<p dir="ltr">Addendum<br>
Liverpool uni started with a small install on an old pc using xampp to prove there was a demand before paying for servers and so on</p>
<p dir="ltr">When toolkits was beinf developed my pc was the server and its always been a relatively light piece of kit in terms of memory and processors</p>
<p dir="ltr">Not to confuse - the best option is full server, but there are other half way houses or external hosting which are good ways to provide the service as well</p>
<div class="gmail_quote">On 5 May 2014 07:37, "Alistair McNaught" <<a href="mailto:Alistair.McNaught@heacademy.ac.uk">Alistair.McNaught@heacademy.ac.uk</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<div style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Useful summary, many thanks<br>
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Alistair <br>
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Sent from my Windows Phone</div>
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<span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;font-weight:bold">From:
</span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><a href="mailto:dbrown61@une.edu.au" target="_blank">Douglas Brown</a></span><br>
<span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;font-weight:bold">Sent:
</span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">05/05/2014 02:08</span><br>
<span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;font-weight:bold">To:
</span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><a href="mailto:xerte@lists.nottingham.ac.uk" target="_blank">xerte@lists.nottingham.ac.uk</a></span><br>
<span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;font-weight:bold">Subject:
</span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">[Xerte] The Costs of Xerte</span><br>
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<div>Mates,</div>
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<div>Just wanted to share the summary of responses to my initial post. Thank you.</div>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-US">The Costs of Xerte</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Some thoughts from a post to the Xerte Listserv</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">“Xerte is obviously free and open source and will hapilly sit on the same</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">server as your Moodle installation so you could argue there is no cost or</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">very little cost per designer/developer and Moodle + Xerte is a great</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">combination if used in an informed way. By that I mean using each for what</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">they are best at and making informed decisions about when and why to use</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">each including integration with other tools too.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">In short I'd say it's a 'no-brainer' to use Xerte as part of the range of</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">options you provide to staff and learners especially given the accessibility</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">benefits. The cost comes with provided the initial and ongoing CPD and</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">support to help all users get the most out of Xerte - but then that applies</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">to all tools in use.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">“Xerte Online Toolkits should sit nicely on the same server as Moodle and integrate with it for login purposes.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Beyond installation anyone can then create LOs. You would only need a designer to change the theme or a developer to perhaps add page types.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">“A lot of people use Xerte out of the box and so don't change anything or modify it. I suspect a few places restyle the CSS but this isn't essential or that expensive.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">I would think most places don't have a developer either. There are about ten Xerte developers and a lot more installs than that.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">A Xerte install can be done inside a Moodle install so doesnt require any extra servers or space.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">I'd be impressed if anywhere has a dedicated Xerte admin person, once installed it pretty much rums itself.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">“As with all Open Source systems, the costs are in humans, not the software. In the UK, if you wanted a Learning Technologist to install, configure and administer Xerte, then advocate its use in blended learning, the
going rate would be £32k-£37k. For a consultant, maybe £250-£300/day (an ex-colleague of mine at Heriot-Watt, who ran her own e-learning consultancy, would charge that). I'm sure that you could translate those numbers into Aussie dollars.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">I'd say that Xerte Toolkits is pretty easy to set up, as an administrator - the costs in terms of time and money would be in getting academics and teachers to use it constructively and to incorporate it into their learning
and teaching, hence the need for a Learning Technologist or similar.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Just my 2 cents worth - I'd be interested to read the views of others on the human costs, not least as I'm kinda interested in e-learning consultancy myself... ;-)”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">“In fairness, a learning technologist wouldn't need to be employed anything like full time to make Xerte Toolkits work for your organisation. It would be a tiny fraction of their time. There are lots of organisations
like ours who have paid for a consultant to set it up and manage any maintenance but we're talking about a day or two here and there at the most and we get a lot of use from toolkits.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Whatever tool you use the overhead will always be getting hard pressed teaching staff to learn new skills and dare to teach differently. But invest in some decent training opportunities and you'll find it's a very attractive
cost benefit ratio.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">“I've struggled to get xerte formally supported by my institution - still working on it! I'm currently stuck with a firewalled dev system...I wanted to use it at #oer14 so my colleague and I installed it on <a href="http://reclaimhosting.com" target="_blank">reclaimhosting.com</a>
which cost us 12 dollars and took us about 15 minutes.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">For more on <a href="http://reclaimhosting.com" target="_blank">reclaimhosting.com</a> see this paper also at #oer14:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.medev.ac.uk/oer14/91/view/" target="_blank">http://www.medev.ac.uk/oer14/91/view/</a>”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">“</span></p>
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<b><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:'Lucida Sans',sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)">Douglas Brown</span></b><span lang="EN-AU"></span></p>
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