16 Nov 2009 Tony Wood, Director ACMS Marta Kutas, Chair CogSci Steve Ford, MSO CogSci Tony and Marta, I write to make you aware of my experience in setting up Web support for my classes in the Winter, 2010 term. Tony, for you it is because I associate this function with ACMS. I also include Marta and Steve, because I think it is an area where the CogSci department should be providing campus leadership (and for all I know departments have funds for these purposes). If I were satisfied with the experience you know I wouldn't be writing. But allow me to set the stage a bit before getting to my issues. I have made use of computer-mediated classroom aids since I first began teaching at UCSD. For example, I have always based ~ 10% of final grades on class participation, where that participation could be EITHER in the face-to-face classroom, or via the electronic forums. Since about 2005 I have become increasingly interested in "content management systems" (CMS) as very useful tools in the academic -- research and education -- settings. I've spent most of my time learning about Zope and Plone, a stack of open source functionality all written in Python. I wouldn't argue that Zope/Plone is completely unique or clearly superior to other alternatives, but it remains at a very useful sweet-spot in my opinion. In the beginning, computer-based classroom communication just meant Email lists including all the students, but you both know how the range of options has grown over the years. Email lists may still be the dominant mechanism for many across campus, but in addition to more general CMS like Zope/Plone, as for-profit online educational systems have increased their market share, a wide range of "learning management systems" (LMS) focused on (both strictly online and classroom support) educational settings, "Learning Content Management Systems," "Computer Learning Content Information Management Systems," "Sharable Content Object Reference Models," "IMS Question and Test Interoperability specification" (QTI)... have grown apace. For approximately the last three years I have been developing Zope/Plone-based tools for use in my classrooms. I think they've added a great deal, and I continue to develop new functionality and tune it to the special needs of new classes. I'm not sure just when WebCT was adopted as this campus' preferred LMS, but I've been recently told (by Kevin Coakley, 2 Nov) that it is the only LMS that ACS will support. I've also heard a rumor that (because WebCT is NOT free), that the campus is planning on dropping this platform. Finally, I've also been told that there is a pilot project using Moodle (another popular and open source LMS, but implemented in PHP instead of Python). We come to my problem: Because I am also using Zope/Plone for building prototype research tools (supporting collaboration among colleagues studying HIV drug resistance evolution), until recently I have felt comfortable hosting the classroom websites on my research computers. But I am now needing to juggle machines, and feel it necessary to separate the educational functions off my research machines. I found (http://acms.ucsd.edu/units/iwdc/recharge.shtml#Web-Site-Hosting) that ACMS offers "FREE hosting is available for instructional course sites." But Kevin's reply (full email exchange included below) makes it clear that I could not host my Zope/Plone websites via this mechanism. Because I believe in these tools, because I want to continue to develop them, and because I saw no way to resolve this in time to prepare my materials for W10 otherwise, I have therefore spent MY OWN MONEY to obtain a domain and web host that I will use instead. You can see an example at http://cogs184.edurik.org. On a campus where I have always had to pay to park to go to work, during a period where I am now experiencing imposed pay cuts, I know this is not really a big deal. I also happen to have a wife and daughter who teach in K-12 settings, where teachers spending their own money to enrich classrooms is typical. So it isn't really the (remarkably cheap, in fact) cost of paying for this myself that makes me write such a long letter. It is to make the point that the campus should be FACILITATING faculty's attempt to explore these media, not making it more difficult. The range of alternative CMS, LMS, QTI, ... is burgeoning, individual faculty are guaranteed to have differing opinions as to what works best for them, and lots of experiments will be necessary. We can also predict that the need for Web-based tools can only increase as the clash between student loads and declining dollars becomes even more acute. Specifically, I recommend: - ACMS or some organization on campus make Web hosting for educational purposes available, at the same easily-maintained level provided at low cost by thousands of other vendors elsewhere. I happen to be using WebFaction, where it is costs < $10/mo. - that the campus develop internal competence around one or more of the available open source CMS or LMS. I point to the WebLion group at Penn State (http://weblion.psu.edu) as one great example, and the College of Engineering at Berkeley (http://coe.berkeley.edu/) as another example of the sort of support organization we could have. With this sort of catalyst, individual faculty would have a local source of support and expertise as they experiment on their own. I continue to think ACMS does a remarkable job managing technological change on this campus, and I know that finding dollars for anything is even more difficult than usual. But I am arguing that what we are currently doing is wasteful of the dollars we do have, that these tools will become even more central to all academics' work in the future, and we need to get with the program. Now. Thanks for listening. I welcome your reactions. -- Richard K. Belew rbelew@ucsd.edu Professor http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~rik Cognitive Science Dept. Univ. California -- San Diego 858 / 534-2601 9500 Gilman Dr. (0515) Fax: 858 / 534-1128 La Jolla CA 92093-0515 USA