Louisiana State Moves to Moodle
Louisiana State University is replacing two learning management systems on its campus with Moodle, an open-source LMS/CMS popular in higher education and elsewhere. According to information released by LSU's Office of the CIO, the move comes on the heels of a two-year system review process headed by the university's Flagship Information Technology Strategy (FITS) Task Force for Teaching and Learning that gathered input from the entire campus community.
Moodle is one of the most popular learning management systems out there. The open-source LMS, as of this writing, had nearly 15 million users participating in nearly 1.5 million courses at more than 35,000 registered sites, according to Moodle's
published statistics. (That, incidentally, is about 1,000 more registered sites than the last time we wrote about Moodle, less than two weeks ago.)
LSU had previously been using both Blackboard and a home-grown system called Semester Book. Half the faculty on campus have been using learning management systems with their courses, and students were forced to use both Blackboard and Semester Book.
"Having a two LMS environment was burdensome from both a user and support perspective," said Joseph Hutchinson, executive director of the Centers for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) at LSU, in a statement released this week.
The university's FITS and CELT are aiming for a spring 2008 test run and course migration and expect to have Moodle "fully deployed" by fall 2008.
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