From:	Stephen Pruch
To:	Christian, Sonya
CC:	Escobar, Joe; Keene-Wilson, Meredith; Lutz, Todd; Walton, David
Date:	Monday - June 18, 2007 5:20 PM
Subject:	Moodle support update
Sonya, I met with David Walton this afternoon to get an update on his research into Moodle support options.  We (IT) are not ready to sign a contract (well, truth is we haven't even seen a contract!) yet.  David is continuing to look into these questions: 1)  What do we get and how do we figure out the cost of faculty support?  You agreed this morning to cover this cost and be responsible for administering the faculty end of things. 2)  Can we purchase faculty support separately from administrative support?  David is hearing that this might be possible; previously we thought it wasn't. 3)  What do we get and how much do we pay for administrative support?  It appears that we get a total of 25 hours of support work for either $5000 (2 servers) or $6500 (3 servers, providing a failover capability).  This will not relieve David of any work, but would provide him with a number of resources to assist with administration. 4)  We're fairly confident that the hosted option is not a good choice for us this year.  That would cost $18,000 for the administrative support only (faculty support would be additional). It looks to me like we are going to start summer term without an agreement in place.  Meredith and Joe have created a nice package of support materials and references.  It is possible that the summer faculty will support themselves, with a little help from IT resources already committed to Moodle (Help Desk, David, etc).  Long term I still believe in the importance of faculty supporting faculty on the learning side of this technology. Please let me know if you have questions or concerns.  I will get back to you as soon as we learn more. Stephen