Re: A Post-LMS Manifesto

scholar360 — Sun, 10 May 2009 19:56:06 -0000

Jon, I love the ideas brought forth here and also in your post "Learner Presence in Course Management Systems". I think you hit the nail on the head with moving away from "course centric" and moving toward "learner centric" systems.

I can say that some are making strong efforts to implement the changes you are suggesting. I'm a developer of Scholar360 and we are passionate about the same ideas you are describing and have been putting these ideas into our system over the last 4 years and I will say with zero modesty that our clients love it. Our LMS, or what we call 'Network Learning Environment' was the first to be built on top of a social network with the aim of increasing learning through interactions between learners and instructors.

There's an evolution happening that people like yourself are helping to promote awareness of and a comfortableness with. There's the need to balance traditional pedagogy with the evolution of learning and teaching styles. This includes social tools within the LMS and the greater access to learning available when users are allowed to freely interact and help one another along in their studies.

I can tell you from a vendor perspective, you *have* to be understanding to the old and new. If you give users traditional tools mixed with innovative tools that encourage social interactions, mashups inside lessons and interesting ways to incorporate content from around the web, live recordings of classes and the ability to interact with their peers in comfortable ways, you do start to see users adopting these tools and enjoying them. We hope we're putting a slightly angled rudder in the water so that clients feel comfortable with the old tools and fall in love with the new ones.

Just want you to know there's someone out there making effort. :)

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Re: A Post-LMS Manifesto