[clug] WebCT vs. moodle

[adam]

Robin Shannon wrote:

> First, does anyone actually like WebCT? i just want to make sure that
> it isn't just me, my friends and my lecturers that loathe it.

I administer a server that runs WeBCT (CE4) and it is as hard to admin 
(from a sysadmin point of view) as it is to use (from a students point 
of view). Backing up 9 Million files/dirs is scary. We have to tar the 
entire install directory every night which ends up at about 160GB (and 
climbing). We can't gzip it because it blows the backup time out by a 
few hours. We can't do differentials because rsync doesn't like checking 
9 million files/dirs for changes.

Apparently all is better on CE6 with it's Oracle backend. I'm yet to be 
convinced.

>
> Second, does anyone have any experience with moodle? I've looked at
> the website and some reviews and stuff and it looks pretty spiffy but
> i don't have any actual experience with it.

I've done a few test installations of Moodle to show it off but we 
haven't ever had the drive to go into a full test scenario.

>
> Third, are other people intrested trying to do some open source advocacy?

Yes. Absolutly. Sign me up. Would you like my first born?

>
> Four, where (if others are interested) would we start? Does anyone
> (specifically staff) have any knowledge or thoughts about which bits
> of the bureaucracy are involved in such decision.

None of my ideas have worked so far. So I don't know if I'll be much 
help here. A userdemo of Moodle to the stakeholders would be a start. 
Some offer of traning for staff, students and administrators. Offers of 
technical assistants where needed. Getting the foot in the door and then 
backing it up with a body of support will be the most important thing IMO.



And then of course there is this... 
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/02/1217219

  Adam.