What to consider when selecting an LMS

Editor's Notes

• #2: Open while waiting Abstract: If you're a teacher publishing articles, how do you make this content available to your students? This presentation will bring together two popular open source CMSs and LMSs as you see how to syndicate content from WordPress to Moodle and vice versa. This presentation will show how to leverage WordPress' strong RSS filtering features to display your published content in Moodle. You will also be shown how to generate content from activities in Moodle and display this back on your WordPress site. While this provides great flexibility with reflective blogging with your learners, the door is open to more powerful and experimental uses when you consider the Moodle activities that can generate an RSS feed. Syndicate your WordPress publications to Moodle, or use Moodle to generate your content on WordPress - the possibilities are exciting.
• #3: Last year very technical talk Many people just had LMS questions in general Wanted to hold a “just ask me web questions” session but was worried perhaps would have not enough questions So if you have any tech questions, this is your session! From Program:“Selecting a Learning Management System can be difficult; vendors will have their biases so it can be difficult to get straight answers. It can be even more difficult coming up with the right questions. You don’t know what you don’t know, so it’s difficult to distinguish if you’ve thought of all the problems facing your organisation as you plan for online or blended delivery.  In this session, Scott Huntley will provide you with the technical advice you’re looking for when selecting your LMS. He’ll outline a strategy to get you online with your courses, or determine if you’re delivering in the best manner. Scott will draw upon his experience as a Web Design teacher, a Learning Designer and eLearning Consultant to help you know what you have, what you need, and the path from here to there.  Come with all your Learning Management System, Student Management System and Content Management System questions, and Scott will share his knowledge with you!”
• #4: From program: “Kenneth Scott Huntley (please call him Scott) is an Instructional Designer for the Student Management System Program Project at TAFE NSW. He has been a teacher of web design in the past and has previously worked as a consultant and trainer for an LMS services company, specialising in Moodle.  Scott also consultants and trains people in the use of the WordPress content management system, and has been known to tinker with Internet-of-Things microcontroller boards. Scott is interested in exploring where we can take education and training in the future with exciting new technologies enabling us to truly think outside the box.”
• #5: Things to acknowledge: This advice is general; a rule of thumb might not apply for your very specific case. I am a WordPress fan and a Moodle fan; my advice may be inadvertently skewed towards those solutions. I used to work for company that sold Moodle hosting and services. I am no longer associated with that company (although I still like them), and I’d like to state for the record that this presentation should not be seen as an advertisement for them. I have not used every LMS, and I may not be familiar with all the details about a specific software, service or solution
• #6: Keeping things casual, no techy definitions. Believe it or not, Joomla! is spelled with an exclamation mark. Joomlaers are very excitable people.
• #7: What: Explain hosting. Shared vs Virtual. LMS requirements for hosting. Where: Is this hosting physically located in Australia? Is this a requirement? Who: Can you host your own? Should you? How much is your time worth? Why: Considerations with Software as a Service. Who owns this data? If it goes south, how easy is it to recover this?
• #8: How big are your courses?Video in particular - Are you putting video on your hosting, or separate service (ie YouTube, Vimeo) Are students going to submit large amounts of data? - It’s more complex for students to upload videos. At the end of the term, what are you going to do with all these students’ assignments?
• #9: Do you trust? – Probably not awful if you do. But ask about it. How regularly? How old? Really Really Trust? – What if they went bankrupt tomorrow? Would you know? How are you going get your data? What if your relationship sours? How do you get your data after they prematurely pulled the cord? Really really really? – How long did you spend developing this content? Why not make a backup to feel safe? Archive, redevelopment, test environments, learn how to make backups
• #10: Camping: Scouts and eating pancakes with a Swiss army knife. Swiss army knives are cool, but sometimes it’s better to just use the right tool for the job. Analogy two: Dad used to have a large woodworking shop in the house. Many saws. But use the right saw – cutting down a tree with a jig saw would be a bad experience. LMS vs CMS – Number of people who want to run entire training organisation off one system. This is foolish. Give the CMS to the marketing people, give the LMS to the teachers. - CMS - write content, advertise, focus on SEO, eCommerce, sell yourself! - LMS – teach the courses! SMS – Student Management System - You might need a separate system to manage your students
• #11: Quizzes Quizzes online, Quiz Banks, random questions, quiz mode to prevent cheating, multiple question types Assessments Uploading “files” Multiple files? File formats? Blind marking scheme? Forum Who’s monitoring this forum for abuse? Video Conferencing Is your chosen solution compatible with this LMS? See plugins SCORM Captivate, Rise Can you include? Should you? Maybe there’s something built in. You can’t convince me to ever put a quiz in a SCORM package By the way, do you own your SCORM package? Really? How updatable is it? Do you actually have the source files? Cannot tell you how many people have paid for an Instructional Designer to build a specialised Captivate course, and two years later needed a change made. Instructional Designer is gone. No source files means no help is coming. Gradebook – way to record students grades in the LMS. Good LMS will have complex gradebook (i.e. take best 10 out of 11 quiz results)
• #12: Responsive – could be a theme, could be an app. Is there an app, or can it be connected to an app? Conditional activities – can Jane proceed to activity Y without completing activity X? - How robust? Branching? Time dependent? Grade dependent? Group Dependent? Multiple dependencies H5P – Cool new thing. Can you use it? Plugins – In general, when talking about bells & whistles, we’re talking plugins. What kind of plugins do you need / want?
• #13: (Define) Not just a couple alt tags. Is your site navigable? Without a mouse? Drag n Drop? Captions on videos? Transcripts for videos? Telling people what they’re about to watch/download (file type, file size, time for videos) Are all the assests accessible? PDFs having alt text? SCORM accessible? Colour contrast? Do you have a lawsuit coming?
• #14: Does this LMS support themes, or am I stuck with this look? Or worse, do I have to hire a developer every time we change our logo? Is my LMS theme going to clash with my CMS theme? Is the LMS I selected so obscure that finding a theme will be impossible – this is where the “bigger” the LMS, the more likely I’ll find a theme. Or a designer with skills developing for that theme Is it worth paying $100 for a good theme to avoid spending 4 hours work?
• #15: If it’s not being used, it’s an expensive souvenir Try before you buy Moodle’s demo site is a good place to get the feel for Moodle But cannot expect to just master it in 5 minutes – using any piece of software efficiently is a skill and skills must be developed. Is there training available? If you need help, can you get help? If you pick something very obscure, finding a consultant could be difficult and expensive.
• #16: Hope this provided you with some thinking points
• #17: QUESTION TIME