Category: Requirements

The third of three posts about the requirements we’ve identified for a future LMS: Teaching, Transition, and Behind the Scenes.

Core Requirement

OIT technical staff must be able to construct and maintain a stable and reliable service within the limits of staffing, budgets and technology.  The system must integrate efficiently with Spire and related technology, and support requirements for security, performance and scalability.

Ideally, a new LMS would be architected to facilitate incorporation of future technology changes and innovations related to learning environments.  A design approach that recognizes the inevitability and scope of such changes could increase the long term benefits from our investment in change at this time.

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?

The first of three posts about the requirements we’ve identified for a future LMS: Teaching, Transition, and Behind the Scenes.

Core requirement: because most tools of this sort can handle the needs of medium  to small classes, the LMS we choose needs to provide tools that specifically assist instructors in managing large classes.

Ideally, instructors should be able to use this tool to communicate with, and manage the data for, large numbers of students (200-600 students).  in addition to standard features for posting content, this tool needs to provide an efficient mechanism for assessing student work (collecting, commenting, grading, and recording) no matter what the type of activity (discussions, quizzes, papers). This tool also needs to have flexible features for allowing an instructor to receive assistance from a variety of people (not just TA’s, but also staff, librarians, and other collaborators).

Basic considerations: it needs to be intuitive to use, yet flexible.

An intuitive system will increase the number of self-sufficient self-starters among the instructors (and decrease the complaints from students that their instructors “do not use it well”). It  needs to provide a flexible environment that adapts to the multitude of teaching styles and requirements on campus. A system which is easy to start using, but provides a deep set of features would be the best option. There are many “basic” features that instructors have come to expect in an LMS: content delivery, grade book, quizzes, discussions, assignment drop box, etc. (see below). These should all be represented in the feature set.

Bonus features: it needs to be adaptable to new technologies and cultural shifts

An adaptable system will be able to change with the times–allowing new modules or features to be added as needed. Current trends in student-driven activities, mobile devices, and RSS dissemination/aggregation need to be addressed now, but the system also needs to be able to adapt to trends that are yet to come.