Edited by Eugene Voorneman, Tuesday, 14 July 2009, 14:06
Some interersting articles by Sclater. Here are my thoughts on the article
The “Key Questions to ask” in Sclater’s (2008a) paper are valid questions in my current work environment as we are (still) trying to implement an LMS in our school. The Board of Governors has chosen a commercial company to do this, but I am inclined to agree with the comments Sclater made in his conclusion , that this kind of solution does not offer enough flexibility. It doesn’t allow for enough customisation and this is something that, in my opinion, is very important. As a school, we need to be able to continually modify the system until it meets our demands. Ultimately, the teachers have to work with the system (in terms of providing content and organising the learning environment for the students) and therefore their input is very significant. Costs are also an important issue for us. Our LMS requires a yearly fee of an average of 3 euro’s per student. We have over 900 students which means close to 3000 euro a year on licenses only. This is a significant amount of our IT budget. Using Open Source software would certainly bring us the benefit of cutting the costs of our current LMS system. Another advantage of using an LMS based on Open Source software is that you have a instant support community to help you set up and develop your system. Knowledge is available, it is out there and we can benefit it from it. However, I would agree with Sclater that the downside to using OS Software is the time scale involved. Working with discussion groups takes longer, people need to reply to forum questions, try different coding solutions etc. There is no instant response. To avoid having the same old discussion about which technology to use, we need to look to other successful projects and use these results and experiences as a starting point. We have evidence that at least certain elements of these projects have been successful and can try to combine them. We could also ask prospective users to agree on a set of important criteria, before making a selection.
Week 22: Sclater 2008
Some interersting articles by Sclater. Here are my thoughts on the article
The “Key Questions to ask” in Sclater’s (2008a) paper are valid questions in my current work environment as we are (still) trying to implement an LMS in our school. The Board of Governors has chosen a commercial company to do this, but I am inclined to agree with the comments Sclater made in his conclusion , that this kind of solution does not offer enough flexibility. It doesn’t allow for enough customisation and this is something that, in my opinion, is very important. As a school, we need to be able to continually modify the system until it meets our demands. Ultimately, the teachers have to work with the system (in terms of providing content and organising the learning environment for the students) and therefore their input is very significant.
Costs are also an important issue for us. Our LMS requires a yearly fee of an average of 3 euro’s per student. We have over 900 students which means close to 3000 euro a year on licenses only. This is a significant amount of our IT budget. Using Open Source software would certainly bring us the benefit of cutting the costs of our current LMS system.
Another advantage of using an LMS based on Open Source software is that you have a instant support community to help you set up and develop your system. Knowledge is available, it is out there and we can benefit it from it. However, I would agree with Sclater that the downside to using OS Software is the time scale involved. Working with discussion groups takes longer, people need to reply to forum questions, try different coding solutions etc. There is no instant response.
To avoid having the same old discussion about which technology to use, we need to look to other successful projects and use these results and experiences as a starting point. We have evidence that at least certain elements of these projects have been successful and can try to combine them. We could also ask prospective users to agree on a set of important criteria, before making a selection.
Cheers, Eugene