OPENSEMINAR IN RESEARCH ETHICS: OPTIMAL IMPLEMENTATION OF AN ONLINE COURSE IN A NEW LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Since 2007, Research Ethics Education at North Carolina State University has utilized OpenSeminar in Research Ethics (OSRE), which is an approach to Research Ethics Education utilizing a combination of classroom teaching, an online course and an online community website. OSRE is composed of OpenSeminar, a web-based framework to provide open-source learning material (text, audio and video) for the class, and e-Assignments, a compact Learning Management System which provides an interactive method for testing the student's knowledge of the material. Starting in the Spring term of 2011, it was decided due to functional support requirements that the structural framework of OSRE for students at North Carolina State University would have to change. This would require a move of the source material and testing capability from the existing platform to a new platform and learning management system. Several alternatives were explored, with the final decision to implement OSRE in Moodle. This move will be completed during Fall 2010 and will be ready for student use for the Spring 2011 semester.

In this paper, we will discuss the reasons for the move, why we chose Moodle, and analyze how the capabilities of OpenSeminar and e-Assignments were mapped to similar functionalities in Moodle. For example, the Moodle lesson module provides adaptive methods to send a student to different parts of a lesson based upon a student's answers to the test questions. This maps directly, and provides additional capability, with the e-Assignment functionality of testing a student at selected points in the lesson and preventing them from continuing until the correct answer is provided. Other issues which will be discussed are support (score maintenance, class rolls and software upgrades) , flexibility (allow other professors to produce their own on-line class based on a subset of the existing class which is a major strength of Open Seminar, ability to easily make changes in the class material when required, including text and student exam changes), and security (how students are qualified to gain access to the course, and how students outside of North Carolina State University would access an open version of the class).

We will explain a structural method by which source material and testing capabilities for a class currently in an existing learning management system can be transferred to a new system while maintaining and extending the capabilities of the present system. We also show how to solve problems associated with features of the current system that cannot replicated in the new system.