I’ve been looking for a way to export a Moodle course in a format that can be ingested in another standards-compliant LMS. The obvious choices are SCORM or IMS-CP.

But, neither are supported as export formats from Moodle. Moodle happily ingests those formats, acting to absorb content into what then becomes an inescapable pit of quicksand. It’s a one-way trip. Content can check in, but it can never leave.

If Blackboard did that, there would be villagers marching in the streets with torches in hand. The Blackboard SCORM import/export stuff might not be perfect, but at least they try to let people move content out.

With Moodle, it’s currently a vendor lock-in proposition. The only saving grace is that the vendor just happens to be an open source project. But it’s still lock-in.

I’m really hoping I’m missing something obvious, but having the only information about SCORM exporting on the Moodle website be a few comments in the forums (one of which jokes “why would you want to leave Moodle?”) isn’t exactly comforting. Standards are only good if they’re used bidirectionally. Standards used to promote lock-in are nothing but tools of oppression. OK. So it’s not as dire as that, but you get my point.

photo credit: Jef Poskanzer

I must have blinked when this was announced, but OpenAcademic.org sounds like a perfect scenario. Development efforts to integrate some of the biggest open source tools used in online education. It sounds like the goal is to come up with a way for Drupal, Elgg, Mediawiki and Moodle to all play nicely together, in such a way as to be easily deployable and maintainable by even the smallest school. Rather than attempting to build The One True LMS, they’re taking the approach of playing to the strengths of the available tools, and putting the effort into integration.

The really cool thing is a documented commitment by the OpenAcademic.org team to not fork projects, and to contribute any code to the relevant communities. So, they’ll be hacking on each of these applications directly, with all improvements freely available to everyone.

Personally, I think this is one of the biggest and coolest developments in online education for the year. I’m ashamed that I missed the announcement almost a month ago.

I’ve been spending almost all of my time lately in Drupal, with some time in Moodle. It’s pretty obvious that each has its own strengths (and weaknesses), and that spending effort to duplicate each package’s feature set would be wasteful and counterproductive. Having an effective way to integrate these various tools would be amazingly powerful, especially as more applications, platforms and tools are brought into the mix.

Imagine an elearning ecosystem that ties in Drupal, Mediawiki, Elgg, Moodle, Blackboard, WebCT, Flickr, del.icio.us, Facebook, YouTube, etc… in a flexible system that can adapt to any pedagogical needs. Sweet.

Moodle. It’s fun to say, and fun to play around with. I’ve spent a good part of the day playing with Moodle to set it up for use on a project. Well, that’s a lie. I spent maybe 10 minutes to set it up, and the rest of the time messing around with modules, themes, courses, lessons and activities to see what it can do.

In my early experimentation, it seems like an amazing and flexible LMS. Looks like it will be able to do everything we need for this project, and I’d be surprised if it couldn’t be tasked as the campus LMS as well. Lots of institutional and political reasons why that won’t happen any time soon, but the software feels pretty close to ready. I know Athabasca is running their campus on Moodle (and ELGG), and I’m wondering what they’re finding about large-scale deployment of Moodle…

In a master stroke of synchronicity, I was looking for a download of Drupal 4.7 to test out the Quiz module just yesterday afternoon. This morning, I see that Drupal 4.7.0 Beta 1 was released! So, I grabbed a copy of it and set up a fresh install on my desktop. Some really nice refinements to Drupal. The configuration side of things is starting to make sense. Good to see them giving it some proper love.

I dropped the Quiz module into place, and started creating a quiz. Looks pretty straightforward, and the quiz questions have exactly the kind of functionality that I’ve built into quiz tools previously (for multiple choice quizzes, the ability to have per-answer feedback, random/notrandom, tracking time in quiz, etc…) - but I can’t seem to take a quiz.

I’m sure it’s just a minor hiccough with the new Drupal 4.7.0 Beta 1, or perhaps an incompatibility between the older Quiz module code and the new Drupal code. Once that’s worked out, I think this could be a pretty solid informal testing tool, or a great option for outside-the-LMS testing.

Now, to see if I can convince Quiz.module to start letting people take quizzes…

I’ve also been playing with various CMS options, and so far Drupal is feeling like the right balance between flexibility, control, and ease of use. Joomla just feels to “heavy” for novice users. WebGUI is waaaay to over-the-top enterprise-application heavy (borking MySQL on my desktop box when I tried to test it). Drupal is a nice, light, fluid system…

Larry Johnson just sent an email to the NMC list with news that Blackboard and WebCT are merging. Holy. Crap. I mean - there goes any sense of competition in the LMS game. What’s left to compete? Moodle? Sakai? Something else? I really hope there is more than one Big Player left in the LMS world…

Here’s hoping the new LMS behemoth doesn’t go all Microsoft on our asses, and is able to do something innovative with their new collective girth.

Looks like Bb and WebCT brands will continue for some time, with the best of both being amalgamated into a new Bb version. BbCT?

I, for one, welcome our new LMS overlords…