The future of open source in Ohio higher ed
It may be so bright we’ll have to wear shades. Yesterday I attended the first face-to-face training session for Ohio Learning Network’s OSPilot. OLN has teamed up with The Longsight Group to provide hosting, training, and support for some open source apps: Sakai, Moodle, OSPI (e-portfolio), and uPortal. Some 40 institutions were represented.
We received some basic training on Sakai and Moodle. OSPI will hopefully be rolled out by the end of February. From a teaching standpoint I prefer Moodle, but from an administrator standpoint I prefer Sakai for its possible tie-in with our information system. We know that there is no such thing as a free lunch and that even open source/free software has associated costs, but Walsh University reports that they are paying about half of what they paid for WebCT, and that they are more pleased with Sakai and the support they are getting from Longsight.
One of the most intriguing ideas I heard was how one school gave its students the ability to create project workspaces in Sakai. The school ended up with about three to four times as many student project workspaces as actual courses. What an amazing testament to the idea of giving people the tools and getting out of the way.
Currently we have one instructor using Moodle and a couple others interested in OSPI when it becomes available.
Stay tuned!
