LMS, Learning Management Systems
Teaching and learning in WEB
environment
Definition of Learning Management Systems
LMS
Either for e-learning or in addition to in-classroom courses
Enables to plan and track learning processes
Provides courses, books, training events and other content
Has the ability to register learners for courses
Platforms for learning
• In most cases, web based integrated information systems
• Support the online activities of the persons involved in
teaching and learning.
• Facilitate the administration of and access to learning content
anytime, anywhere and with any pace.
Types of LMS
LMS Platforms
Open source
Commercial
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
ATutor Bazaar
Bodington
DoceboLMS
Dokeos e-Learning XHTML Editor
Fle3
GaneshaLMS
ILIAS
interact
KEWL.Nextgen
LRN
Moodle
OLAT
Mitechsoft
Sakai
ANGEL Learning
Apex Learning
Blackboard Inc.
Desire2Learn
eCollege
Learn.com
Meridian KSI
Saba Software
SAP Enterprise Learning
WebCT,
12 Best Free Learning Management Systems (LMS)
Top 20 Learning Management Systems for 2013/20134
Characteristics of learning platforms
•
•
•
•
•
Presentation of learning content
Creation of assignments
Support the assessment
Administration
Communication
Some concepts
• Learning platform
• Learning portal
• Content Management Systems…
• Learning Management Systems…
• Personalised Learning Environments…
Learning management systems, in particular open-source, play a key role in
bridging the digital divide.
Educational institutions must integrate them to their websites, portals, catalogs of
libraries, learning repositories, etc..
Portal SIO
The differences between CMS, LMS and LCMS
• Learning Management Systems (LMS)
– Administration and supervision of learning process
– Tracking
– Communication
• Content Management Systems (CMS)
–
–
–
–
Creation and administration of contents
Presentation and publishing
Exchange of contents
Examples: Joomla, WordPress
• Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS)
– Integration of LMS and CMS
– Standards for e-learning (IMS, SCORM)
– Example: ILIAS
C3MS
• Content, community and collaboration management systems (C3MS)
• C3MSs are effective learning tools to support socio-constructivist approaches such
as project-based learning in virtual learning environments.
• The teacher is the manager, moderator and facilitator.
WEB
Why we need LMS?
•
Complete or partial replacement of frontal teaching.
•
Management of students, track their progress through all educational
activities.
•
Management of courses (subjects) and the exchange of information
with students.
Management Reports to Evaluate Learning Performance
• Helps provide usage and cost information for managers to
accurately assess return on investment of training activities.
•
Enables full tracking of learning resources and performance using
a range of standard reports
• Provides detailed reporting to individual, which can provide
valuable information on training and assessments.
10 features that a LMS should have
• Can the LMS be implemented quickly and easily, without programming?
• Does the LMS system have a robust feature set, or is it really just a collection of
documents for online viewing?
• Can the LMS support multimedia files such as Flash, streaming video, movies, and
audio narrations?
• Is the LMS truly a web native solution, using open standards like HTML, SQL, and
HTTP?
• Does the new LMS have everything you need built in, or will you need to buy an
external authoring or reporting tool?
• Is the LMS product widely accepted in a variety of industries, or is it a limited niche
product?
• Does the selected LMS support instructor-led training and self-paced automated
training, as well as classroom (off-system) training?
• Can the LMS easily support Skill Groups or certifications, so you can track learners'
progress toward defined goals?
• Can the LMS seamlessly pull together learning content from various sources and
formats?
• Does the LMS come with actual source code, in case you need to make modifications
later?
LMS features
• Learner Tools
– Communication Tools
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Discussion Forums
File Exchange
Internal Email
Online Journal/Notes
Real-time Chat
Video Services
Whiteboard
– Productivity Tools
•
•
•
•
•
Bookmarks
Orientation/Help
Searching Within Course
Calendar/Progress Review
Work Offline/Synchronize
– Student Involvement Tools
•
•
•
•
Groupwork
Self-assessment
Student Community Building
Student Portfolios
Source: http://www.edutools.info/compare.jsp?pj=8&i=263,276,299,358,366,386,387
LMS features
• Support Tools
– Administration Tools
•
•
•
•
Authentication
Course Authorization
Registration Integration
Hosted Services
– Course Delivery Tools
•
•
•
•
•
Course Management
Instructor Helpdesk
Online Grading Tools
Student Tracking
Automated Testing and Scoring
– Curriculum Design
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Accessibility Compliance
Course Templates
Curriculum Management
Customized Look and Feel
Instructional Standards Compliance
Instructional Design Tools
Content Sharing/Reuse
Comparison: http://www.edutools.info/compare.jsp?pj=8&i=276,358,392
Technical requirements
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Data Management : Usually a relational database
modularisation
scalability
distribution
integration
Using Web services to integrate the LMS with user databases
Server-side scripts
Compliance with standards
– web standards
– accessibility standards
– Standards of e-learning
Standards, related to LMS
• IMS Global
– non-profit standards organization
– concerned with establishing interoperability for learning systems and learning
content
– mission is to "support the adoption and use of learning technology
worldwide".
• SCORM
– Sharable Content Object Reference Model
– A collection of standards and specifications for web-based e-learning
– Defines communications between client side content and a host system called
the run-time environment
– Also defines how content may be packaged into a transferrable ZIP file.
• eLML
– The eLesson Markup Language (eLML)
– Is an open source XML framework for creating eLessons using XML
– The didactical fundament of eLML is the pedagogical model called ECLASS
LMS provides collaboration tools
• Forums, chat rooms, e-mail notifications, which used both pupils and
teachers and administration
• Allows blended learning
• Encourages learners to access to learning materials only and manage
their learning according to their needs.
• Sharing applications
Domains of application
• classical schools
• Centers for distance education
• Internal training centers of companies
• Schools for students with special needs
• In Moodle a teacher has full control over all settings for a course,
choice of course formats such as by week, by topic or a discussionfocussed social format, course themes,
• Facilitates forums, quizzes, glossaries, resources, surveys,
assignments, chats, workshops.
•
•
•
•
Students can be divided into groups
Access to data on pupils
Is scalable up to 10,000 more pupils per institution
Probably the most widely used LMS
Moodle philosophy
– constructivism
– social constructivism
– connected or separate
Moodle disadvantages
Some are not a problem with Moodle but of education or all
LMSs as a whole:
• Social networking: capacity for forming learner groups and
friendship groups informally. Most learning happens
informally.
• Exchange of content: It is difficult to share activities and
content between teachers.
• Ease of use: some parts of Moodle are very easy to use and
some are very hard to use.
• Viewing, sharing, commenting on student projects: not so
easy. It is easier to do forum discussions or quizzes.
• Face-to-face learning: the physical classroom and its tasks
need more integration with an LMS.
Moodle Sindrom
People choose open source solutions, including Moodle often. The
reasons are as follows:
• it's free
• We assume that this tool is a "turnkey" and immediately ready
• That is designed for our needs
Moodle is an important player and offers its users a variety of additional
packages. We choose what we want
Claroline
• Allows teacher to write a course description, publish
documents in any format, administer public and private
forums, develop learning paths, create groups of students,
prepare online exercises, publish announcements
• built over pedagogical principles
• allowing a large variety of pedagogical setup including
widening of traditional classroom and online collaborative
learning
• Translated into 35 languages.
DEMO
Learning model of Claroline
OLAT - The Open Source LMS
•
A well featured system in its tenth year of development. Recently
the winner of the “IMS Learning Impact ‘Leadership Award’ 2009
for best open source learning platform”.
•
Multilingual online translation tool having flexible course system.
•
Offers wikis, single pages with integrated WYSIWYG HTML editor,
forums and "file dialog" element to discuss papers, questionnaire
for course evaluations, etc.
EFront
•
Offers a wide range of features from content creation, test builder, project
management, extended statistics, internal messaging system, forum, chat,
surveys User management
•
Lessons, Courses and Categories management, Files management, Exam
builders, Assignments builders, Communication tools (Forum, Chat, Calendar,
Glossary), Progress tracking, Authentication methods, Enrollment methods,
Certifications, Reports generators, Modules management, Payment integration
and more.
eFront
Fle3 > Future Learning Environment
Supports learner and group centered work that concentrates
on creating and developing expressions of knowledge.
Easy to localize to different languages.
Fle3 WebTops can be used by teachers and students to
store different items, organize them to folders and share
them with others.
Written in Python
ATutor
Actually an LCMS, ATutor also offers tools for the management
of learning. The “A” stands for Accessible and it has excellent
support for key accessibility standards as well as support for
SCORM, IMS etc.
WEB
DEMO
ILIAS
• Try out:
http://143.50.63.94/ilias3
– administrator:
• usern: citel
• pw: tel123
– user:
• usern: test
• pw: test123
Problems with LMS: Features First..Usability Second (1)
• Feature sets and enhancements are necessary for the
evolution of any system and mandatory to garner more market
share.
• There are plenty of vendors out there who believe in the
concept of focusing on features and forgetting about usability,
under the guise that people would rather have lots of cool
blinky things rather than usability
• People want new and cool features, but they won’t utilize it, if
your usability is difficult or challenging. Focus first on usability
and everything else while come into place
Problems with LMS: Features First..Usability Second (2)
• Some common traits include:
– Broadway Effect: Front end looks too busy, end users cannot figure out
what to click, where to go, what to avoid – lots of information,
flashiness, overload of the senses
– Illogical – I often see systems that add features that seem as though
they tossed a bunch of ideas on a wall and whatever stuck up there,
went into their platform
– Miss Targeted – A frequent guest, whereas they add features or
enhancements that do not target their current customer base or future
-example: they include corporate yet include rubrics
– The True Wizard of Oz – Systems forget that the true power comes from
the administrator side and thus the importance of usability should be
their top goal, not some add-on that people may want
LMS comparison
WEB
Issues (1)
• Evaluation of LMS?
– Does LMS help students, faculty, staff?
– Content, interaction, assessment ..
• Integrate with existing systems?
– Registration, course catalog, grade databases, content
servers
• Integrate with e-commerce?
– Textbook publishers, digital libraries …
• Standards compatibility?
– Exchange content and learner info between LMS
Issues (2)
• Management/technical issues
– Who manages LMS? Platform, cost, technical competency
required ...
• Faculty and student development
– Training, curriculum development, support
• Security issues
– Implications for access, testing ...
• Policy issues
– Policies for grades, credits, class lists, privacy
E-learning Standards
• Share content (‘learning objects’) across LMS
• Share learner information across LMS
• Requires standard descriptions and interoperability
specifications
• How to describe learning objects?
• How to describe learners?
• ====> metadata
Personalised learning networks …
Integrated learning networks…
WEB 2.0
Personalised Learning
Student Choice
Connect Learners
Evidence
How to survive a personalized
learning?
Overload…
‘e-portfolio concept
Education
Viewsi
Files
Views of eportfolio …
eportfolio-polytechnic.net.au
Different LMS – distributed content
• Content packages imported
in multiple LMS.
• Contents duplicated on
multiple systems.
• LMS contains: contents,
access control, data about
students.
• Difficult management of
content‘s lifecycle
New model, centralized content
• The content is considered as
service
• Content is gosted on content
servers
• LMSs can address a valid
content.
• Service interfaces control data
about students and access to
the contents
Services in cloud
LMS in cloud
This should resolve problems with backups, minimal downtime time,
solving of failures, warnings, scalability and other difficult tasks.
When LMS in cloud makes sense?
LMS in cloud examples
WEB
WEB