FACULTY PERSPECTIVE:

• Communication
  • Announcements
  • Place to exchange files
  • Gradebook mechanism
  • Automatic lost password response
  • Calendar
• Assessment and automatic grading
• A logical interface/navigation
• More control of the look and feel of the page (without html)
• Access to directories: Some early adopters, and now a fast growing number of faculty, are conditioned to building their own websites and accustomed to having access to directories to select, copy, and move files from page to page. The LMS should provide this capability.
• Managing more than one section: Many faculty like to maintain a single course in which they have several sections of students. While some of the material is meant for general consumption across the sections, some materials and almost all of the communications are specific to each section. They are frustrated with having to conduct multiple uploads when adding materials to separate sections of the course and would like to find creative ways to create their sections within a single course.
• Smoother multimedia transitions and linking files within directories: The recent increase in availability of multimedia material has meant that many faculty are adding sound and movie files to their courses. Students may view these in their browsers, but not without some good coaching by academic computing experts and/or very savvy teachers. Two issues exist with respect to the use of multimedia files: (a) faculty would like to see greater support and smoother transition to plug-ins, and (b) they would like to be able to link to multimedia files from presentation, word processing, and other programs using hyperlinks (e.g., Inspiration). This enables them to use a coordinating mechanism (slide or document) to help the student work through a complex learning module that utilizes a variety of file types.
• Addressing delivery for multiple student learning needs: A growing number of faculty believe they can use the LMS to address multiple learning styles, help students with learning disabilities, and are concerned about making information available to physically disabled students. The LMS must provide text options, for example and should seek to integrate the distribution of multimedia as seamlessly as possible.

Different disciplines have different pedagogical approaches. Can one Learning Management System meet the needs of all faculty?

ADMINISTRATIVE PERSPECTIVE:
Probably not: This is a difficult problem. In the physical learning environment we have lecture style classes, seminars, laboratories, group project spaces, collaborative learning spaces, etc. It is unreasonable that one LMS can replicate the range of capabilities that we continue to evolve in face to face learning interactions. Still, the combination of meeting mainline needs for interaction and building to a modular design that allows "plug-in" modifications as appropriate might be the best that can be expected.

FACULTY PERSPECTIVE:
No, but an LMS that meets the needs of most faculty is better than none. It is agreed that technical disciplines that use symbols and disciplines with foreign language requirements must be supported. Must a LMS trade these needs off with other basic functionality? Why can't one LMS do it all through the use of extended products that can be purchased? (See the need for extensibility above.)