opensyllabus a sakai and opensyllabus pilot at hec montréal martin montminy, functional analyst,...

OpenSyllabusOpenSyllabus

A Sakai and OpenSyllabus Pilot at HEC Montréal

Martin Montminy , Functional analyst, HEC MontréalRémi Saïas, Developer / ScrumMaster, HEC Montréal

2010 Sakai Conference - Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.

OpenSyllabus

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Presentation Plan

• What is OpenSyllabus?• Two pilots are better then one!• Winter pilot• Summer pilot

• Lessons learned• Next step: deployment


OpenSyllabus

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What is OpenSyllabus

• Structured Hierarchical Course Outline (or Syllabus) Editor

• Integrated into Sakai environment and works with other Sakai tools.

• Successor of ZoneCours (first generation syllabus editor at HEC).

• Collaboration tool:• Between teachers and students;• Between teachers;• Within the institution: registrar, department, library.


OpenSyllabus

Open Syllabus

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OpenSyllabus

Open Syllabus

OpenSyllabus

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OpenSyllabus in Sakai – Big Picture

Sakai Institution Academic System

(PeopleSoft)

• List of courses• List of sections• List of students• Schedule• Location• …

OpenSyllabus

Resources

Citations

Course Management

Assignment

Entity picker for other tools


In house integration –Available connectors does not support our version of PeopleSoft

OpenSyllabus

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Hierarchical CO example•Course Introduction•Contact Information•Learning Material•Assessments•Lectures• Lecture 1

…• Lecture 10

•Course Introduction•Contact Information•Learning Material•Assessments•Lectures• Lecture 1

…• Lecture 12

•Course Introduction•Contact Information•Learning Material•Assessments•Lectures• Lecture 1

…• Lecture 11

Economics 101Generic course

outline from Coordinator

Economics 101Section A course

outline from Section A’s teacher

Economics 101Section B course

outline from Section B’s teacher

ReuseReuse


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Hierarchical CO exampleLecture 1

Description Coordinator’s description

ObjectivesCoordinator’s objectives

Lecture 1

Description Teacher’s description

Objectives Teacher’s objectives

Coordinator

Teacher Section AStudent Section A

Lecture 1

Description Coordinator’s description Teacher’s description

ObjectivesCoordinator’s objectivesTeacher’s objectives

Merge of coordinator’s and Teacher’s course outlines


OpenSyllabus

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Presentation Plan

• What is OpenSyllabus?• Two pilots are better then one!• Winter pilot• Summer pilot

• Lessons learned• Next step: production


OpenSyllabus

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Winter Pilot’s Objectives

• Objectives related to the environment (Sakai + OpenSyllabus)• Collect feedback from different classes of user: instructors,

secretaries, students.• Identify bugs and improvement opportunities.

• Public relation objectives:• Gave the application visibility in all departments by finding

one instructors to use it in the context of its course. • Other Objectives• Evaluate training needs and communication needs.• Show the community that OpenSyllabus can be used in real

context.2010 Sakai Conference - Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.

OpenSyllabus

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Winter Pilot’s Statistics

• 11 courses(3 coordinated)/16 sections• All instructors and secretaries were volunteer to

participate.• 13 instructors and approximately 600

students.• Each department had at least one course.• All groups used OpenSyllabus with

integration with Resources and Citations.• 3 groups used the integration with Assignment.


OpenSyllabus

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Winter Pilot’s Strategy

Pre-pilot• Careful planning• Training and documentation• Migration of existing syllabiDuring pilot• Proactive support (2 lines of support)• On demand trainingAfter pilot• Postmortem meeting with instructors and secretaries• Survey students of the pilot


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Winter Pilot’s Problems

• Emails avalanche• Documents added to Syllabus

• Students cannot access documents located in parent Syllabi

• Students cannot access documents with special characters “( )” or “[ ]”

• Problems with browser cache (blank page)• Problems with new wireless network

configuration on campus2010 Sakai Conference - Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.

OpenSyllabus

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Winter Pilot’s Feedback

Postmortem meeting with instructors• 9 out of 13 were present• Feedback was strongly positive

Strengths mentioned:• Ease of use• Performance (compared to current system)• Team behind the pilot (development, training, support)Improvement opportunities• User interface: too many scrollbars, font problems, size of

windows• Feedback missing on certain tasks• Need to work on available rubrics in OpenSyllabus


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Winter Pilot’s Feedback

Student survey• 168 responses / 600 participants• Incentive: 3 prices of 100$


OpenSyllabus

Student survey – Technical problems

Response Percent

Response Count

58.1% 9738.9% 653.0% 5

1674

Often

Answer Options

skipped question

Sometimes

Until now, have you experienced technical problems with OpenSyllabus?

answered question

Never

Types of problems- interpretation of comments

Colonne1 Nb. Occurrences % occurrences

Email problem (too many) 10 13%

Browser compatibility 6 8%

Download 14 19%

Performance problems 10 13%

Display problem 43 57%

Nombre of occurrences repported

%: number of occurrences on total number of answers to the question


OpenSyllabus

Student survey – support &documentation

Do you think there is a need for additional documentation or training help students in there use of OpenSyllabus?

Answer OptionsResponse Percent

Response Count

Additional documentation 8.4% 14

Training for student 6.0% 10

Not necessary 86.7% 144

Comments 34

answered question 166

skipped question 5

Most cited reason:• Not necessary because easy to use, intuitive


OpenSyllabus

Bibliographic References

In OpenSyllabus almost all bibliographic references have links that brings you to the reference in the library catalogue for a book or to the full text of the article when available in one of the databases to which the library subscribes. Have you used this feature?


Response Count

Yes and that was very useful 19.3% 32

Yes and that was more or less useful 24.1% 40

No 56.6% 94


skipped question 5


We strongly believe this is a key feature of OpenSyllabus and we were disappointed by the results but:• Authors (instructors, secretaries) and librarians sees it as

a major improvement in quality and productivity.• Our pilot had only bachelor’s degree students.• It was a goal to use that feature to bring the student in

the library because it was a known problem that students (B.A.A) rarely go to the library.• We’ll have to try harder

OpenSyllabus

OpenSyllabus vs ZoneCours

Do you think that OpenSyllabus is :


Response Count

Better than Zone Cours 47.0% 77

Same as Zone Cours 30.5% 50

Worst thanZone Cours 22.6% 37

Please explain: 109


skipped question 7

Most cited answer in commentary:• Not different enough from ZoneCours• Interface needs to be improved


OpenSyllabus

Overall Appreciation

What is your overall satisfaction regarding OpenSyllabus?


Response Count

Very satisfied 13.4% 22

Satisfied 59.8% 98

Neutral 17.1% 28

Not satisfied 8.5% 14

Not satisfied at all 1.2% 2


skipped question 7


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Winter Pilot’s Feedback - Conclusion

Instructors:• Very satisfied• Big improvement• Better performance• Ease of use and more functionalities

Students:• Moderately satisfied• No major gain for them• Will see the benefit when more tools will be available

and used to change their learning experience.2010 Sakai Conference - Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.

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Summer Pilot’s ObjectivesSame as winter’s pilot plus:• Training

• Train all 44 secretaries: creation of syllabi from scratch.• Train level 1 and 2 support team with secretaries.

• Test new features and improvements:• Automated creation and update (instructors and students) of course

site based on data coming from institution academic system (PeopleSoft).

• Revamped User Interface.• Test performance of application and infrastructure

• Increase load on application.• Increase volume of data: number of sites, documents, etc.

• In parallel with migration of syllabi from old system for fall.


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Summer Pilot’s Statistics• 40 courses/53 sections (10 coordinated)• All secretaries had to participate and selected a

course in collaboration with their department and the instructors.

• 53 instructors and approximately 2600 students• Each department had multiple courses in the

pilot.• All groups used OpenSyllabus with integration

with Resources and Citations• 1 or 2 groups used the integration with Assignment.


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Summer Pilot’s Status

• From May 6 to June 23• Problems encountered so far• Some students and instructors not having access

to their sites• Updates to membership to course site /

synchronization with academic system (PeopleSoft)• Access to document in parent syllabi• Other isolated problems• Majority of problems occurred at the beginning

• Very quiet since


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Lessons learned• Careful planning paid off.• Take care of your pilot participants, they are your

ambassadors.• Two pilots approach gave us the opportunity to start earlier,

learn and adjust.• Start non-functional(performance, volume, etc.) testing early.• Design carefully and test thoroughly all interfaces with Sakai

tools and core. This is where we had most of our problems.• Make sure your support team has all the training and tools

(e.g. become user) to diagnose the problems.• Need to define promote the use of best practices.


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What’s next?

• Staged deployment starting in September

July 200910th Sakai Conference - Boston, MA, U.S.A.2010 Sakai Conference - Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.

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To Learn More…

• Presentations this afternoon• 3:25 Chasm Creek A: Open Syllabus in Sakai 2.6:

Up and Running!• See us at the technical demonstrations

Wednesday night • Watch the OSYL video at http://

vimeo.com/12495226• Try OpenSyllabus at http://osyltest.hec.ca• Confluence: http://tinyurl.com/opensyllabus


http://vimeo.com/12495226

http://vimeo.com/12495226

http://osyltest.hec.ca/

http://tinyurl.com/opensyllabus

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Questions?
