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大学向けの Moodle 学修管理システムの構築: Gikadai LMS の開発実践レ
ポート
林 晶晶 1), 後藤 仁志 1),2)
1) 豊橋技術科学大学 IT 活用教育センター
2) 豊橋技術科学大学 情報メディア基盤センター
lin@cite.tut.ac.jp
Building Moodle-based Learning Management Systems for Universities: A
Development Report of the Gikadai LMS
Jingjing Lin 1), Hitoshi Goto 1),2)
1) Center for IT-based Education, Toyohashi University of Technology
2) Information and Media Center, Toyohashi University of Technology
Abstract
The Gikadai LMS is a Moodle-based learning management system developed over the course of
two years by the Center for IT-based Education at Toyohashi University of Technology. From its
inception to its full maturity, the platform underwent iterative design, development, and revision
processes. Now, the platform is fully operational and awaiting user visits and usages. This paper
presents the Gikadai LMS as a case study to share a comprehensive understanding of LMS
development and to demonstrate the final product. To actualize the university’s digital education
vision, the project was driven by four objectives that cover system interoperability, open curriculum,
e-portfolio management, and online teaching and learning assistance. Four levels of development
were implemented as responses: strategy, server, application backend, and application frontend. The
final product is a unique Moodle instance that is networked with e-portfolio management system
Mahara, integrates Google Classroom functions, allows unlimited video conference meetings
simultaneously via the BigBlueButton tool, highly tailored user management and course
management in accordance with the university’s academic structure, open online classrooms for
teachers and students, and friendly online support provided by both asynchronous human agents and
a synchronous chatbot.
1 Introduction
Toyohashi University of Technology (TUT or
Gikadai) is one of only two Universities of Technology
in Japan, with over 80% of its students directly
transferred from 5-year technical colleges called
Kōsens (高専). TUT had approximately 200 faculty
members and 2,027 students as of May 2021 (1,176
undergraduate students, 748 master’s students, 103
doctoral students, and 277 international students).
Moodle has been an optional learning management
system (LMS) for teachers and students since April
2011, when TUT switched from WebCT to self-hosting
Moodle (IMC LMS, https://lms.imc.tut.ac.jp) on a
university-based virtual machine. IMC LMS was
developed and maintained by the Information and
Media Center (IMC, https://imc.tut.ac.jp), which
manages and operates the network system and
computing environment at TUT.
In April 2020, TUT established the Center for
IT-based Education (CITE, https://cite.tut.ac.jp) to
dedicate more resources to e-learning research and
practices in response to the increasing demand for
online teaching and learning support due to the
COVID-19 pandemic. In December 2020, the TUTTI
(in Italian it means all, everyone) initiative was
launched, to which two additional virtual machines
were allotted for designing and developing a new LMS
using Moodle (Gikadai LMS project,
https://lms.cite.tut.ac.jp), as well as an educational
e-portfolio creation and management system using
Mahara (Gikadai Mahara project,
https://mahara.cite.tut.ac.jp).
This paper will focus primarily on introducing the
Gikadai LMS project in terms of its objectives and
vision, four levels of development activities, and final
output that highlights significant designs on four
aspects: inter-system communication, user
management, course management, and user support.
2 Gikadai LMS: Objective and Vision
Although TUT already had the IMC LMS, the
Gikadai LMS project (December 2020 to September
2022) was initiated with the goal of transforming the
e-learning landscape at TUT through a systematically
planned and better designed LMS. The project has the
following objectives and vision.
2.1 System interoperability
The first objective is to improve the system
interoperability between the LMS and various
information management systems inside and outside
TUT, such as the Academic Affairs Information
System (AAIS or 教務情 報 シ ス テム), in which
students select courses, the Google Classroom
management system, in which the majority of TUT
courses are currently held, and other third-party
plugins that can enhance Moodle’s functionality. The
accomplishment of this objective will contribute to the
realization of TUT’s vision of improved course
management flow and experience.
2.2 Open curriculum
The second objective is to develop a cutting-edge
learning management system that supports TUT’s
vision of open curriculum. The open curriculum
education can promote open education at TUT and
foster a culture of free learning among members. By
removing the barriers between classrooms in the online
environment, it will also enable all TUT members to
share knowledge, learn from peers, and enhance the
quality of education.
Gikadai LMS will provide robust support for the
delivery of the TUT curriculum, while promoting open
curriculum education and allowing all TUT members
to audit courses as online students. Students will not be
limited by their specializations and will have golden
opportunities to access a vast array of educational
materials for which they are not required to enroll.
Teachers will also be able to audit other teachers’
online courses and study their teaching methods.
2.3 E-portfolio management
Using e-portfolios in classrooms encourages
students to become behaviorally, cognitively, and
affectively aware of the learning process [1]. A number
of studies have confirmed the positive impact of this
type of portfolio on learning engagement [2]–[4].
By pairing the LMS and Mahara, we aim to realize
the vision of integrating formal and informal learning
in the online environment. Using Mahara assignment
on the LMS, portfolios created on Mahara can be
submitted as assignments for grading on the LMS.
With the aid of digital technologies, students will
experience a more vibrant and interactive learning
environment and develop the habit of monitoring their
own learning progress and outcomes.
2.4 Online teaching and learning support
The fourth objective is to provide efficient and
effective support for the adoption and use of the LMS
by teachers and students, so that educational activities
at TUT can gradually transition from using proprietary
technical solutions to open-source technical solutions.
3 Four levels of development
The Gikadai LMS involved four levels of
development: strategy level, server level, application
backend level, and application frontend level (Figure
1).
Figure 1. Four-level development of the Gikadai
LMS
3.1 Strategy level
E-learning strategy is a blueprint consisting of a
vision and a framework for detailed e-learning actions
designed to achieve e-learning objectives. When
properly conceived and planned, it can significantly
increase the likelihood of success for the organization
implementing it.
Guided by the work of Morrison [5, pp. 112–134],
the activities at the strategy level included team
discussions on the following aspects of content: vision,
content, senior executive support, business case,
success criteria, stakeholders, learning value chain,
technology, culture, transition, risk register, roll out
and communications, human resources, schedules, and
milestones.
3.2 Server level
The server level mainly covered tasks such as
virtual machine/server setup and maintenance,
Shibboleth installation, virtual machine security,
virtual machine/hosting backups, etc. This level
involved a close collaboration with the Information
and Media Center (IMC, https://imc.tut.ac.jp), which
manages and operates the campus network system and
computing environment to promote research and
education at TUT.
The server level primarily encompassed tasks like
virtual machine/server installation and maintenance,
Shibboleth installation, virtual machine security,
virtual machine/hosting backups, etc. This level
required close cooperation with IMC.
3.3 Application backend level
This level included tasks such as installing the
Moodle application on the server, updating the
application, backing up the application’s database and
directories, debugging errors, securing the site,
customizing the site, etc.
3.4 Application frontend level
The tasks at this level involved both structure and
content aspects of the Moodle website concerning its
appearance and user experience, including but not
limited to user management, course management, site
content development, site tutorial development, data
structure design, etc.
4 The final output
This section will discuss the final outlook of several
significant designs and developments within the
Gikadai LMS.
Figure 2. Front page of the Gikadai LMS
4.1 Inter-system communication
Login. The Gikadai LMS supports Shibboleth
authentication method, powered by GaKuNin.
Everyone with a TUT email account can sign in to the
LMS without a problem.
Course enrollment. The action plan to synchronize
academic data from AAIS to Gikadai LMS has been
established (Figure 3). The only communication
between AAIS and IMC LMS consisted of the LMS
administrator downloading the course keys from IMC
LMS to a PDF file, which was then manually
distributed to students within AAIS. After selecting
courses in AAIS, students were required to search for
course enrolment keys and log into the IMC LMS to
self-enroll in the chosen courses. However, the Gikadai
LMS will automate the entire course enrollment
process by mapping AAIS and LMS systems at the
database level. As a result, students select courses on
AAIS, and enrollment data is synchronized
automatically to the Gikadai LMS system. When
students log in to the Gikadai LMS, their chosen
courses will be displayed on their Dashboard. The
mapping was accomplished by configuring the Gikadai
LMS with the “External database enrolment plugin”,
which is already a part of the core Moodle installation..
Figure 3. Mapping AAIS and Gikadai LMS
Mahoodle. The Gikadai LMS is for formal learning
in degree programs and classrooms, whereas the
Gikadai Mahara is for informal learning in student
projects, student clubs, study groups, interest groups,
laboratories, etc. Connecting Gikadai LMS to Gikadai
Mahara (also known as "Mahoodle" by the
community) enables communication between these
two systems. Through XML-RPC/MNet
authentication, Gikadai LMS (Moodle 3.11.8+) was
bridged with Mahara (21.10.1), allowing LMS users to
directly sign into Mahara. On the LMS, the Maharaws
plugin (https://bit.ly/3BXJf1U) was installed to enable
the Mahara assignment function. Figure 4 depicts the
technical configuration and data transfer between
bridged Moodle and Mahara. In Mahara, students
create pages and collections of pages. In Moodle,
instructors create Mahara assignments. On the Mahara
assignment submission page, students can view their
existing collections/pages and choose one to submit as
an assignment. Meanwhile, when the Mahara portfolio
is enabled on Moodle, forum posts, assignments, chats,
database entries, and glossary entries can be exported
to Mahara. They can then be added as e-portfolio
content to Mahara pages.
Figure 4. Mapping Mahara and Gikadai LMS
Google Classroom functions. Due to the large
number of teachers and students at TUT who are
accustomed to using Google Classroom for course
delivery, it was deemed necessary to provide Google
Classroom’s capabilities in the Gikadai LMS at least
for the duration of the transition. First, we needed to
add the Google service as one service on the OAuth
service page inside Gikadai LMS. Personal Google
account is also acceptable for this step. Second, the
assignment function of Google Classroom (Figure 5)
can now be used independently within Gikadai LMS.
However, it is not linked to any Google Classroom
courses a teacher may have. It is in fact a separate
activity that has been created and placed within the
LMS. The configuration and installation procedure can
be found at http://bit.ly/3UEloLZ. Thirdly, users are
able to link their Google Drive account to Gikadai
LMS. Once connected, users can select files directly
from the folders of their Google Drive (Figure 6). To
achieve this function, we had to enable the Google
Drive repository on Moodle, make Google Drive
repository visible, choose the OAuth 2 service for
Google Drive to be “Google”, and configure the
Google Drive plugin. Finally, with the installation of
the Google Meet plugin on the Gikadai LMS, teachers
can now directly create a new Google Meet session
(Figure 7). They can set up a notification to remind
students before the meeting begins, configure the
meeting’s repeating rule, and sync previously saved
meeting recordings from Google Drive to the Gikadai
LMS.
Figure 5. Enabling Google Assignments in Gikadai
LMS
Figure 6. Enabling Google Drive in Gikadai LMS
Figure 7. Enabling Google Meet in Gikadai LMS
BigBlueButton. In collaboration with the Bluesky
project [6], the Gikadai LMS also enabled the
BigBlueButton (BBB) video conferencing function as
an alternative to Google Meet. Project Bluesky began
as an effort to create a collection of BBB servers that
could be utilized by numerous Japanese universities.
Each BBB session produces two distinct types of
recordings. The presentation-style recording can be
viewed chapter-by-chapter or page-by-page based on
the associated materials (e.g., used PPT when the
recording happened), and only browser-based view is
supported. The mp4 video recording cannot be viewed
chapter-by-chapter or page-by-page but can be
downloaded. It is recommended that TUT instructors
download their own recorded meetings to local disks.
The virtual private server (VPS) is unable to
differentiate between recorded files. The VPS is shared
by multiple partner universities; consequently, files are
typically mixed based on which universities used that
VPS over time and who is using which VPS is
assigned in real time by the system.
Figure 8. Enabling BBB in Gikadai LMS
4.2 User management
User roles. The Gikadai LMS defines nine user
roles (Figure 9).
・ Authenticated user. All logged-in users via
Shibboleth authentication method have this role.
Every logged-in user can request new courses.
However, only teachers are advised to do so.
Students ought not to.
・ Manager: Like administrator role but with slightly
less technical capabilities on the system.
・ Course creator: These are some users who are
manually assigned the ability to create new
courses. Typically, this role is assigned to the
headmaster, department head, or program
coordinator.
・ Teacher: TUT teachers are assigned this role either
by being manually assigned to a course, or
approved course request, or synched role data
from AAIS.
・ Course inspector: All teachers at TUT are
manually assigned to this role to allow them the
free access to other teacher’s courses without
participating. It is also possible to exclude courses
from course inspectors’ access.
・ Non-editing teacher: The role is assigned by
course teachers to co-teachers or teaching
assistants. It allows the user to view and grade
students’ work.
・ Student: Logged in users can self-enroll or get
enrolled to courses in the role of student
depending on the enrolment methods of courses.
・ Auditing student: Any student can request to audit
a course on Gikadai LMS by sending a request to
the administrator.
・ Guest: Can view some limited content without
logging into the system.
Figure 9. User roles in Gikadai LMS
User cohorts. All users of the Gikadai LMS are
manually organized into three cohorts: faculty,
students, and staff (Figure 10). Cohorts are site-wide or
course category-wide groups that make it easy for all
cohort members to enroll in a course. For example, if a
course is required for all students, the teacher can add
cohort synch as an enrollment method and select
“student cohort” to automatically enroll all TUT
students in the course.
Figure 10. User cohorts in Gikadai LMS
4.3 Course management
Alignment with the university curriculum structure.
The course categories of the Gikadai LMS are
structured in accordance with the TUT curriculum
structure outlined in its Course Requirement Guide
Book 2021 (http://bit.ly/3DGDJbb). The Gikadai LMS
uses the degree programs’ education levels
(undergraduate courses, master’s courses, and doctoral
courses) as its first-level course categories, as opposed
to the IMC LMS’s use of TUT’s five faculties. On the
second or third level of the hierarchical structure, the
faculties become subcategories. Figure 11
demonstrates specifics.
Figure 11. Course categories in Gikadai LMS
A complete database of all TUT courses. The LMS
administrator will receive csv files from AAIS staff
regarding the available courses in their system and
upload the csv file using the “upload courses” function
on Moodle in April and October of each year. Using
this method for the first time on April 15, 2022, the
Gikadai LMS now contains a comprehensive list of
over 1,300 university courses. The Gikadai LMS is
also equipped with the csv flat file enrolment method,
which permits the uploading of a csv file to a specific
path on the LMS server, where it can be read and
modified by the web server process. The file is deleted
automatically after processing. However, once AAIS
and Gikadai LMS are connected, the aforementioned
two methods will no longer be necessary, as new
courses added to AAIS that are not present on Gikadai
LMS will be automatically added to Gikadai LMS.
Course templates. On the launching page of a new
course, a list of course templates is displayed, allowing
teachers to choose how to begin designing their
courses based on the available templates. This support
is enabled by the Kickstart Moodle plugin.
Figure 12. Course templates in Gikadai LMS
Four course templates are available now.
・ Template 1: default course (Figure 13.a). This
course template allows instructors to create an
entirely new course using the topic format. This
template includes the following components by
default: A label indicating the availability of
tutorials on using the course templates; an
embedded YouTube video; a BBB activity; a block
indicating who the teacher is.
・ Template 2: Google Classroom redirect course
(Figure 13.b). This template serves as a
placeholder for Google Classroom courses. It is a
simple page listing the invitation link to the
Google Classroom course. This template includes
a label reminding student that this is a course
redirect page and instructing instructors on how to
locate the invitation link for their course on
Google Classroom, and a link to the Google
Classroom course which must be manually
updated by the instructor.
・ Template 3: Google Classroom replacement
course (Figure 13.c). This template course is ideal
for teachers who wish to continue teaching within
Gikadai LMS while retaining Google Classroom’s
functionality. Google Meet, Google Classroom
assignments, and the direct insertion of Google
Drive files are among the features.
・ Template 4: creation-based learning (Figure 13.d).
This course template follows the CLEAR (create,
learn, extend, apply, and reflect) model of
instructional design and experiments with Mahara
assignments as assessment activities. See details in
[7] and [8].
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
Figure 13. Course templates in Gikadai LMS
Course backup/archive and reset. A rollover is the
process of preparing Moodle for the upcoming
academic term. Carr [9] identifies three approaches to
academic year rollover: (1) clone a new Moodle
instance annually, (2) backup a course and then reset it
to remove all enrollments, grades, etc., and (3) clone a
course and retain both the live and archived versions.
Considering the situation at TUT, the “backup a course
and reset” approach is the default setting with three
steps: (1) the administrator will execute a bulk backup
of all courses on the platform during a specified time
window by executing a script on the terminal; (2) all
backups will be downloaded and saved to a local
external disk for archival purposes; and (3) teachers
will reset their courses. The “clone a course and
archive” approach is only accessible upon request from
individual instructors. The administrator will copy the
entire course and place it in the “Archive” course
category upon receiving the request. Before resetting
the original course, the instructor is instructed to verify
that the archived version is complete.
4.4 User support
Knowledge base and chat bot. We utilized the free
technical solution of tawk.to to create a knowledge
base for providing searchable tutorial support, such as
how to create a new page or assignment. The
knowledge base is accessible in both English and
Japanese languages. Gikadai LMS also integrated a
tawk.to chat bot. The chat window is located at the
right bottom of the platform. When users click on the
chat bot, they will be able to not only chat with a CITE
support agent, but also search the knowledge base for
solutions.
Figure 14. Knownledge base and chat bot in
Gikadai LMS
Example course to fully experience the LMS
functions. The tutorial course "Fully Experience
GIKADAI LMS by Example" provides examples of
available resources and activities. All logged-in users
are automatically enrolled in this course due to cohort
synchronization. Thus, they are able to see what
resources/activities are supported by Gikadai LMS and
how they will appear once successfully implemented.
A copy of the course won the Best Moodle Open
Courseware of 2021 (honorable mention) award from
the Moodle Association of Japan.
CITE help ticketing system. When online
synchronous support is unavailable, users can still
submit help tickets using an asynchronous support
system on the CITE website
(https://cite.tut.ac.jp/en/helpdesk/add-ticket).
5 Conclusion
This paper describes in depth the development of a
university-level Moodle-based LMS and demonstrates
the final appearance of the platform. It provides a case
study for other Japanese universities to use as a guide
when creating or renovating LMS. Before launching
the LMS to the entire campus, additional work is
required to perform quality assurance. Teachers and
students must be properly trained on how to use the
platform. Research activities should be conducted
concurrently with the development of the LMS in
order to continuously seek evidence-based teaching
approaches and incorporate them into course templates
for use by teachers. Teachers can be invited to
participate in action research with CITE to redesign
their courses and conduct collaborative research for
academic publication. To identify and disseminate best
practices in the shared community, outreach activities
are also encouraged to improve communication
between universities’ e-learning support labs and
centers.
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