What is it?
A learning
management system (LMS) is an application that provides a comprehensive set of
tools for educators to manage learning resources, administrative functions,
assessments, and grading. Some educators argue that because of evolving Web 2.0
applications, students can be better served by an LMS alternative, a toolbox of
web resources that might include social bookmarking tools, document sharing
applications, social networking sites, timeline tools, and media options
available in the cloud. Underlying this approach is the belief that students
should become more familiar with today’s technology tools because these skills
will be useful in the workplace. As a result, some institutions have begun to
offer LMS alternatives, and some instructors are using these options to support
their students’ learning. The framework of an LMS alternative may offer the
user a coordinating hub with a dashboard or other interface that gives easy
access to selected web-based tools. Applications joined in this way provide a
“cafeteria” approach that allows students and instructors to select tools
according to course and project requirements.
How does it work?
LMS alternatives span a wide range of tools
and functions. One option might be a complex system built in-house at a college
or university, designed to perform many of the functions of a traditional LMS
while giving access to outside applications. Another might be a mashup of web
applications assembled by an individual instructor and hosted from a blog
platform or a social networking site. The tools that faculty members select as
LMS alternatives are typically free or low cost, easy to learn and use, and
robust enough to support students and faculty without suffering from service
outages or other glitches. Ideally, the LMS alternative might integrate with
applications already in use on campus, via APIs or existing standards. In such
a design, students could select from among the proffered applications to
complete their assignments.
Who’s doing it?
Institutions or individual instructors pursue
LMS alternatives when a traditional LMS does not meet their teaching and
learning needs. In this sense, any college or university that supports blogging
or uses a collaboration tool like Google Docs might be said to be employing an
LMS alternative. In fact, LMS alternatives frequently use existing applications
as a hub. The GLEAN application at Pepperdine’s Graziadio School of Business
and Management, for example, is a secure framework that integrates the
university’s traditional LMS with Web 2.0 applications, allowing students and
faculty to access a collection of online media and social networking tools. A
program at the University of British Columbia illustrates just how an LMS
alternative can fill a gap for the standard LMS. Students in the Global
Resource Systems program, who spend a term overseas Scenario After accepting a
faculty position in the biology department of a large research university,
Richard decides to use a blogging tool to create his course materials on the
open web. He hopes that by handling his coursework in this way his materials
can be useful to other biology instructors, either at his university or at
other institutions. He also plans to use this platform to test new tools for
delivering content and interacting with students. Richard’s first step is to
set up a blog where students can find course content. A table of contents lists
each class session by title and offers a link to the materials on that topic.
Individual blog pages for class modules include text, images, embedded YouTube
videos, VoiceThreads, data visualizations, or Prezi presentations. They also
contain links to resources for further study. As students visit the blog before
each class session, they are encouraged to use embedded Google Forms to offer feedback.
Their comments let Richard know what he needs to clarify when the class meets.
Periodically, students assess their knowledge of a topic with a test created in
StudyMate. This helps them identify areas where their own understanding is
incomplete in time for them to ask questions during the subsequent class
session. Later in the course, students work in learning teams, writing group
papers using Google Docs. As each group of students completes their paper, they
post it to a team blog page. They are required to read the papers of all other
teams and post a paragraph in comment. Teams can then modify their papers for
final presentation, which Richard can review in Google Docs. There he can check
the revision history to see which team members wrote which parts. At that
point, because the blog tool has no gradebook feature, Richard enters the
grades for these team assignments in an open source courseware tool that is
integrated with the student information system. THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT…
LMS Alternatives © 2010 EDUCAUSE This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.
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>> enrollment information. In addition, any alternative LMS could raise
issues about a lack of technical support, a dearth of faculty support, an
increasingly fragmented student learning environment, and the absence of a
common learning platform.
Where is it going?
The practice of augmenting a standard,
centralized LMS is a trend that can be expected to continue among faculty
members. Often their individual compilations of Web 2.0 tools are highly
specialized and allow them to design learning experiences that are more
targeted than those they could present with the LMS alone. What may emerge from
this environment is a new kind of institutional service that combines the best
of both worlds, providing the integration of an enterprise application that
addresses security and administrative control with a constantly renewing set of
cloudbased media and collaboration tools to support academic work. The
institutionally provided portal or container may become commonplace, allowing
users to select and plug in the tools they desire, which might be internal or
external. There is even the potential for LMS alternatives to return
applications to the pool—that is, faculty and students may create new tools
when the existing offerings do not meet their needs.
What are the implications for teaching and learning?
The use of LMS alternatives encourages faculty
and students alike to see learning as an evolutionary process where effective
tools are emerging constantly. Such an environment prompts learners to become
familiar with a genre of tools rather than any specific one. At the same time,
faculty adoption of tools outside the LMS may induce institutions to take a
fresh look at the LMS service they offer. In so doing, they may discover the
advantages in providing access to a wide variety of tools that enable strong
support of teaching and learning. The use of LMS alternatives may hold the
promise of a more student-centric approach, one that encourages students to
reach across the boundaries of academic terms and learning disciplines and to
see their education as a coherent whole that they can maintain using a range of
applications. By going outside the LMS to use tools that allow for more student
engagement, more effective collaboration, and more active learning in general,
instructors could establish new expectations for the LMS. While some of the
features they seek from the Web 2.0 world might never make it into the
repertoire of most instructors, they may still help push the LMS to its next
iteration. EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit membership association created to support
those who lead, manage, and use information technology to benefit higher
education. A comprehensive range of resources and activities is available to
all EDUCAUSE members. The association’s strategic directions include focus in
four areas: Teaching and Learning; Managing the Enterprise; E-Research and
E-Scholarship; and the Evolving Role of IT and Leadership. For more
information, visit educause.edu. in a developing country, often find themselves
living without sufficiently sophisticated telecommunications infrastructure to
accommodate UBC’s standard LMS. Instead, a WordPress MultiUser (MU) blog site
functions as an online learning center for these students. Instructors submit
course content, and students discuss class topics and submit assignments—all
within the blog structure, with all student and faculty work on the blogs open
to public view. Class presentations, podcasts, and other resources are linked
to and from this space, and presentations are posted to SlideShare. The site
aggregates resources and serves as a directory for the student work posted in
individual blogs while the blog structure allows participation and comments
from registered and nonregistered contributors, including alumni and students
in other countries. This setup allows the participation of those not currently
enrolled, something the traditional LMS typically does not easily accommodate.
Why is it significant?
The tools available in the cloud may offer
students advantages over those in the LMS for collaboration and content
creation. For instance, applications like VoiceThread and Diigo have no
corresponding functionality in a traditional LMS. Moreover, because web tools
are designed for ease of use, students can learn them rapidly, leverage them
for multiple assignments, and recommend the most effective to their peers. The
broad selection of Web 2.0 tools makes it possible for instructors and students
to choose the tool that best fits a learning exercise. Moreover, applications
available in the cloud frequently offer portability, allowing students to
retain and continue to build on their work after they are no longer affiliated
with the institution. Finally, when student work is published on the web, it
can engage individuals from outside the university, generating a kind of
informal peer review. Such exchanges can provide students with experience in
how to weigh the criticism of others. What are the downsides?
Using
alternatives to the LMS can take time—for instructors and students. Teachers
must evaluate new tools and match them with suitable assignments, and students
must learn new application types. Some web-based applications charge fees for
use, while many that are free include advertising. In either case, the locus of
control is outside the institution, raising concerns about interruptions of
service, the security of data and personal information, and the effect on an
institution’s reputation that could result from a security breach. Institutions
that adopt third-party applications for learning have little or no recourse if
those products are poorly maintained, shut down for repairs, or cease to exist.
While some applications include privacy settings, these are generally not
subject to the institution’s authentication protocols. As a result, many
instructors return to the LMS for student grading to ensure compliance with
applicable regulations. While some web applications use emerging web standards,
they are not designed to access the student information system, course
reporting, or THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT… LMS Alternatives July 2010
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