Criteria of Selection
What do you consider to be the two most important selection criteria for choosing a course management system at your institution?
Ease of use and IT support.
At my organization, reliability and customization are the most important criteria for choosing a course management system. Reliability applies both to course site uptime and customer service. I really don't like the one-size-fits-all approach inherent with the LMS systems I've experienced,therefore,the ability to customize the LMS interface is also important. My organization needs the flexibility to scale up or scale down depending on the needs of the course.
Veronica,
As a result of assessing your organization's needs for an LMS, which one have you selected? What criteria did you use to determine its potential to addres the institution's requirements for customization and reliability?
Dr. Robert Roehrich
IT support is a big factor, and I believe the ease of customizing the content and the delivery is very important.
We still haven't decided! Finding the right LMS has proven to be a huge challenge for us. We provide degree-granting and non-degree programs, and the needs of these programs differ dramatically. Our degree-granting schools are now using Canvas and prior to this, they used Angel. Neither LMS, however, has proven flexible enough to meet the needs of our non-degree programs. I have also been underwhelmed by their reliability and customer service and find their interfaces non-intuitive. Therefore, our non-degree programs are still searching for alternatives. We've been meeting with new LMS providers and LMS alternatives such as NextThought, ExecOnline, and GoingOn. Meanwhile, we've been experimenting with free courseware, using the experience to test functionality, assess user experience, and better guide the decision-making process. At the end of the day, the main criteria that will determine our choice will be ease of use for both the faculty and students, customization/flexibility, reliability, security, customer support/responsiveness, integration of tools that support social learning, integration with our existing registration system, ability to monitor student activity and assess student learning, and ADA compliance. We're giving ourselves until June 2013 to make a final decision.
Samuel,
Agreed,both are important elements in the consideration of selecting an LMS for your institution. Other key elements are flexibility and alignment of the LMS (and its capabilities) with key programmatic and business goals of the organization. Given that instructional content is the "intellectual capital" of your institution and the outcomes of instructional delivery ultimately drive institutional effectiveness, retention and revenue growth, these are essential considerations that should be added to your list. Upon further reflection, what other capabilities would you add to your selection criteria?
Dr. Robert Roehrich
Veronica,
Thank you for articulating the challenges you and your institution have been facing in selecting an appropriate LMS for your online programs; its not an easy task! To para-phrase your response and to reinforce what I posted earlier, selection of an LMS must align with your educational and business objectives. Institutions are more likely to select an appropriate LMS if an instructional delivery strategy is carefully developed and considered a "business asset". Given your June 2013 target for a final decision, have you developed a "decision tree" format for assessing and comparing LMS characteristics against your instructional strategy and business objectives? By creating a decision tree, assets and liabilities of the different alternatives become clear and it helps eliminate some of the subjectivity that may be created by individual biases.
Dr. Robert Roehrich
What a great idea! Do you have a sample decision tree I could use as a guide in the LMS decision-making process?
Veronica,
There are several providers of LMS decision tree models, mainly from software providers, that can be located through a basic search. As a starting place, I suggest you go to the following web address for an article that contains a decision tree for selecting an e-learning strategy. http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/103/decision-trees-for-selecting-an-e-learning-strategy--a-case-study.
Dr. Robert Roehrich
I have to say that based on experience, I don't have much faith in the dial-support provided by expensive off-the-shelf delivery platforms. I find that having local, in-house IT Support empowered to integrate course delivery with the local database so that these can speak to each other is crucial.
Kevin,
Clearly it depends on the breadth of the online program and number of students enrolled. With a relatively small to medium number of courses and like size enrollment, your post is vaild and recommended. However, when the number of courses and students begin to expand beyond the capabilities of an in-house IT Support Department, then dial-in or chat support is a viable approach to provide timely and uniform customer service.
Dr.Roehrich
Ease of use and ease of navigation seem to be the biggest problems we have had getting our system up and used by all our people. If everyone won't use it, it has very little value. Our faculty is made up of old school, hands on learners teaching hands on courses. It would be nice for the theory portion of programs to be able to be taught using a self paced, automated system.
Mark,
Have you considered "subcontracting" portions of courses, either through publishing companies, independent contractor faculty or other education partners? Given the nature of the issues you describe, this approach may provide an alternative to turning over a portion of your faculty. However, there are potential downsides: initial and recurring costs, alignment of curriculum, acceptance by your faculty, etc. Mark, if nothing else, it's worthy of exploration!
Dr. Robert Roehrich
