Cooking with CHEF / Making a meal with Moodle

Title : Cooking with CHEF / Making a meal with Moodle

Abstract:

We'll see what's cooking with two open source Course Management Systems (CMS) in the Instructional Technology kitchen of a small Liberal Arts College, Earlham College. Dinner guests are classes ranging from Asian Cinema through Strategic Planning and Marketing to Immunology.

Description:

What options are open to a small college wanting to implement an open source Course Management System (CMS)? This is an account of Earlham's evaluation of two such systems; CHEF (from University of Michigan) and Moodle (originating in Australia).

• CHEF
  Chef is an open source course management system developed at the University of Michigan (web site : http://chefproject.org) and is currently the framework hosting UM's CourseTools NextGeneration.
• Moodle
  Moodle is an open source software package for producing internet-based courses and web sites designed to support a social constructionist framework of education. It originates from Australia (http://moodle.org) but it is truly an international project with developers from all over the world contributing to the ongoing development.

• Why Open Source?
  How Open Source philosophy is in harmony with Earlham College's mission.
• Why CHEF?
  Fruit of collaboration between Midwest Instructional Technology Center (MITC), University of Michigan, and Earlham.
• Why Moodle?
  Good reviews, easy to install and maintain, easy to set up and use.
• Evaluating Course Management Systems; how pertinent literature influenced what we did.

1^st Course:

• Brief overview of CHEF functionality with particular reference to usability.
• Brief overvew of Moodle functionality with particular reference to usability.

2^nd Course:

• Student and Faculty evaluations of CHEF as used in class (immunology, managment classes)
• Student and Faculty evaluations of Moodle as used in class.

3^rd Course:

• Comparing CHEF to Moodle. Is one 'better' than the other?

Where do we go from here?

Future Developments : CHEF and Sakai

• CHEF is due to metamorphose into Sakai. Timetable and brief overview of these changes. Unresolved issues with backwards compatability and unknown feature set and user interface.

Future Developments : Moodle

• Some concerns with Moodle. New teaching possibilities with features from upcoming version 1.2 and version 2 planned for next year.

Conclusion :

• Earlham's approach - make haste slowly, consult widely, limited two track implementation.