Implementing WebCT DIT’s Institutional Strategy Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) Dublin...

Implementing WebCTDIT’s Institutional Strategy

Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT)

Dublin Institute ofTechnology

• Ireland’s largest third-level institution, established by the DIT Act (1992)

• Six faculties: Applied Arts, Built Environment, Business, Engineering, Science, Tourism & Food

• 22,000 students (10,000 whole-time, 7,000 part-time, 4,000 Apprentices, 1,000 research and short courses)

• 1,150 academic staff (including whole-time and part-time)

• Currently spread across 38 sites in Dublin, but planning to move to a new state-of-the-art campus within 5 years

Implementing WebCT


DIT’s Strategic Plan 2001-2015

The Strategic Plan acknowledges and responds to the challenges facing Higher Education in Ireland. It identifies 8 themes and strategic objectives, each underpinned by specific goals to be achieved over the duration of the plan. A Technical Working Group was set up to advise on the implementation of the Plan.

Theme 1: Enhancing a learner centred environmentTheme 2: Developing a strong postgraduate and research capabilityTheme 3: Developing links with IndustryTheme 4: Developing and enhancing a culture of excellenceTheme 5: Developing leading edge electronic capabilities within DITTheme 6: Enhancing a caring and supportive ethos within DITTheme 7: Fostering an entrepreneurial culture within DITTheme 8: Development of the Grangegorman campus

Implementing WebCT


DIT’s Strategic Plan 2001-2015

The Strategic Plan acknowledges and responds to the challenges facing Higher Education in Ireland. It identifies 8 themes and strategic objectives, each underpinned by specific goals to be achieved over the duration of the plan. A Technical Working Group was set up to advise on the implementation of the Plan.

Theme 1: Enhancing a learner centred environment•Modularisation•E-learning/ Distance learning•Learning, teaching and assessment strategy•Student retention/ Career development•Widening student base•Craft education•Bologna ladder/ progression system•Continuing professional development/continuing education and training

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The Learning Technology Team

• Established May 2002

• 1 manager, 1 administrator and 3 designers

• Role• to support the implementation and promotion of technology-based teaching at DIT

• to support academic staff in their efforts to create new ICT approaches to learning • to have 50% of the courses at DIT using WebCT to enhance teaching by 2005

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Three-year roll-out plan, involving:

• Technological change• Pedagogical change• Cultural change

• Academic staff in six faculties

• Library staff

• Central Computer Services (including the MIS)

• Student support services (counselling, careers, disability etc.)

• Learning & Teaching centre: prioritising pedagogy over technology

We raise awareness of accessibility, intellectual property and copyright issues (including the use of an approved disclaimer on all courses)

Technological Change

Software in use:

• SteelEye LifeKeeper 4.1, distributed by Open Minds

• WebCT 3.8 Campus Edition

• Redhat Linux 7.2

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Hardware in use:

• 2 x Dell PowerEdge 6650, 2 x Xeon 1.4GHz Processor,

4GB RAM

• 2 x Network Card

• HP HBA QLogix (qla2x00)

• HP MA8000 SAN

• 2 x 18GB internal hard drives (RAID 1)

• 12 x 36GB disks (RAID 0+1) and

3 x 36GB (RAID 5) external in SAN

Implementing WebCT

Implementing WebCT


Kevin St

Aungier St

Bolton St Cathal Brugha StMountjoy Square

Rathmines Pembroke St

Sackville Place

Linen Hall

90Mbs-HEAnet

(Internet Access)

Adelaide Rd

Mount St

Chatham Row

Temple Bar2Mb LL

256kb LL

Fibre

34Mb

128kb LL

WAN Design:

Green Street

• DIT installed Redhat Linux on the two servers

• Open Minds configured HBA and installed SteelEye LifeKeeper on site

• WebCT was installed by DIT running on a virtual IP number (Apache)

• Open Minds installed the LifeKeeper Application Recovery Kit (ARK) for WebCT

• ARK was configured to protect the WebCT application

• Failover was tested

Installation:

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• Active and passive servers are connected via a private network connection on a second NIC with a heartbeat between them

• When the heartbeat is missed LifeKeeper fails over to the passive server and:

- moves the mount points to the second server

- starts up the WebCT application services on the second server- moves the virtual IP number so that it now points to the second server

What happens during failover?

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Data HP MA8000 SANHBA connections to serversWebCT Campus Edition 3.8

Active serverRedhat Linux 7.2

Passive serverRedhat Linux 7.2

SteelEye LifeKeeper 4.1distributed by Open Minds

[http://webcourses.dit.ie]

System configuration & failover:

---------------------

Active server

-------------------

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[http://webtutors.dit.ie]Development server

Redhat Linux 7.2

• Administration by GUI or command line

• Manual failover, putting passive machine in service

Failover administration:

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Failover administration:

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•During failover

• Minimal loss of service in the case of hardware failure- failover time at present is less than 1 minute

• Less downtime for hardware maintenance and OS upgrades as the second machine continues to run

• Automatic failover out of hours

• LifeKeeper customizable scripts can check the system processes to monitor the WebCT application

What failover solution gives us:

Implementing WebCT

• Protection of data on disks

- Shared storage mount point is only moved

- SAN hardware RAID protection protects filesystems

- Long term plan is data mirroring

• Complete preservation of client connection. Users suffer brief disruption and must re-establish their connection – High Availability Solution

What failover solution does not give us:

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• Failover was successful in a real-life situation when access to a mount point was lost

• Positive experience

Experience to date:

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• Server monitoring – cpu usage, processes, disk space, etc.

• Operating System upgrade – Red Hat Enterprise Linux

• WebCT upgrade

• Offsite data mirroring

Where do we go from here?

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WebCT and SCT Banner ® Integration

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• Interim solution - manual scripted download of students from SCT Banner® to WebCT

• DBA runs script and monitors logs for import errors

• Run daily during registration periods

SCT Banner ®:

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• SQL script extracts students with RE (registered) or EL (eligible to register) status

• SQL script extracts information such as student ID, lastname, firstname, date of birth (ddmmyyyy), registered course (FTxxx/x)

• SQL script puts information in standard form if necessary,

e.g. Mc/Mac, O’, with no spaces

• SQL script ensures password is at least 4 characters

SCT Banner ®:

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SCT Banner ®:

• Output file must have no commas

• File is transferred to the live server by FTP

• API tool is used to import the file into WebCT. This must be run as the webct user from /webct_home/webct/generic/api.# webctdb [fileadd|update|delete|change] global

• Students are assigned to a default course according to their faculty (course must exist in WebCT)

• Student ID becomes the WebCT ID

• Date of birth becomes the password

SCT Banner ®:

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Pedagogical and Cultural Change

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• There is no simple way to adopt e-learning…it’s a complex process, and to a great extent doing it absolutely right is still an unknown process

• The technology is only a means to an end: what’s important is the teaching

• Successful use of VLEs is dependent on the quality of course design and pedagogy

Supporting face-to-face teaching

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• Presentations at board level to all 6 faculties

• Each faculty encouraged to develop its own strategy

• Focused pilot on Tourism & Food

•Training at local level (currently weekly)

• e-Learning days, December 2002/2003

• Summer School 2003/2004

• Support: Designer Central and Resources Site

Implementing WebCT


• As of 4 May 2004, we have worked with 521 staff, 355 of whom have

received formal training

• 270 live courses/modules, 300+ in development, growing daily

• School of Hospitality Management and Tourism using WebCT for all first

years across their main programmes

• Uptake across faculties is accelerating: we now employ students as

additional support resources

• Ambitious use of design (e.g. OADL, Simulation Modelling)

• All 6 faculties live by September 2004

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• Student feedback: extremely positive

• Independent DITSU survey (March 2004)

• 19.5% of students used WebCT in 2003–4

• 75% of those who used WebCT rated it as

“Excellent”, and all believed that it should

be introduced to every DIT course

http://intranet.dit.ie/ltt/html/september2003.html

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On 77 CAO advertised undergraduate programmes at DIT, WebCT is now being introduced to 36 of them

This equals 46.75% in under two years

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Tracey RocheSenior Systems [email protected]

Dr Kevin O’RourkeProject Manager, Learning Technology [email protected]

Implementing WebCT DIT’s Institutional Strategy Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) Dublin...

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