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De-coupling Course Content Management from the LMS/CMS
1/9/2008
As we move further into the 21st century we will see a steady increase in the use of online content delivery. Even with the massive effort my campus has gone through, what we brought over to the new system represents a relatively small percentage of the total learning content taught on our campus. I can only imagine the volume of content to be contended with during our next migration. An additional benefit of the approach I am now recommending will be to greatly simplify this future effort.I am calling for higher education technology decision-makers to put pressure on the LMS vendor community to begin to un-bundle their products, with particular emphasis on greater flexibility in terms of content management. These vendors should be establishing strategic alignments with technology vendors who specialize in more generalized areas. If we can successfully persuade (or compel) the LMS vendors, we will be in a much better position for future migrations. We will also be much kinder to the faculty on whom all of this is imposed...
Sandy Schaeffer is the director of the Advanced Learning Center, FedEx Institute of Technology, at the University of Memphis.
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