LMO Wk 3 Comment 2

Justin Kraky posted a very descriptive analysis of the process that organizations need to follow in order to find an appropriate LMS or CMS platform for their own use. Justin's blog is accessible here.

A brief excerpt from his post is below:

"In the blog article by Godfrey Parkin entitled “The LMS selection process in a nutshell” (Parkin, 2005), he states that the intuition needs to form a selection team made up of all parties who will be involved with the use and implementation of the LMS. This includes information technology staff, content creation managers, and perhaps an outside consultant. This team must identify what they want the LMS to do, how they plan to integrate it, and who will manage the system once it is implemented. Parkins suggests that the team form a list of “critical success factors” (2005), or the features that absolutely need to be available in order for the system to be an effective solution for the companies training needs."


Justin,

I think you really hit on a great point when you quoted Godfrey Parkin's 2005 statement that institutions should look for "critical success factors". Considering how complex these systems can be, it is again important for organizations looking to deploy such a system to really examine what functionalities would be most important.

As I've watched two institutions go through this process (from the sidelines mind you), it was quite often that each time a new LMS or CMS was discovered, someone on the search committee would exclaim, "This one does everything".

I think if we read the marketing and product literature from any of these vendors, we'd be awed at the power of their technology and the accessibility afforded by their proprietary platform. However, from my personal experience in the software world, while lots of products do a variety of chores quite well, within the audio spectrum at least, each of the main products available actually excels at only a few specific feature sets. Choosing a software based recording platform has nothing to do with which product is "best", but rather, which one is going to best suit your needs?

In that respect, you've really synthesized the process that someone or some group should undergo in order to find the most appropriate platforms that best meets their immediate needs. And, you very aptly pointed out that experimenting and using the products is a critical step that I think can often be overlooked. While some hold the perspective that "software is software", there really are significant differences in how different products function and interact at the user interface level.

Well done.