Who should be at the table when an institution decides on a LMS strategy and product?

ADMINISTRATIVE PERSPECTIVE:
Clearly all stakeholders have to have a say, but... ...there are many issues at play here. The decision touches on many of the issues discussed in our current list of questions. Clearly it would be shortsighted to leave this decision to only administrative staff or to only faculty. Faculty need to have a say in features, functionality, and ease of use. Administrators need to determine initial and long term cost of ownership, ability to support the system with technical staff, viability of the vendor, and integration with existing systems.

FACULTY PERSPECTIVE:

• Faculty: While faculty have a huge role to play, they are not the only stakeholders. Instructional design experts provide the guidance for developing course modules and have a vested interest in the capabilities of the program. They know best what needs faculty have expressed. Some faculty members will have specific needs and may sit on committees that help make these decisions. While satisfying their needs is very important, the needs of a few should not drive the purchase decision, however. The institution must ensure that a wide variety of faculty are represented—from the expert and experienced users to the novices. At this point in time, it is the novices that may interest the institution the most depending on the aspirations of the institution's to do widespread online learning.
• Students: While faculty have a large stake, and while Administrators must be able to live with the administrative and technical requirements of the LMS, it may be time in the development of online learning to involve students. They express concerns with consistency among classes (user names, navigation, nomenclature of the course areas), ease of use, and flexibility with respect to downloading multimedia and files that are not compatible with their presentation and word processing software.

One of the perceived barriers to using technology in support of teaching and learning is sometimes referred to as administrivia—the need by faculty to key in class lists, grade books, etc. over and over. How big a problem is this really?

ADMINISTRATIVE PERSPECTIVE:
Administrators put a high value on reducing this barrier to faculty adoption. Much current staff effort and expense of upgraded licenses is invested in addressing this issue. Integration with the campus Student Information System is considered a necessity. Managing drop-adds and gradebooks is an unnecessary burden to inflict on faculty members in this day and age.

FACULTY PERSPECTIVE:
Batch load process, copy the course structure and content, and administrative support: This is a very big issue for faculty. Most will not persevere if they find they are doing much clerical or administrative work. Any LMS product should provide, at least, a batch load process. Additionally, the LMS system must provide features that allow faculty to copy the course structure, content and online tests, sans current student enrollees, in order to avoid the requirement of rebuilding gradebooks, discussion board questions, and the like. The administrative support of students who forget their passwords should be built into the product.

One of the perceived barriers to using technology in support of teaching and learning is sometimes referred to as administrivia—the need by faculty to key in class lists, grade books, etc. over and over. How big a problem is this really?

ADMINISTRATIVE PERSPECTIVE:

• Communication
  • Email
  • Asynchronous conferencing
  • Chat
• Multimedia publishing
• Foreign language, natural science, and mathematics editing capabilities
• Modular design: By this is meant the ability to use learning objects created for other courses or by other faculty members.
• Assessment capabilities
• Tutoring capabilities
• Integrated class management tools
• Calendar
• Homework grader would be desirable