日本教育工学会

第２５回全国大会

Dynamic Synchronization of Learning Contents among
distributed Moodle systems
Tsuyoshi Usagawa, Achmad AFFANDI*, Bekti

Cahyo HIDAYANTO*, Meita RUMBAYAN,

Toshiro ISHIMURA, Yoshifumi CHISAKI
Kumamoto University, * Institute of Technology Surabaya
Abstract

Sharing learning contents over distributed LMSs is an important issue in order toreduce the burden for building well-designed contents. As a lecture, regular updates of contents foron-going course are really important because contents should be reflects the learners’ attributes aswell as the correction and addition of contents. Although this kind of dynamics of contents isrequired for actual situation, differential updates of contents provided on distributed LMSs are notsimple tasks. This paper introduces the dynamic synchronization between distributed Moodle
systems connected over network. Concerning on the synchronization of contents, there are twotypes,uni-directional

andbi-directionalones,

howeverthemethodofuni-directional

synchronization is discussed in this paper.
KeywordSynchronization of learning contents, distributed LMS, Moodle, uni-directional
together, all of contents can update immediately

�．Introduction
In order to reduce the burden of building

so that dynamic synchronization of contents cancontents is important issue. One of the typicalconfiguration has several issues to be considered

contents are dumped, copied, then uploaded toThis solution can be used only if the contents arecontents for their own courses always wish toand managing learning contents, a share ofbesolutions is dump-copy-upload, that is wholewell;other LMS via standard or original data format.

already fixed. However

lectures who utilize

madeeasily.

However,single

LMS

Protection of personal, especially learners’

information
Robustness

againstfailureofnetwork

communication channel for distant instituteCost efficiency of network bandwidth

update the contents according to the demand or(For example, major Indonesian nationalerrata. In order to meet this demand, thenetwork now, but some of connection is only

distributed LMSs is required. In this paper, theIn order to solve those issues, the authors havecontents between distributed Moodle systems isbetween multiple Moodle systems[1].

acquisition of students as well as correction ofuniversities are connected by INHERENTdynamic1Mbps or so.)synchronization

methodbetweendynamic synchronization method of learning

proposed the synchronization method of contents

discussed with communication failure treatment.

Figure 1 shows an image of distributed

LMSs for dynamically synchronizing learning
contents from a server LMS to multiple client

2．Concept and implementation

In order to share the same learning

contents between many institutes, a technicallysimplest solution is to use a single LMS for

supporting multiple classes by different schools
or institutes if sufficiently wide bandwidth canbe assumed. If multiple courses are linkedLMSs. Synchronization process can be run
regulary, i.e., once a day during least busy

duration of communication channel. Because of
direction of synchronization is “server to clients”
only,

it

issynchronization.

− 1011 −

named

as

uni-directional

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会場：２４５Ｅ２ａ−２４５−０６

records to make M and sub1 identical are

directly generated.

STEP 3: SQL commands are copied from server
LMS side to the specified client LMS side.

STEP 4: Copied SQL commands are applied toclient LMS’s Database S1.

STEP 5: Based on the acknowledgement fromclient LMS, Database sub1 is updated.

Against the failure of communication channel,handshaking protocol is utilized between server
LMS and client ones even if SSH connection isFig. 1: Concept of synchronization of Multiple LMSs.

In order to implement the synchronization

method,utilized.

Moodle system is chosen by various

reasons; i.e. software license, rich experiences ofMoodle usage at authors’ university and institute,and reliability. One server LMS carries themaster contents, and client LMS carries the copyofserver LMS’s contents course by course unit

as shown in Fig.2.

Fig.3 Synchronization method of contents by SQL
operation.

3．Concluding Remarks

The dynamic synchronization method ofcontents between distributed LMSs is discussed.

This method is testing as the test bed for

e-learning activities at a local elementary school

Fig.2 Courses allocation of server and client LMSs.
Whenonesynchronizes

theand some test are performing between Indonesia

specifiedcourses, only related database contents, such as

updated html, quiz are checked while user
specific data are omitted to avoid the sharing
personal information between LMSs.

Figure 3 shows the basic procedure forsynchronization.

STEP 1: Specified database tables are compared

between master data (Database M, in Fig.3)
with copy of client’s data (Database sub1).

STEP 2: SQL commands to update / remove /add

universities.

Acknowledgement: A part of this research issupported

byStrategic

Information

andCommunications R&D Promotion Programme –Regional topic (SCOPE) #082310003.
Reference:[1] J. Watanaba, T. Ishimuro, Y. Chisaki, T.

Usagawa, Technical Report of IEICE, ET2008-70,

pp.77-80 (2008.12.13) (in Japanese)− 1012 −