Uniservity + Moodle

[Jed]

Hi Guys,

 

For those of you who were at BETT you probably already know this but I thought I'd let you know that if you are being pushed to use Uniservity and their poor excuse for a VLE at the moment, they will be moving over to Moodle design modules soonish, so be aware it will all change very soon.

 

Thank god for that! This is exactly what we as an LA have been asking for and they've finally listened, now to the other 50 things.....

 

Hope this helps,

 

Jed

[penfold_99]

Hi could you expand,

 

moving over to Moodle design modules soonish

[Jed]

Yeah sure-

 

They are replacing their limited design structure with the moodle design structure. This mostly relies on floating modules that theoretically can be created by anyone and moved with a Click and drag feature, which would be big improvement from their wysiwyg editors.

 

As they were showing it off with a moodle header I am assuming they have just paid Moodle for the code.

 

They are saying Summer for it's release, but I am not sure how realible that is and how smoothly it will run in after the MIS integration saga we had.

 

Jed

[gwendes]

Yeah sure-

 

They are replacing their limited design structure with the moodle design structure. This mostly relies on floating modules that theoretically can be created by anyone and moved with a Click and drag feature, which would be big improvement from their wysiwyg editors.

 

As they were showing it off with a moodle header I am assuming they have just paid Moodle for the code.

 

They are saying Summer for it's release, but I am not sure how realible that is and how smoothly it will run in after the MIS integration saga we had.

 

Jed

 

 

Theoretically? Will I be able to go to Moodle.org: Modules and plugins and make it good?

[Jed]

Yes, as far as the guys I spoke to about it were aware it will be a fully functional moodle design. If that is true then you will be able to use all moodle modules and plugins.

 

Here's hoping!

[gwendes]

wwwwwwwwwwwwww0000000000000000000000ttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt!!!!!1111!!!one!!!!11!

[danIT]

So uniservity is now moodle? Or atleast built on top of Moodle?

 

Id love to see more!

[TechMonkey]

Yeah could you confirm that? Uniservity is moving to moodle and away from Sharepoint? Will be funny as our LEA has just gone with Uniservity and we pulled otu to go with Moodle, arf arf.

[danIT]

The uniservity front end already looks very moodle-like, can you remember who you spoke to at BETT regarding the Uniservity change?

[penfold_99]

Yeah sure-

 

They are replacing their limited design structure with the moodle design structure. This mostly relies on floating modules that theoretically can be created by anyone and moved with a Click and drag feature, which would be big improvement from their wysiwyg editors.

 

As they were showing it off with a moodle header I am assuming they have just paid Moodle for the code.

 

They are saying Summer for it's release, but I am not sure how realible that is and how smoothly it will run in after the MIS integration saga we had.

 

Jed

 

So uniservity has realised they had a shit product and have scrapped it and gone with moodle?

 

This will be interesting because of the licensing!

 

If they have done this there will be fight from schools who currently have moodle to get a refund.

[CyberNerd]

We also ditched university to go with moodle

 

this would be most interesting because moodle is published under the GPL - which would mean that Uniservity would also have to be published under GPL if they have used the moodle code

so we can all use uniservity for free ? (not that I want to, last time I looked it sucked)

[Edu-IT]

Interesting. I didn't pay too much attention to the Uniservity stand as what I saw on the screens didn't look any different to what they offer at the moment.

[Domino]

We also ditched university to go with moodle

 

this would be most interesting because moodle is published under the GPL - which would mean that Uniservity would also have to be published under GPL if they have used the moodle code

so we can all use uniservity for free ? (not that I want to, last time I looked it sucked)

 

those were my thoughts......

 

mind you, anything uniservity say should be taken with a pinch of salt IME

[Jed]

 

mind you, anything uniservity say should be taken with a pinch of salt IME

 

I think this important to remember, but from their point of view, if they were advertising this on the stand at bett for thousands to see and they didn;t follow through, it could see the end of them!

 

I spoke to Ben Sills and a couple of sales guys, can't remember what they were called, they were showing a limited version off on a couple laptops on the edge of the stand with a couple of guys giving a brief description about it.

 

When I mentioned it to Ben because of my disbelief, he confirmed that this is the way they are going.

 

As I said before: Here's hoping!

[penfold_99]

I think this important to remember, but from their point of view, if they were advertising this on the stand at bett for thousands to see and they didn;t follow through, it could see the end of them!

 

I spoke to Ben Sills and a couple of sales guys, can't remember what they were called, they were showing a limited version off on a couple laptops on the edge of the stand with a couple of guys giving a brief description about it.

 

When I mentioned it to Ben because of my disbelief, he confirmed that this is the way they are going.

 

As I said before: Here's hoping!

 

So to confirm Ben Sills stated Uniservity are throwing out there own product and replacing it will a version of moodle?

[Jed]

I have just spoken to a reliable source that grilled the Uniservity team at BETT about this.

 

Uniservity will be giving schools the option of using Uniservity or Moodle. The difference being that they will be hosting the hardware and administering the Moodle based platforms aswell. The reason they have done this is so that all the people complaining about Uniservity not being Moodle will stay with them.

 

For those of you concerned about cost, Moodle is actually open source software. You pay for the Hardware, and administration cost of techs like you and me running it. You can pay the Moodle (.com) Company, setup by moodle (.org) for support, consultation, etc which in my opinion is a waste of time as the forums on Moodle.org are so good.

 

Uniservity will still be Uniservity. They will just offer, in my opinion, a better option to run Moodle instead of the Uniservity rubbish.

[penfold_99]

I have just spoken to a reliable source that grilled the Uniservity team at BETT about this.

 

Uniservity will be giving schools the option of using Uniservity or Moodle. The difference being that they will be hosting the hardware and administering the Moodle based platforms aswell. The reason they have done this is so that all the people complaining about Uniservity not being Moodle will stay with them.

 

For those of you concerned about cost, Moodle is actually open source software. You pay for the Hardware, and administration cost of techs like you and me running it. You can pay the Moodle (.com) Company, setup by moodle (.org) for support, consultation, etc which in my opinion is a waste of time as the forums on Moodle.org are so good.

 

Uniservity will still be Uniservity. They will just offer, in my opinion, a better option to run Moodle instead of the Uniservity rubbish.

 

If that's the case there should be a difference in cost, as it hasn't cost uniservity anything to develop it.

 

Also will schools be able to add there own modules? i doubt uniservity could handle schools moving from in house to hosted as most users moodles are in the tens of gigs of data.

 

I thought the original plan was for county to have the equipment to host SLG and the county wide VLE, if uniservity are now going to use moodle, county have effectively wasted hundreds of thousands pounds when they could have got a good developer in at £50,000 instead of spending £300,000ish on uniservity.

 

this is going to be an interesting network managers meeting in feb.

[Jed]

Tell me about it.....if you've been to the Uniservity meetings, this has been a nightmare from start to present and I can't see it getting any easier.

 

Accessing resources is always going to be an issue. The NGN stats are terrible, so even the smallest schools will struggle!

 

One of the guys from here asked Sandra South about it this week, they didn't even know! If they have blown that much on it then i believe this could get worse before it gets better....

 

Regardless of cost (I'm sure Uniservity are paying something for Moodle), I'm just happy they have decided to offer it as an option...

[Edu-IT]

Thanks for the additional information.

[penfold_99]

with this all in mind, I believe Paul LeFevre, e-learning co-ordinator of East Sussex gave a Best Practise Seminar on Flexible Learning in East Sussex at BETT.

[CyberNerd]

with this all in mind, I believe Paul LeFevre, e-learning co-ordinator of East Sussex gave a Best Practise Seminar on Flexible Learning in East Sussex at BETT.

 

Best practice:

1) charge schools for a VLE that they don't want

2) let schools implement their own moodle, at extra expense

3) realise that the schools were had a point, when they said the LA VLE sucked.

4) get company to support the moodle

5) ???

6) profit..

[moodler]

(I'm sure Uniservity are paying something for Moodle)

 

They don't have to, because Moodle is GPL.

 

But I can confirm that they are absolutely not paying anything for Moodle nor (at this stage) contributing anything at all to the Moodle project.

 

Note that Moodle Partners (listed at Moodle Services - moodle.com) do contribute at least 10% of their gross revenue to pay Moodle developers.

 

Cheers,

Martin Dougiamas

[penfold_99]

They don't have to, because Moodle is GPL.

 

But I can confirm that they are absolutely not paying anything for Moodle nor (at this stage) contributing anything at all to the Moodle project.

 

Note that Moodle Partners (listed at Moodle Services - moodle.com) do contribute at least 10% of their gross revenue to pay Moodle developers.

 

Cheers,

Martin Dougiamas

 

Hi Martin,

 

I have a question about licensing of plugins, if i create a plugin, am i able to choose the licence its released under ie non-commercial/education only or will it need to be GPL?

[conehead]

Looks like the poor loves at Uniservity have taken the Best VLE poll to heart:)

 

I don't anticipate them killing the goose that lays the golden eggs with a full scale migration to Moodle, imagine the outcry!

 

More likely that it will be a optional extra for those existing and more importantly NEW customers who want to host "in house" for speed and configuration/MIS integration ease.

[Jed]

Uniservity will still be Uniservity. They will just offer, in my opinion, a better option to run Moodle instead of the Uniservity rubbish.

 

This will mean, either you will have Uniservity or Moodle. It is yet to be seen how this will be setup, however if Uniservity charge people as they do now, they will not beable to justify such a high fee if people keep their platform in-house.

 

As I see it they have one option, to host Moodle and administer it from their side.

 

Also the GPL licence is full of holes. If Uniservity make a profit from hosting Moodle as part of a package, which they will be, then they are breaking the GPL licence terms. Hence, Uniservity should be paying for it, Moodle should not let them get away with not paying for it.

 

I was well informed of this yesterday after I had the same view, having looked into it I came to the conclusion of the above aswell.

 

If we have any GPL Licencing geeks on here, I'd be more than happy to be set straight as I am no expert and this would save us all money!

Edited January 22, 2009 by Jed