Utilizing Open Source Software toManage Training

Paul Vasilauskis
Crew Chief & Web Applications Developer

Notice: Authored by Jefferson Science Associates, LLC under U.S. DOE Contract No. DE-AC05-06OR23177. The U.S. Government retains a
non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce this manuscript for U.S. Government purposes.

In the beginning
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Initially Operations had no formal training program.
New hires are assigned as 4th person on a Day Shift crew.
Initial job is to observe and learn from those senior.
Start with letting you perform simple tasks under instruction.
More freedom and complexity as you gained experience.
Very little was written for how things worked. It either did
not exist or was out of date.
• Experience dependent upon what you were exposed to.
• The information learned depended upon who you talked to.

• We needed a list of required subjects, areas of knowledge.
• Also needed something to gather the “Tribal Knowledge”
and make it available to everyone in a consistent manner.
• Preferred method, On line web based:– available both in the control room and at the users desk.
– easy to upgrade and maintain as things changed.

ToolBook• Did not get used as expected:– Windows based:• Developer must create courses on a Windows OS.
• On the client side, advanced interactions only
available after installing Windows plug in. (IE only)– Limited number of course developers:• It is licensed, $1000+ each (currently $2795).
• Fairly steep learning curve.

We need something else
• As a minimum we needed something that:– Was not Windows exclusive.
– Could work with both Internet Explorer or FireFox.
– Can be used by multiple developers by either having alow cost and/or by not being commercially licensed.
– Relatively easy to learn and use.
• We found all that and more with Moodle.

What is Moodle• From http://moodle.org– “Moodle is an Open Source Course Management System(CMS), also known as a Learning Management System(LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)”• Software package written in php that you install on yourweb server. (it's your own training web site)• Lets you create, manage, use, on line training courses.
– Provides a single point of access to multiple courses.
– Both developer and student log in to use Moodle.
– Controls who has access and what they can access.

Course content creation• Just about anything you can put into a web page you can put
into a page in a Moodle course.
• Moodle utilizes a built-in WYSIWYG html editor.

• Most have had no problems understanding and using theeditor.

• Besides the standard text, links and images of a web page,
Moodle allows several multimedia plugins such as .flv, .swf,mp3, .mov, .mpg, .avi, .wmv, .rm to be embedded.
• In addition to the web page content of a course, various“Activities” can be added:– Assignments– Quizzes– Glossary– Discussion forum– Wikis, Chats...

Assignments• Moodle's way of handling off line activities.
• Great for documenting performance of an activity.
• A user with the correct privileges can log in and grade
another user's assignment.

Quizzes• Multiple question types:– True / False– Multiple Choice– Short Answer– Numerical (can allow for a + / - range also multiple units
such as MW, kW, W)– Matching– Calculated (formula question with random variables
based on a design set of parameters for each variable)– EssayQuizzes• Questions are stored in a question bank.
• Quiz questions can be manually selected, randomly selectedor both.
• You can set a time limit for the quiz, choose to allow
multiple attempts, how many, set a delay between attempts...
• Statistics can be seen at the question, course or student level.

Global Glossary• In addition to each course having it's own glossary, thewhole site can have a global glossary available to eachcourse.
• Each glossary entry can have multiple keywords that can be
auto linked to words with a course.
• Clicking on a highlighted glossary link opens a pop up
window with the glossary entry.
• Glossary entries are created with the built-in html editor thus
they can have images inserted, tables, format text...

Meet our needs?
• Not OS specific, it serves up web pages to any browser
whether IE or FireFox on windows or Linux.
• Anyone with access to the web server can develop course
material.* (no developer software to install)• Anyone with access to the web server can view course
material.* (No plug-in required)• Easy to use editor. Help readily available.
• Easily configurable as our training methods evolve.
• Yes.
* if they have the appropriate permissions on Moodle.

Stats from Moodle.org
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46,760 Registered sites in 208 countries.
+33 million users.
+3 million courses.
85 language packs available.
100's of user contributed modules, hacks and plugins.

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We started using Moodle last year.
Our first steps have been to create the course material.
We have ~40 courses created in the 0-6 month category.
Weekly meeting to review 3 courses for content and refine
how we are using it.

Ops Discussion forum• New operators tended to ask the same general questions.
• Future new operators as well as current operators could
benefit if the knowledge traded was some how captured andstored.
• Some of the questions would do well to being discussed
among several more experienced operators. “What would
you do if...”, “How do you know when to...”• On line would provide the greatest accessibility.
• Sending a group email could work but the results would not
be available to future operators.

Enter phpbb.com• www.phpbb.com Is a widely used Open Source forum
software package.
• Written in php, supports several databases MySQL, MS
Access, Oracle...
• Easy to setup and configure.
• Helpful support forums and knowledge base articles• +40 language packs.
• Plenty of user created styles and modifications.

Ops forum stats• Started:Jul 17, 2007 4:35 pm• Total posts 770• Total topics 285• Members 41