The second of three posts about the requirements we’ve identified for a future LMS: Teaching, Transition, and Behind the Scenes.
Core requirement
It needs to be as easy as possible for faculty to move current content and course practices to the new system.
Ideally, it should be possible for someone (instructor or staff) to simply “pack up” an existing Vista course and unpack it in the new system. Unfortunately, the “export course” features of Vista involve creating an encrypted proprietary zip file. We need to look at tools that could possibly help us extract content from an exported Vista course.
At minimum, we need to have tools or procedures in place that assist faculty with the transfer of content. Since the proprietary problem with Vista backups came to light, we have been advising faculty that the best way to “back up” their courses is to capture the content in an open standard or accessible file format and save it to their hard drives: e.g. exporting gradebook data as CSV, exporting “printable” views of their discussions, and extracting quiz questions using Respondus. While this method is the most stable over the long term, it is also the most time-consuming, so a direct transfer would be preferred.
Associated Requirement: the new LMS needs to provide the ability to transfer courses (or course content) between itself and other systems no matter what platform, or version, they are using. This is especially important to UMass Amherst faculty who teach CPE courses through the UMassOnline LMS (which is also currently Blackboard Vista and thus will also be changing by 2013.)
Associated Issue: how much disruption will we accept for the sake of a better long-term solution? Choosing a new LMS is an opportunity for getting something better than the current system, but this needs to be balanced with the disruption if the “better” system is very different. How much change is too much?
Specific Requirements
Migrating course content to (and from)
Any new LMS should ideally have a system for importing and extracting Blackboard Vista courses. It should also be able to work with open standards or accessible formats for importing (e.g. comma-delimited data into the grade book and Respondus files to quizzes) as well as exporting (course content should not be locked up in proprietary files). The future LMS should also have file-management tools that make it easy to transfer collections of files (i.e. WebDAV or other multi-file upload tools).
User Interface
The new LMS needs to be reasonably easy to learn so that instructors do not need to spend too much time getting up to speed. This can be accomplished either by selecting an LMS which has a similar interface as the current LMS, or by selecting an LMS which has an interface that is intuitive and easy to learn. A primary criticism of the current LMS is its interface, so a better interface may be worth the disruption.
Course Structure
Different systems have different approaches to how a course is structured. The difference between a new system and Blackboard Vista will determine how much redesigning that an instructor will have to do when converting their classes. When reviewing options for this requirement, we need to evaluate the benefit of a new structure over the time required to redesign courses to fit the new structure.
Long-term Stability
Technology is always changing, and the interwoven web of hardware & software improvements, combined with cultural shifts, means that nothing technology-based is change-free. However, despite the fact that WebCT was introduced on campus in the late 90s (!), it is possible that a course created at that time could still be running relatively unchanged in Blackboard Vista (depending on the specific tools in use). Do any of our options offer us a similar path for long-term stability so that, once converted, instructors will not need to redesign again in the near future?