LMO Wk 2 Response 1: Jeff Kolhs

This week, Jeff Kohls had a really good post about the overall costs that can exist when implementing an LMS or CMS platform. Jeff's blog can be found here, and below is choice paragraph taken form his post:

"To get an honest view of the complete cost of the LMS/CMS learning systems, companies and educational institutions must look at the whole picture, from conception to fruition, maintenance and sustainability and longevity, while providing up-to-date support and technology."


Jeff,

I don't think you could have summarized the financial considerations when investigating LMS and CMS platforms any better. Your suggestion that institutions work to understand the "whole cost" of a project is critical. I know that within my business dealings, it is often quite easy to forget to address the continual operational or maintenance related costs that might exist within such complex systems.

Earlier this week, I was visiting a colleague's office and noticed that he had a Braniff Airlines poster next to his desk. Out of curiosity, I had to ask what the relevance of a now defunct airline could be for him or his students. He casually asked me what I knew of Braniff, and I responded that they were an airline who refocused their brand image to reflect fun, class, style and an "experience" that was not often found with competitors. Agreeing with my assessment, my friend continued the narrative and explained that they did this without critical regard for the bottom line. The lesson being that a company who was considered a model for the entire industry eventually filed for bankruptcy because they didn't account for all the associated costs which continued to climb, sometimes incrementally, as the airline enhanced everything from their planes, to their uniforms, and their food service.

Similarly, several years ago, my home institution decided to adopt Moodle to support both our faculty and students. This particular platform was chosen almost solely based on the upfront cost of the software. Moodle is an open-source platform and it is essentially free to use and build out individual components and settings tailored specifically for your own institutional needs. This choice was made despite the fact that our sister schools all used Blackboard. From my understanding, the licensing for our school to use Blackboard would have cost tens of thousands of dollars and that was considered too expensive by our immediate managers.

However, without any outside administrative support for Moodle, we had to spend significantly to have several of our faculty and staff learn the Moodle platform in order to train the rest of our employees. Furthermore, Moodle did not have direct integration to our administrative software package, and we had to hire an additional person in the registrar's office to port data back and forth between the two systems. In hindsight, between the cost of training and the subsequent hiring of personnel in both the registrar's office and our IT department, it is now quite apparent that Blackboard would have been less expensive in the long run.

All too often, I believe that societally we forget to analyze the bigger picture when considering purchases. Whether we are discussing the cost of a new iPhone (while ignoring future data costs), a vacation (and omitting the cost of eating out) or educational software purchases (and the continued development costs that can arise from maintenance, licensing, and training), we often forget to think about the TOTAL cost. I agree with your assessment whole-heartedly. This is a lesson not just for educators and administrators, but also our students as they learn to negotiate the myriad costs and expenditures that inevitably arise throughout life.

LMO Wk 2 Blog 1: Readings

LMO Week 2 Blog


I own lots of filing cabinets. I'm not kidding. Seriously. Lots.

Why pray-tell would someone like me need such a bevy of storage capacity? Within these imposing black obelisks lies the readings, transparencies, news articles, and other educational materials I've collected throughout my past decade in the classroom.

Granted, while I might personally tend towards hoarding behavior more than the average person, what else would I do with all of these papers and files?

However, with each passing month here in the EMDT program, I'm starting to learn that there might be a better way. In last week's study materials, Dr. Ian Gibson introduced the acronym of SCORM, or Shared Common Object Reference Model. Only now, while reflecting on the potential of LCMS platforms, am I truly coming to grips with the potential these systems hold and the impact and value that might provide in our careers.

This week, our collective understanding of these systems (CMSs, LMSs, and LCSMs) has been further clarified wherein an LCMS bridges the gap between media development and deployment in concert with the learner focused systems level operational management of an LMS. By combining those feature sets into a single portal, fully developed LCMS options seem to hold quite a bit of both power and convenience. Although I'm sure the programming, design, and deployment of such systems will limit their use to the largest of corporate institutions, universities, or governmental departments.

Yet again, at the center of these complex software systems lies what I perceive as a revolutionary concept: the RLO or "repeatable-learning-object". As we've progressed through our EMDT coursework, we've been introduced to film making, animation and design, podcasting, and blogging. All of these tools, in combination or by themselves, can be utilized to create instructional media elements. Today's $50 one-terabyte drives mitigates any storage concerns, and (I'm finally realizing after 10 months of this program) these instructional elements can be used again, and again, and again.

Honestly, leveraging this type of approach, building an array of interactive and reusable educational media files, would revolutionize my classroom. True, while it can take a significant amount of time to develop digital materials, once a specific lesson or example has been produced, it can easily be stored, recalled, and distributed to learners. Furthermore, organizations often talk about developing "community" and "common language" among staff and faculty in order to develop a compelling call-to-action that excites clients, students, etc. Creating sharable media can help enhance this process. Adding to this process, by developing such materials in-house, institutions and educators are practicing many of the same digital competencies that are likely to be required of students in tomorrow's workplace.

Going back to last week's activities, Dr. Ian Gibson reiterated that these technologies are gaining significant awareness and it is likely that virtually every institution will start to implement either a CMS, LMS, or LCMS. Initially I thought that was an aggressive statement and my interest in these portals was limited. However, today I realize that yes, organizations will adopt such management platforms in hoards because they are efficient, cost-effective, and their digital content (in terms of registration and participant records etc) is likely more secure than individual paper files.

With the likelihood of these systems coming into our classrooms and institutions increasing, we as educators do need to be aware of the features, limitations, and basic configurations of these technologies. And while our abilities to develop media for these platforms will be appreciated, I now realize that it is also critical that we help plan and assess institutional need for these systems as Guillermo Leija warned in the LCMS Roundup article by Ryann Ellis, choosing a system should not be based solely upon that software's feature sets, but on the specific needs of the organization. Clearly, per the e-Learning Center, there are a myriad of new tools to choose from. In making such decisions, we should help our fellow colleagues and administrators choose a product with as much analysis and preparation as well bring into the classroom each morning.

These systems are gaining in popularity. Their use can aid in classroom efficiency and and institutional management. As with any instructional tool, we should carefully analyze the needs of our students and apply the best resources we have at our disposal to excite, engage, and inspire their hopes and dreams. As I've said before, I'm looking forward to returning to the classroom this fall. Everything seems new again and the potential for further reaching out to our young learners to make a meaningful impact in their lives seems to increase with every month in this program.

Thanks everyone, this is exciting- I might not need a new filing cabinet next year.



Ellis, R. K. (2001). LCMS Roundup. Retrieved August 11, 2010 from http://web.archive.org/web/20071012195821/http://www.learningcircuits.org/2001/aug2001/ttools.htm

Gibson, I. LMO Moments: Learning Platform Terminology Mindmap Part 1 and 2, Video, Full Sail University

Learning Light. Course Authoring Tools List. Retrieved August 11, 2010 from http://archive.e-learningcentre.co.uk/eclipse/vendors/authoring.htm

LMO Wk 1 Project 1: Acronym Soup

There is an ancient and oft quoted Chinese "curse" which relays something along the lines of, "may you live in interesting times". As it relates to the rapid development of online classroom management systems, learning management systems, and other similar resources used throughout academia, corporations, and the military, we do live in "interesting" times indeed.


Within the last 18 months alone, I've had to learn to navigate Moodle, ADP's LMS (I thought they just made alarm systems), Campus Vue, Skillsoft, Microsoft's Sharepoint, and Full Sail Online. Now with a new job starting in September, I'm already diving into Sonis, a completely cloud-based CMS, and another company, New Media Training, for a "new employee" Sexual Harassment training exercise.

The diversity and complexity of these systems is astounding and I can't even begin to recall how many key-commands, site maps, and virtual folders I've dug through within this relatively short period of time. Despite this complexity, all of these systems share at least one common and powerful functional trait- they store, display, and distribute information.

In today's business and academic worlds, information is critical. And for such entitles to operate efficiently, sharing much of this information is essential. As an employee, being able to check my remaining annual vacation time in ADP's LMS from my living room is extremely convenient. Prior to the development of such learning management systems (or "learner" systems) I would have to drive across town to the corporate office and schedule an appointment with our HR Director to simply ask her to look up a specific data point. The sharing of that data facilitated by ADP allows both our HR Director and myself to focus on other more important job responsibilities. Furthermore, considering this system tracks my time off usage, neither of us are wasting precious brain space or paper in order to keep track of the dynamic nature that information.

Furthermore, with resources such as Moodle and Blackboard my time management in the classroom as an educator is drastically improved. Instead of spending hours digging through filing cabinets for overhead transparencies or DVDs and scheduling AV installs in my individual classrooms, I can use a CMS to instantly access key multimedia files to enhance my lectures. In short, I believe that these types of systems are nothing short of indispensable for businesses and educational institutions alike.

I found Dr. Ian Gibson's description of the SCORM (shared common object reference model) acronym to be especially useful in understanding the role and value of these complex systems. From a very basic level, these systems share and allow the repetition of information and materials. While overall CMS systems organize people into groups and subcategories like "classes" and LMS systems allow for a more individualized corporate approach, the purpose and utility is the same.

Again, through my personal experience, I have seen from multiple vantage points how valuable such organization and asset management can be for users. Yet what is really amazing, is how quickly these tools are developing. I graduated from my bachelor's degree in 1998. Our course records were on paper and I even had to mail our registrar a physical letter in order to retrieve a copy of my transcript.

However, today, only twelve short years later, I am surrounded by an unbelievable array of media, resources, and personal information as a student in the EMDT program at Full Sail. Simply put, if my anecdotal observations are any indicator, we are likely to continue seeing an incredible expansion in the breadth, scope, and potential of such tools. In many ways, as the functionality and feature set of various CMS and LMS products expand, I'm guessing these resources will all start to look like more complex LCMS platforms marrying content, asset management, and individual program tracking into one system.

I think Dr. Gibson hit on an interesting point during his second video explaining the complexities of LCMSs. While encouraging students to not only study the material but engage with it by using the acronyms being discussed, he suggested that we could all become "mini-experts" within a relatively short amount of time.

I think he was on to something.

We can become experts overnight. And as educators and administrators here in the EMDT program, we may have to. If indeed this sector is going to continue developing by leaps and bounds, this is a critical perspective to hold dear. We are living in an world that has moved from a perspective of state-of-the-art to state-of-the-industry (which could have happened yesterday). Only a few weeks ago, Blackboard purchased both the Elluminate and Wimba software systems. Clearly, this company is looking to further increase their function set by adding a variety of synchronous learning tools to their product portfolio.

The world of data management and distribution is evolving daily and it is critical to stay current on the trends and tools within this sector. And while this process of keeping up with a frantic industry may be frustrating and overwhelming, we should find solace in remembering what these resources can offer our end users, our students, and that is a hereto unimaginable learning support system. I've been blown away with the resources available to me through Full Sail Online. I can repeat course content, talk with students, chat with instructors, and visit the library; all from from my laptop.

I will consider it nothing short of a major victory if I am able to bring even 5% of such resources to bare in my classroom this fall. Speaking from experience, the results of well managed and planned educational media design is amazing. I never imagined growing and learning as much as I have in the past 10 months.

Here's to September and turning the focus towards my students. Echoing Ivan Illich's aims, I truly feel inspired as a user and a learner with such tools and I'm excited to share it with my students, peers, and learning community.

Resources:

Dr. Ian Gibson, "LMO Moments: Learning Platform Terminology Mindmap Part 1 and 2", Video, Full Sail University

Terry Anderson, "OER's & A good educational system", Slideshow, The 14th Annual Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning

LMO Wk 1 Comment 2: Tamara Collins

I have also commented on an earlier blog posted by Tamara Paris Collins which can be accessed here.

"Learning platforms have been in existence for many decades. Of course with the change in times the learning platforms have changed to accommodate the student and educator. As society continues to evolve so will our systems of learning. Two of the learning platforms established by several educational and corporate institutions are the Content Management System (CMS) and the Learning Management System (LMS)."



Tamara,

Your post is one of the clearest and most straightforward delineations of LMS and CMS that I have read. Furthermore, I think you are on the right track by suggesting that these systems will continue to evolve in order to meet the needs of tomorrow's students and institutions.

Honestly, I think there will be quite a bit of development and consolidation in this arena in the coming years. Per Dr. Gibson's explanation of the diverse and growing feature sets of current LCMS platforms, I believe all of these systems will continue to add on tools and resources which will only further expand their scope and potential. I'm not sure if you are aware, but Blackboard, which you mentioned above, purchased both the Wimba and Elluminate software companies a few weeks back. I am certainly not an expert in these areas, but it seems easy to predict that by combining a CMS platform with a video based synchronous VLE technology resource, we're going to have some very powerful options in the near future that will only further combine and confuse our current naming schemes for such systems.

Thank you for the post.

LMO Wk 1 Comment 1: Jeff Kohl

I commented on Jeff Kohl's recent blog post which can be found here.

"LMO Overview"

"The CMS was originally developed as an educational e-learning platform for educational institutions. Typically, higher education facilities will use the CMS as a campus-wide database, which serves to connect, manage, and track their students through their duration at said institutions. The CMS cycles on a term basis, for example students at Full Sail University are placed into a CMS which allows the institution to manage courses, grades, library needs, and track plagiarism if necessary. CMS have proven successful in assisting administrators in running their institutions, as well as helping to ensure that the school is compliant with national accreditations and standards."



Jeff,

I think you hit the nail on the head with your assertion that VLEs represent a rethinking rather than an outright change in educational practice and approach.

As it turns out, much of our reading for this week has overlapped on topics and issues that I've been researching in my AR project. I've been working to identify technologies and methodologies to enhance student engagement within lecture environments, and VLEs have come up in several articles as valuable tools.

From personal experience, I am well aware that VLEs are often met with skepticism. However, in every article that I have researched, not one educator or researcher has explicitly suggested that any such system is a complete and perfect replacement for the traditional classroom experience. However, when carefully integrated into an educational setting with clear goals and assessments (as you also raised), they can certainly be powerful resources to support both student participation and engagement.

Reiterating the comments you posted from Morgan's (2003) assessment of CMS and LMS systems, in Alexandra Toedt's 2006 article, "What is a Learning Management System", she also pointed out the benefit of academic transparency. As further public and federal inquiry has been brought to bear in higher education within the last few years, I believe that transparency will likely become an even greater consideration in the continuing dialog of the implementation of VLEs. I speak with parents on a near daily basis who are wondering what their son or daughter is actually learning or doing in the classroom. Highlighting the value of VLEs from a standpoint of academic transparency in higher education might become more of an asset than any of us realize today.

Whether the issue stems from a tax analysis of public institutions, federal student loans in for-profit education, or the rising cost of higher education altogether, the window into the classroom afforded by such systems could be especially critical. Honestly, until this week, I hadn't really considered this particular aspect or value from Course Learning Systems. I appreciate your insight and again, I do think that such technologies will become even more ubiquitous as educators, administrators, and institutions alike further explore the benefits that such tools can provide. By nature, VLEs don't replace the classroom experience, but the transparency they can potentially provide in the educational process is but another benefit that others will take into consideration as we continue to discuss topics relating to educational reform and improving student success.

LMO Wk 1 Blog 1

Honestly, I am not at all surprised that our readings this week trace the origins of distance learning back almost 300 years. More importantly, I think it is critical that supporters of distance learning programs reiterate this fact in light of the many recent criticisms which have been brought to bear on VLEs within the last several months.

I think the social nature of humanity is ingrained deep within our beings. For millennia, we have communicated with each other and passed down information through oral history, hieroglyphics, pictographs, stone tablets, and virtually every other medium discovered. Furthermore, communication and negotiation between peoples is vital to the stability of any civilized community.


Education is but one of the many frameworks through which we communicate. As such, it is only natural that our educational systems incorporate the very tools and resources which our society regularly uses. Whether this phenomenon is manifested in Caleb Phillips' mail order lessons, the University of Alberta's purchase of a IBM 1500 in 1968, or the launch of Jones International University, all of these examples bear a similar educational intent.

More to the point, it was encouraging for me to study the timelines of distance education development. Personally, I've been thrilled with our program here at Full Sail and I would whole heartedly encourage other colleagues considering an advanced degree to look at the EMDT program.

However, as many of us have previously discussed in various blog posts and course assignments throughout the year, there are still many in both the public and professional spheres who are skeptical about online education. Recently, as schools like the University of Pheonix and other for-profit institutions (which rely significantly online resources) have come under federal scrutiny, I've found myself having to defend our program more than ever. While "defend" is probably too harsh a word to accurately describe some of these conversations, it is a shame that all too often online education is trumpeted merely as a convenient and time-saving option for learning.

What I would like to reiterate to parents, teachers, and legislators alike is that for centuries, educators have been working to bring the best tools, resources, and minds together in order to provide for the learning of that era's students. For example, if I were to teach copyright course this fall, I believe it would be in my students' best interests to meet with and discuss intellectual property with Lawrence Lessig, one of the nation's preeminent scholars on the subject. Considering Mr. Lessig's obligations and responsibilities at Harvard Law School, it is very unlikely that this opportunity would come to pass. That said, I could add his book to my syllabus. Better still, we could try and set up a video conference with Mr. Lessig or stream one of his recent lectures.

In any of these scenarios, we are simply trying to pass on the knowledge of an expert to our learners. Personally, I think that VLEs such as Full Sail's portal have tremendous potential to supply educators and students with a wealth of information, communications infrastructure, and the mechanisms to store, catalog, and relay such information in a compelling manner.


Distance learning is not new. Motivated teachers have been leveraging such tools for centuries. However, since the early 1990s, the power of desktop computing and the democratization of information afforded by the development of the Internet has greatly expanded these platforms to near ubiquity. Furthermore, the greater adoption of these systems will only grow as Internet-based communication protocols represent one of the most comprehensive and efficient means to disseminate important content. The debate within our educational system moving forward should not be about the validity of distance education, but rather how such tools are designed, implemented, and maintained in order to best meet the challenging learning goals of our diverse population.

This program has made me a true believer in the potential of online distance education. I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to study their evolution (even at a cursory level), as this experience will only further allow me to discuss these valuable tools with a broader and more holistic perspective.

Resources:

Wikipedia. (2010). The history of virtual learning environments. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_virtual_learning_environments

Wikipedia. (2010). History of virtual learning environments 1990s Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_virtual_learning_environments_1990s

Seth Godin's Take on Higher Ed

Interesting article. Seth Godin, a well known author and marketing "guru" just posted his thoughts on higher ed. Its interesting to see Full Sail recognized for their individuality, but more pressing, the state of our nations schools...

Let me know what you think.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/04/the-coming-meltdown-in-higher-education-as-seen-by-a-marketer.html