Moodle in the Cloud
by James Ballard
There is a growing interest in students and learning providers making more use of Cloud technologies, in particular the services offered by Google Apps or Microsoft Live@EDU. With recent Moodle integrations released for both platforms I have been looking into how these work and what this means for providers who may be choosing to go with one or both options for their learners.
Why the Cloud?
The main benefits of using the cloud offering are predominantly that it saves money and resources. Students can be given lifelong emails and potentially link these with personal accounts and they have ‘always on’ access to a wide range of leading technologies supporting collaboration and communication. There is a challenge to IT departments who currently restrict access to such technologies on the whole as this will be taken out of their hands by outsourcing student spaces to the cloud.
Integration with Moodle
To accompany these services both platforms have released an integration for Moodle-Google and Moodle-Live@EDU. I will look at the finer details of how each works and what this provides, however first I want to discuss some general limitations initially for wider implications of integration. The main function of both plug-ins is about Single Sign-On (SSO) so that when you login to Moodle you are also logged into your relevant Cloud system. This means you can access documents and emails etc via a Moodle block but fundamentally these are predominantly set up to take you out of Moodle and into the cloud system itself where there is little consistency of look and feel between the two. This is perfectly usable and works well but further improvements would be desirable to say this was truly integrated.
If we compare this to models using networking functionality such as Mahara we can see where these limitations could be addressed. For example a learner is writing an assignment using their new ‘cloud doc’ application and want to submit this for marking. They could share it with the tutor, however they somehow need to provide a link to it within the assignment itself. This could be achieved via a copy and paste, or by downloading from the cloud and uploading to Moodle, however it would appear to make more sense to have an assignment submission format that allows a user to pick from their ‘cloud docs’ from one interface. The Mahara Submission allows views to be selected and viewed from within Moodle and grade outcomes to be passed back to Mahara, and it would be nice to see something similar for these tools.
There is also a decision to be made as to whether teacher and institutional documentation should be in the cloud. Initially I can see the response being ‘no’, and institutional repositories are gaining interest as a way of managing institutional content. However if tutors are using one system and student’s another there is a risk of confusing as to where things should go unless integration is very tight.
At the moment email and student storage are very well handled and the interoperability with Moodle is a definite improvement other internally hosted email and storage servers, however there is still a further stage of integration that could make either incredibly powerful. In particular we know that from experience, tutors and students could benefit incredibly from being able to edit documents directly within Moodle, rather than having to keep leaving for other system, which may also help with version control.
Microsoft Live@EDU
MIS feeds both systems and then Moodle authenticates through Windows Live login
The Microsoft Live@EDU authentication uses Windows Live to authenticate users in place of other authentication methods. When a username and password are entered the Windows Live server is contacted for authentication. This means learners will use their Live@EDU password for all access. It is therefore important that other systems authenticate in a similar fashion or that the varied systems are kept synchronised.
When a user logs into Moodle they will have direct access to Windows Live Mail, Calendar, Messenger, Alerts, and Bing search from the associated Moodle block.
Google Apps
Moodle authenticates against MIS and then synchronises with Google Apps
The Google Apps authentication works slightly differently. Users authenticate into Moodle using existing mechanism (internal, LDAP, etc.). Once the accounts are in Moodle these are then synchronised with Google Apps to create corresponding accounts. When a user logs in to Moodle it will authenticate against internal systems, and then send a login token to Google so that the user is logged in to both systems.
Once logged in a user will have direct access to Google Start Page, Google Docs, Google Calendar and Gmail from within Moodle. A link back to Moodle can also be used from within Google Apps.
Which to choose?
The integrations are almost identical and other very similar services to the user so this choice will clearly be different for each institution and will probably hinge on which back-end systems you may also want to link into this mix. Cynically one could propose that the integrations are predominantly about Google vs. Microsoft market shares and learners should be given a choice based on what technologies actually help them, however that will prove impractical in most cases as there is little interoperability between the two platforms. If one provider chooses Live@EDU and another institution collaborating with them uses Google Apps it remains to be seen whether this is a barrier or boon to collaboration.