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TUTORIAL 3

FACTORS THAT DRIVE ORGANIZATIONS TO SHIFT FROM PROPRIETARY TO OPEN SOURCE LEARNING CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

To improve the tutorial, please add comments at the end of this page. To obtain additional information, please write to Tony Bailetti at bailetti@sce.carleton.ca .

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Thanks to John Callahan (Canada), Jean-Claude Dauphin (UNESCO), Fred Heller (Denmark), Claude Martin (Italy), Andrew McMillan (New Zealand), Glen McInnis (Canada), Cameron Nichol (Australia), Yeyer Rolli (Nigeria), and Richard Wyles (New Zealand). They provided references and made insightful comments to improve previous versions of this tutorial.

ACRONYMS

FOSS = free open source software

LCMS = learning content management system

OBJECTIVE

Upon completion of this tutorial you will know about the factors that drive organizations to replace proprietary LCMS (e.g., WebCT and Blackboard) for off-the-shelf open source LCMS (e.g., Moodle and ATutor).

TARGET AUDIENCE

This tutorial may benefit non-technical and technical individuals interested in making a case for their institutions:

  • to switch from proprietary to open source software systems
  • to install a new off-the-shelf FOSS LCMS

EXCLUDED

This tutorial does not examine the migration to custom open source LCMS. It is concerned with the migration to off-the-shelf FOSS systems.

RELEVANCE

The decision to migrate to an open source LCMS has significant implications for the overall direction of an organization. This decision is constrained by experiences with the proprietary LCMS and existing skills and services.

Most of what has been written about open source focuses inward, --the characteristics of FOSS, the FOSS phenomenom, the differences between FOSS and freeware, FOSS projects, motivations to contribute to FOSS, etc. Few studies focus outward: the reasons why organizations adopt FOSS.

This tutorial provides the lessons learned from reading the few published articles that exist on why it makes sense for an organization to switch from using a proprietary LCMS to an open source LCMS. The tutorial incorporates comments made by participants in the UNESCO led forum on open source in e-learning.

FACTORS THAT DRIVE FOSS LCMS MIGRATION

The factors that drive organizations to switch from proprietary to open source LCMS have been organized into four types:

  • FOSS specific: factors inherent to open source.
  • Organizational: factors inherent to the people who work for the organization assessing the migration to open source and the learners they serve.
  • Government: factors inherent to freeing education and training systems from commercial pressure, imports, job development, capability to innovate, and protection of intellectual property.
  • Environmental: factors inherent to availability of technical and non technical personnel, availability of external support services, and the long term viability of the FOSS community that supports the LCMS.

FOSS specific factors

  1. Lowers the cost of owning a FOSS LCMS with features and performance comparable to that of a proprietary system (Bruggink, 2003, p. 16; Dauphin, 2004; Delgado, 2004; Fitzgerald and Kenny, 2004 p. 50; Jadud, 2004; Rolli, 2004).
  2. Freedom to modify open source code makes it easier to: (i) align information technology tools with the objectives of the various learners' programs and the local context (Bruggink, 2003, p. 17; Dauphin, 2004; Wyles, 2004), (ii) support the pedagogical models, languages and cultures most appropriate for the target users (McMullin and Munro, 2004; Udas, 2004; Wong and Sayo, 2004; Wyles, 2004), and (iii) extend LCMS functionality (Rolli, 2004).
  3. Open standard implementation makes it easier for FOSS LCMS to interoperate with other tools and organizational systems (Dauphin, 2004; Fitzgerald and Kenny, 2004, p. 52; Jadud, 2004; McInnis, 2004; Rolli, 2004; Wong and Sayo, 2004).
  4. Rapid deploy-test-repair development cycle results in quick bug and flaw fixing and more reliable and stable software (McMullin, 2004b; Rolli, 2004; Wong and Sayo, 2004).
  5. Eliminates vendor lock in (McMullin and Munro, 2004).
  6. Increases the motivation to collaborate, e.g., collaboration amongst different business units within a company, collaboration amongst different universities, and collaboration amongst suppliers, their customers, and their customers' customers (McMullin and Munro, 2004; Nichol, 2004; Wyles, 2004).
  7. Provides a greater number of opportunities to innovate and contributes to the FOSS community (Bruggink, 2003, p. 16; Jadud, 2004; McMullin and Munro, 2004; Wyles, 2004).

Organizational factors

  1. Top management support for FOSS (Bruggink, 2003, p. 16; Fitzgerald and Kenny, 2004, p. 54; Nijbakker, 2004).
  2. Alignment between FOSS LCMS and the organization’s strategic goal to lead (Bruggink, 2003, p. 16; McMullin and Munro, 2004).
  3. Commitment of the IT personnel (Bruggink, 2003, p. 17; Fitzgerald and Kenny, 2004, p. 54; Heller, 2004; Nichol, 2004) and owners of courses on old proprietary system to shift to new FOSS LCMS (McMullin, 2004b).
  4. Involvement of technical and non technical users in the identification and selection of the new FOSS LCMS (Fitzgerald and Kenny, 2004, p. 54; McMullin and Munro, 2004).
  5. Resources to experiment with new FOSS LCMS (Nijbakker, 2004).
  6. Willingness to take the hit to shift content from proprietary to FOSS LCMS, e.g., maintain two systems in parallel during the shift period, live with external hosts of ePacks that do not work on FOSS LCMS, overcome user fears promoted by suppliers of proprietary systems (McMullin, 2004b; Nijbakker, 2004)
  7. Incentives for educational development and research using the new FOSS LCMS (McMullin and Munro, 2004)
  8. Expertise and resources to:
  • port the custom code and learning resources from the old proprietary to the new FOSS LCMS (McMullin and Munro, 2004).
  • train users in the new FOSS LCMS (McMullin and Munro, 2004).
  • support users of the FOSS LCMS, particularly non-programmer users (Heller, 2004; Messerschmitt, 2004).
  • evolve the FOSS commonality and variability (Messerschmitt, 2004).

Government factors

  1. Frees education and training institutions from biased and aggressive commercial, sponsoring, and marketing policies trying to impose proprietary educational environments and software at the national level (Martin, 2004).
  2. Accelerates technology transfer and helps developing countries to become active partners instead of passive consumers (Martin, 2004).
  3. Reduces imports and preserves hard currency that can be used to attain country specific goals (Wong and Sayo, 2004, p. 15).
  4. Develops local software capability which then increases employment in the country (Wong and Sayo, 2004, pp. 15-16).
  5. Allows students to learn from their participation in development communities without incremental investment in education (Wong and Sayo, 2004, p. 16).
  6. Reduces software piracy making the country more atractive to foreign investors (Wong and Sayo, 2004, p. 16).

Environmental factors

  1. Availability of external technical personnel specialized in delivering open source solutions (Jadud, 2004; Fitzgerald and Kenny, 2004, p. 52; McMullin, 2004b).
  2. A large energetic user community engaged in pedagogical discussions and instant feedback for troubleshooting (Bruggink, 2003; p. 17, Jadud, 2004; McMullin and Munro, 2004).
  3. Access to small firms and individuals with business models to generate income providing support for FOSS (Fitzgerald and Kenny, 2004, p. 55).

REFERENCES

  • Bruggink, Martin (2003) Open Source Software, Take It or Leave It: The Status of Open Source Software in Africa. International Institute for Communication and Development, Research Report No. 16. June. http://www.ftpiicd.org/files/research/reports/report16.pdf Accessed July 13.
  • Callahan, John (2004) Private communications via e-mail. July 10.
  • Dauphin, Jean-Claude (2004) Private communications via e-mail. July 5 and 9.
  • Delgado, Paul (2004) Message posted in forum on Wednesday, 24 March 2004, 04:04 PM. http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=6416 . Accessed July 13.
  • Fitzgerald, Brian and Tony Kenny (2004) Developing an Information System Infrastructure with Open Source Software. IEEE Software. January/February.
  • Heller, Fred (2004) Private communication via e-mail. July 8.
  • Jadud, Matt (2004) Considering the Alternative. http://www.cs-ed.org/blogs/mjadud/archives/000556.html . Accessed July 13.
  • Martin, Claude (2004) Private communication via e-mail. July 8.
  • McInnis, Glen (2004) Private communication via e-mail. July 15.
  • McMullin (2004a) Message posted in forum on Wednesday, 24 March 2004, 05:32 PM http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=6416 . Accessed July 13.
  • McMullin (2004b) Message posted in forum on Thursday, 13 May 2004, 09:24 PM. http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=6416 Accessed July 13.
  • McMullin, Barry and Morag Munro (2004) Moodle at DCU. Dublin City University. April 22. http://odtl.dcu.ie/wp/2004/odtl-2004-01.html. Accessed July 13.
  • Messerschmitt, David G. (2004) Back to the User. IEEE Software. January/February.
  • Nijbakker, Paul (2004) Message posted in forum on Wednesday, 24 March 2004, 02:45 PM. http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=6416 . Accessed July 13.
  • Nichol, Cameron (2004) Private communication via e-mail. July 7.
  • Rolli, Yeyer (2004) Private communication via e-mail. July 8.
  • Udas, Ken (2004) Private communication via e-mail. July 13.
  • Wong, Kenneth and Phet Sayo (2004) Free/Open Source Software: A General Introduction. United Nations Development Programme, Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme. http://www.iosn.net/downloads/foss_primer_print_covers.pdf . Accessed July 13.
  • Wyles, Richard (2004) Private communication via e-mail. July 7.

PLEASE PROVIDE YOUR COMMENTS IN THIS SECTION

One FOSS specific factor I see that can drive things is the reduced likelihood of "marketing features". Sometimes proprietary software can have features added at the request of marketing / sales, so they can tick the box in a feature comparison. When features are added to FOSS they are more likely to be driven by someone's actual need, and are more likely to be usable features, as a result. Having a "need driven feature set", rather than

Environmental factors might also include some assessment of the level of committment to an existing LCMS - i.e. is the current one shelfware? Maybe there is no need to migrate...

Andrew (New Zealand)

Tony's reply to Andrew: The first point you make is a great one. I will incorporate this. Thank you.


 
    		
    

    




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