Course management systems put educators and their students within electronic reach of each other, but are rarely enjoyable to use. Systemically applied platforms like ULearn (formerly Web CT) and Blackboard seem clunky and outdated. The open-source Sakai Project provides interesting options, but must be customized by the institution and sometimes loses pedagogical effectiveness in that standardization. Textbook publishers like Bedford/St. Martin’s, Pearson/Longman, and Cengage all develop more usable tools tailored to individual disciplines, but those tools are often bound to the use of a particular textbook and cannot remain open for student use indefinitely.
Currently, I am researching alternatives to current course management systems. I want to learn about and help build a pedagogical landscape that jumps the fence of institutional and commercial boundaries and involves dynamic research capabilities and collaborative components. I have been teaching with a digital course space for three years, but I want to grow past it. At THAT Camp I would like gather data on what the best digital teaching environment might look like if it could harness other applications on the web, while still offering a few uniquely useful and adaptable tools within its framework.
Philosophically, this discussion might veer into evaluating the dissolution of boundaries around learning institutions. As we contemplate the impact of new digital systems, we might wonder how much teaching and learning can or should happen on the open web — outside of a log-in screen or behind the digital fence of a school. I would love to hear discussion. Functionally though, I would like to learn about what things are currently missing from course management systems so that, collectively, we can imagine a new one(s). Even more specifically, I want to discuss how new uses of social media tools and re-imagined assessment methods can augment an online course landscape.
#1 by Carl Hall on February 23, 2011 - 4:40 pm
I am a Sakai consultant and work on Sakai OAE (system redesign). I can speak to the design considerations we go through and the approach we’re taking for writing the new system.
#2 by Pete on February 23, 2011 - 9:19 pm
Cool Carl! I am not well versed in Sakai, beyond the version my institution has branded and made available. I am sure that Sakai can do more, but our version always looks like the online equivalent of a bunch of filing cabinets.
#3 by Roger Whitson on February 24, 2011 - 7:57 am
Interesting stuff Pete. I’ve wanted to open consideration of this issue for some time.
#4 by Caroline Barratt on February 24, 2011 - 9:37 pm
I think we are gearing up for a third iteration of a course management system at my institution. I am definitely interested in learning the strengths/weaknesses of what’s out there and how we might help shape what develops.
#5 by Brian Croxall on February 28, 2011 - 9:08 pm
This sounds like a similar conversation to one at last year’s THATCamp Prime. Steve Ramsay proposed a session on why all courseware sucks, and Boone Gorges wrote up his take on the session’s conclusions. Maybe we didn’t come up with the answer since we still have courseware 9 months later. But those posts are worth reading.
#6 by melanie.kohnen on March 1, 2011 - 12:42 pm
Excellent suggestion! For years, I’ve been wanting to use the social media classroom (socialmediaclassroom.com/), but have come up against the fact that I don’t know Drupal (which will hopefully be remedied by the bootcamp!).
Another issue that comes up for me in this context is, do I want to use commercial platforms such as YouTube, flickr, etc. in my classroom? They are often the easiest to use, but their privacy policies and proprietary frameworks make me pause.
#7 by Brian Croxall on March 1, 2011 - 8:27 pm
I think you’re right, Melanie, to be concerned with the privacy policies of commercial sites. But when it’s between using them and not being able to do something interesting in the classroom, then I’ll gladly make use of them. I think the real key is the ability to be able to extract one’s data, if one wants to later leave the system.
#8 by Lauren Pressley on March 2, 2011 - 9:41 pm
I’ve been using a university hosted blog to be my CMS for years, and I’ve mostly made use of the official CMS (first Blackboard and now Sakai) for quizzing and gradebooks. This conversation could be really interesting!
#9 by Rebecca Oling on March 3, 2011 - 10:38 pm
I’m becoming a Moodle evangelist. I think it is a flexible platform that allows for a variety of pedagogical approaches and we are in the beginning stages of integrating video with it using a Kaltura server. We benefit from an instructional designer to help tweak the bells and whistles, but I’d be interested in talking about eschewing the pitfalls of redesign in ALL of these platforms (the rush to load content often trumps the need to re-think how we are reaching our overall objectives and what those are). I don’t see that Steve Ramsay’s group talked much about the value of Moodle as a growing community tool. We use it not only for teaching courses, but also for increasing communication and training in various depts where folks don’t necessarily see each other all the time (our circ dept uses it to communicate with our student workers).