Western University’s Flight to Open Source Deanna Grogan

FTE ( ) Full-Time Faculty ( ) 12 Faculties,3 Affiliate Colleges and a Continuing Studies Department 1998 WebCT Vista Sakai Deanna – part of the Instructional Support team, working with the Instructional Technology Resource Centre within ITS at Western Background Information

Agenda WebCT OWL OWL Flight Plan is born The plan The reality Decision Reasoning Lessons Learned Questions

WebCT OWL 2011 o 5,865 active sections o 2,910 instructors o 51,548 students o 300,927 enrolments October 13, 2011 at 10pm o 4,427 concurrent users October 2009 o 1,707,260 logins

WebCT OWL – Many Wings Class Photos ScanExam Results Final Grade Export Wiki Wimba Tools one45 PeopleSoft HE Integration Turnitin.com Publisher ePacks Registrar Exam Schedule Certificates of Achievement Library Off- Campus Access

Information Gathering RFPEvaluationSelectionImplementation OWL Flight Plan – The Plan

Information Gathering RFP #1 More Information Gathering RFP #2Collapse RFP Product Evaluation SelectionRFP #3Implementation

Decision

Financial Platform and Infrastructure In house knowledge Tied Community evaluations No commercial risk Leader Open Source Active Community Sakai Community Winner Reasons

Lessons Learned Don’t expect LMS features to dictate the selection. Consider whether you need an RFP before beginning an RFP Open-source is a different culture (otherwise known as we are not open- source natives!!!!)

Seed Questions How is the migration going? What about Sakai OAE? Just because you can customize the LMS – should you? What are the community’s expectations about open-source? Any additional lessons learned from your experiences?