Learning Management Systems (LMS): Which is Right for Your Organization?

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Learning Management Systems (LMS) Which is
Right for Your Organization?

• Fred Saba, Ph. D.
• Professor of Educational Technology
• San Diego State University
• saba_at_distance-educator.com

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Introduction

• Dont have an LMS? and not sure if need one?
• Built your own LMS?
• Currently use
• A proprietary LMS?
• Open source LMS?
• Planning to select one, or change the current
  LMS?

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Farhad (Fred) Saba, Ph. D.

• Distance educator since 1972
• Professor of Educational Technology San Diego
  State University
• CEO, Distance-Educator.com
• Consultant to American Pacific University (DECT
  accredited institution)

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Current Research

• Theory building in distance education
• Applying system dynamics to develop new
  instructional design principles that are relevant
  to todays media environment
• Rapid dynamic development
• Just-in-time-training
• Responding to individual learners

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Learning Management Systems?

• Nortel DV-1 Database development (1986)
• Open source Web 2.0 Applications
• Proprietary LMS
• Blackboard
• Desire2Learn
• Open Source LMS
• Moodle
• ANGEL
• Sakai

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LMS Used in Business

• SumTotal
• Saba

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What do LMS do?

• Administrative Tools
• Instructor Tools
• Learner Tools

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Administrative Tools

• Student registration
• Student profiles
• Student tracking
• Grades
• Integration with legacy systems (?)

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Online Demo
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Instructor Tools

• Content management display
• Text, audio, video, animation
• Electronic dropbox
• .doc, .pdf,.ppt, .jpg
• Synchronous chat
• Asynchronous discussion forum
• Quiz

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Online Demo
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Learner Tools

• Course content access
• Dropbox
• Chat
• Discussion forum
• Groupware and community building tools
• Blogs, Wikis,

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Online Demo
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Selecting the appropriate system

• LMS Features
• Global
• Administrative
• Technical
• Proprietary system
• Open source system
• Hosting

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Global Features

• Comfortable learning and teaching environment
• Usability
• Accessibility (Section 508 of US Department of
  Justice code
• Maximize interactivity and community building
• Optimize personalization of learning

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Administrative Requirements

• University administration
• Colleges and schools
• Academic departments
• Degree, non-degree, and certificate programs
• Courses within each program

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Administrative Features (1)

• Manage registration
• Online payments, and other electronic commerce
  requirements
• Manage online rosters, and attendance records
• Manage differential access to staff, instructors,
  courses developers, visitors,

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Administrative Features (2)

• Track student participation
• Manage online grade books
• Manage online course calendars
• Manage a public bulletin board
• Administer online surveys
• manage access to administrative data
  instructional materials and student conferences

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Instructional Features (1)

• Provide user friendly access to instructors, and
  students
• Offer different means by which instructors can
  integrate course materials into the new
  environment
• Allow for the use of a variety of media files,
  ranging from simple text and graphics, to more
  complex video and animation

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Instructional Features (2)

• Support application, file and screen sharing
• Support synchronous chats, and asynchronous
  discussions
• Manage separate virtual breakout sessions
• Share instructional materials among several
  course
• Provide test development and scorning capability
• Generate reports on test results for students

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Technical Features (3)

• Server/platform compatibility
• Server/client compatibility (Web browsers)
• Ease of deployment
• Ease of administration

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Technical Features (4)

• Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SC0RM)
  compatibility (http//www.adlnet.org)
• A set of specifications for reuse of Web-based
  learning content across multiple environments and
  products.
• A set of interrelated specifications to create
  one unified "content model".
• reference model that defines Web-based learning
  objects
• A process to knit together diverse and disparate
  learning content and protocols for reusability,
  accessibility, durability and interoperability

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To host or not to host? (1)

• Is the vendor (In-house IT department) qualified?
  
• Can the vendor (In-house IT department) provide
  sound technical advice?
• Are the technical staff helpful in
  troubleshooting and problem solving?
• Is the company well established?
• Is the company financially sound?

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To host or not to host? (2)

• Is there positive synergy with the vendor?
  (In-house IT department)
• Is the LMS platform compatible with the
  organizations IT infrastructure?
• Is server and client software easy to implement?
  
• Is the telecommunication infrastructure
  sufficient?

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Distance-Educator.com

• Starting pointLinks to everything related to DE
  e-Learning
• Research-based VS Opinion-Based
• News, think tanks and industry reports, white
  papers, and many more resources

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Learning Management Systems (LMS) Which is
Right for Your Organization?

• Farhad Saba, Ph. D.
• Professor of Educational Technology
• San Diego State University
• saba_at_distance-educator.com