.”

LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting J5.001: Resource sharing of online teaching materials: The lon-capa project  Wolfgang Bauer  Michigan State University

LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting 9 LON-CAPA  Learning Content Management System  Assessment System  Open-Source and Free

LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting 10 LON-CAPA  Learning Content Management System  Assessment System  Open-Source and Free

LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting LON = LearningOnline Network (1)  Providing high quality learning content in an online environment is time and cost intensive  Typical scenario today: Online material is developed by only one instructor Online material is used by only one instructor Online material is used in only one course No assessment of learning effectiveness  Ineffective use of time and resources

LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting  Much better scenario: Online material is developed and reviewed by more than one instructor Online material is shared among instructors Online material gets used across many courses and disciplines Continual assessment of learning effectiveness LON = LearningOnline Network (2) Multimedia Collaborative Content Creation (mc 3 )

LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting 13 LON = LearningOnline Network (3)  We have built: a cross-institutional cross-disciplinary content repository a tool to seamlessly assemble this content a course management system to readily deploy this content

LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting 14 Network  Network of connected servers  Any server in the network can serve sessions for any user  Content replication in background  Network-wide persistent URL paths

LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting 15 Virtual Filesystem “The aisles of your supermarket” Your shopping cart: The Resource Assembly Tool

LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting 16 LearningOnline Network  3,000 content pages  6,000 homework and exam problems  5,000 images  150 movies  300 simulations and animations  150 applets  Publisher libraries, “back of the chapter problems” BUT: Do the students learn any better? This is the physics pool! Other resource pools in biology, chemistry, food science, math, psychology, statistics, …

LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting 17 LON-CAPA  Learning Content Management System  Assessment System  Open-Source and Free

LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting 18 CAPA  Computer-Assisted Personalized Approach  Online assessment with immediate feedback and multiple tries  Different students get different versions of the same problem different options different graphs or images different numbers or formulas

LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting 19 CAPA  Same problem, two students

LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting 20 CAPA Benefits: learners can work together without just exchanging the answers learners get immediate feedback on their learning progress instructors get immediate feedback on their learners’ progress

LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting 21 CAPA Benefits, cont.: cost-savings in routine grading instructor time used for instruction, not grading LON: shared problem library, de-facto setting standards and establishing LON: cross-course cross-institutional dynamic metadata

LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting 22 CAPA Improved course performance Improved exam performance Improved performance especially of female students Across a number of studies:

LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting 23 LON-CAPA  Learning Content Management System  Assessment System  Open-Source and Free

LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting 24 LON-CAPA  Open-source free software  No license fees  GNU General Public License  Can be modified, extended, improved, adapted...  Runs on Linux, no license fees for operating system  Developed by educators for educators

LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting 25 Open Source  Code contributions by Florida State University Ohio University Simon Fraser University Vancouver Hebrew University Jerusalem UNICAMP São Paulo

LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting 26 Internationalization  Rewrote most screen output such that it can be localized into other languages

LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting 27 LearningOnline Network Writes module on statistical averages Writes module on statistical errors Includes the two into her unit on survey analysis Uses that unit in his course

LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting 28 LearningOnline Network  Currently used at 9 high schools, 2 community colleges, and 17 universities nationwide

LON-CAPA Installations Multiple: USA, Canada, Brazil, Germany Single: Chile, India, Italy, Zimbabwe

W. Bauer - October 12, 2003

LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting Collaboration

32 Closing Thoughts Initially developed at Michigan State University Funded by Michigan State University and the National Science Foundation under Information Technology Research Project “Investigation of a model for online resource creation and sharing in educational settings” Join us:

W. Bauer - October 12, 2003 Educational Object Economy

W. Bauer - October 12, 2003 Educational Object Economy