> I do think you’ve correctly identified our disagreement in this conversation as our ambitions for the Learning Management Systems of our public learning institutions. I want faculty and students to have as much ownership and authority as reasonably possible of the systems that manage learning.
This statement implies that I disagree that faculty and students should have as much ownership, authority, and control as possible over the systems they use to enable and manage learning. My entire argument – that we need a thriving ecosystem of extra-LMS components that can be integrated via LTI – is exactly the argument that faculty and students should have as much autonomy, control, and choice over the systems they use as possible. I’m not sure where you’re saying a disagreement lies.
]]>I’ve thought more about those features that might be more practically provided via a 3rd party. I’m a long time fan of VoiceThread (I’ve used it in 3rd grade classrooms and MBA programs successfully, although, the MBA faculty were much slower on the adoption than 3rd graders.) I don’t see any LMS duplicating the capabilities of VoiceThread anytime soon, and there’s not much reason to because VoiceThread’s LTI integration works very smoothly. I like the Big Blue Button. I’m really intrigued with H5P. Intelliborad is leading the way with competency tracking and reporting. The group above do things that won’t practically be incorporated into most LMSs anytime soon.
Then, there are a class of what I call higher ed institutional/program assessment report generators; an example of that would be the LiveText-Taskstream-Tk20 conglomeration. This class exists, still, due to the inertia of higher ed program administrations in general. There is, also, a rapidly growing group of ‘learning analytics’ providers that attach themselves to various points of the learning continuum almost randomly, it seems. LMS vendors are at various places in this development. The learning analytics that Lumen does is appropriately attached, as far as I can tell from my woefully limited knowledge of that magical platform.
I do think you’ve correctly identified our disagreement in this conversation as our ambitions for the Learning Management Systems of our public learning institutions. I want faculty and students to have as much ownership and authority as reasonably possible of the systems that manage learning.
This discussion is reminding me of my time in the days of pre to post monopoly telecommunications which I referenced here http://developingprofessionalstaff-mpls.blogspot.com/2013/01/if-youre-teacher-youre-leader-part-2.html . In those days, AT&T was asserting that nobody who worked for somebody other than their corporation was ever going to be able to understand or securely provided the complexities of their ‘natural monopoly.’ About 10 years after the time referenced in the linked post, AT&T paid me some substantial money to do some work for them. Their Help Desk system was actually quite good; other pieces of the org, not so much. But, then, I’ve been accused of not being very good at making money for people who don’t need it.
]]>Then we’re in total agreement on this point – a hypothetical future LMS *could* include any capability, but today’s specific LMS has only a finite, limited set of capabilities.
An LMS is like an operating system – a future version of Windows *could* include any capability Microsoft desired to include. The same for OS X and Apple, or Ubuntu and Canonical. But we are all *greatly* benefited by the breadth and variety of applications written by third parties that are available for our operating system of choice. It would be a dismal world indeed if the only capability your computer had was what the operating system provided when you first turned it on.
I have found that the applications that come built into the operating system are seldom as good as those made independent of it. Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox would be one example. MS Paint and Photoshop would be another. Wordpad and MS Word would be another. Coming back to the specific context of the LMS, there’s no LMS-provided discussion tool as good as Discourse. There’s no LMS-provided blogging tool as good as WordPress. There’s no LMS-provided wiki tool as good as Mediawiki. &c.
If I’m understanding you correctly, our disagreement in this conversation lies in our ambitions for the LMS. I believe the ability to draw in creativity and innovation from a wide range of sources in support of teaching and learning is important, and not only “for a short period of time” while we wait for LMS vendors to create a watered-down clone. I have a strong preference for modularity, interoperability, and a healthy ecosystem of competing ideas and pedagogical models. In order for this ecosystem to exist and function, the LMS’s proper role must be that of an operating system where the LMS provides a base of core functionality and that people will, depending on their needs and desires, install additional (LTI) applications.
And I believe that LMS vendors share this vision of the LMS as an OS – I’m not sure how else you could explain the significant time and expense they have invested in creating and implementing the LTI standard, whose sole purpose is enabling this ecosystem of third party applications.
]]>Thanks for the continued exchange, David. I never claimed (whether you use quotation marks or not) that “there is literally no capability that can be imagined and provided by a novel platform that is not already provided within the finite capabilities of an existing LMSs.” As you stated, That statement is obviously logically false.
I am arguing that there is literally no capability that can be imagined and provided by any platform that could not also be provided by an LMS. Learning management systems are not static things that never change, even though they may feel like that to some faculty at some institutions. It is certainly possible that some features might be more practically provided via a 3rd party, especially for a short period of time if that capability needs to be developed by the commons while some private enterprise retains control of ‘their’ feature. But, determining the practicality of providing any feature or process either ‘in house’ or via a 3rd party is something that should, IMO, be primarily a pedagogical, or androgogical, decision. My tendency is always to bring the decision back to the faculty – student relationship and to have an abiding faith in the power and purpose of innovating for the common good.
]]>> I’ve said before and will say again – It’s 2017; we have learning management systems that can house free OER and provide all of the things described as added values in the Lumen model.
Dan, you don’t understand Lumen’s model or offerings, and consequently shouldn’t make claims about “all of the things” in Lumen’s model. Each time you do, you’re wrong.
> A learning management system (LMS) allows faculty to create any kind of in situ assessment they want to create. An LMS has analytics to gauge where students are in the learning journey. The specific example mentioned about including a prompt to meet via Skype is easy. All of the ‘packaging’ is available in an LMS. All of the ‘added value’ for which Lumen is charging recurring fees could be included in the free OER license.
One of the primary services we provide as part of the recurring fees you mention is ongoing faculty support. In the last two months alone we’ve resolved over 1,000 support tickets from faculty with a 98% satisfaction score and median reply time of 5 hours. These tickets include everything from help finding additional OER and supplemental materials to technical support issues. Obviously you can’t put a “free OER license” on this kind of support. You do not understand Lumen or our model, and you need to stop making false and irresponsible claims about “all of the added value for which Lumen is charging.”
> I think rather than me asserting that this is possible with an LMS and David continuing to assert that only a Lumen type (for-profit 3rd party) platform can do “the infinite variety of novel student – content, student – student, or student – teacher interactive activities you might want to create, manage, share, and use,” I would like to figure out a way to test what is possible with either method.
I think this kind of test is meaningless for reasons I will describe below. But since you’ve asked for a way to conduct such a test, I suggest you simply reimplement the three examples described in this post in the major LMSs. Actually, to make the task significantly easier and faster, I invite you to implement these highly simplified versions of the three interactives described above using only the capabilities that exist within major LMSs:
* Koedinger-style student – content interactives. Embed a machine-graded assessment item directly within a page of content. Don’t link to the item, but embed the practice opportunity directly within the page of content (like you would embed a YouTube video) so that students truly have access to the practice opportunity in situ.
* Fle3-style student – student interactives. Within the LMS’s discussion board, implement a simple taxonomy of three message types (e.g., argument, evidence, rebuttal) in such a manner that students are prevented from submitting a discussion post unless they have categorized their post as one of these three types. If this is easier to do using an LMS tool other than the discussion board, feel free to use another approach.
* Waymaker-style student – teacher interactives. After students have taken each machine-graded assessment, automatically generate an email to every student that includes a bulleted list of the learning outcomes aligned with each item they missed on the assessment.
So there’s a test – reimplementing three miniature versions of capabilities that exist today in non-LMS platforms (but can be easily integrated into the LMS via the open LTI standard). But here is why this or any other test is meaningless. I’m arguing that “people and organizations can imagine and create novel platforms that provide an infinity of capabilities beyond what the LMS offers.” You, by disagreeing, are arguing that “there is literally no capability that can be imagined and provided by a novel platform that is not already provided within the finite capabilities of an existing LMSs.” That statement is obviously logically false.
> Ultimately, though, it’s not about the tools, but about how faculty and students are best supported. If an institution can’t get it together to support their faculty to learn how to Manage the Learning in their System, then it might be practical to hire that support from a 3rd party. That is, however, not an optimal scenario for strengthening a faculty or promoting deeper learning opportunities that are based on strong faculty – student relationships. “Enabling drastically better student learning while saving students money” is not a peripheral activity.
I agree that enabling drastically better student learning while saving students money is not a peripheral activity. Yet there are many core – or “non-peripheral” – activities around which institutions rightly choose to partner with third parties. Inasmuch as providing students with access to their core learning materials is what we’re talking about, a specific example of this principle would be that colleges don’t own and operate the printing presses that produce the tens of thousands of printed textbooks their students are required to use each semester. A slightly more modern example would be that they generally don’t host and manage their LMS, either. Organizations and companies partner on core capabilities all the time, and whether or not this is optimal is highly dependent on what you’re trying to optimize for.
]]>You made reference to the recent announcement made by Cengage and a few readers may be seeking additional info, here are a few link that may be useful:
Website – OpenNow – Institutional Learning Solutions – Cengage _ http://www.cengage.com/institutional/opennow
Article – Cengage offers new OER-based product for general education courses _ https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/10/10/cengage-offers-new-oer-based-product-general-education-courses
Blog – The Future of OER is Now _ https://blog.cengage.com/the-future-of-oer-is-now/
Presentation _ https://www.slideshare.net/jonmott/cengage-oer-and-learners-80789697
Phil Hill blog [2016] – About That Cengage OER Survey _ http://mfeldstein.com/cengage-oer-survey/ – with link to Cengage White Paper
]]>Ultimately, though, it’s not about the tools, but about how faculty and students are best supported. If an institution can’t get it together to support their faculty to learn how to Manage the Learning in their System, then it might be practical to hire that support from a 3rd party. That is, however, not an optimal scenario for strengthening a faculty or promoting deeper learning opportunities that are based on strong faculty – student relationships. “Enabling drastically better student learning while saving students money” is not a peripheral activity.
I fully agree that OER-as-free-PDFs is a future that we can and should avoid.
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