Best Practices Series 10 Questions Everyone Should Ask When Choosing an LMS
Table of Contents The LMS of Today Isn t What it Used to Be 10 Questions Everyone Should Ask When Choosing an LMS 1. Is the LMS Easy to Implement and Use? 2. Is the LMS Open? Does it Connect with Third-Party Services, Content, and Tools? 3. Is the LMS Reliable and Dependable? 4. Does the LMS Provide Accessible and Usable Reporting and Analytics? 5. Does the LMS Provide Efficiency to Teaching and Learning? 6. Does the LMS Support Mobile Access and Distance Learning? 7. Does the LMS Boost Communication and Collaboration? 8. What is the Feedback from Your Faculty and Students? 9. Is the LMS Adaptable and Scalable to Changing Needs? 10. Does the LMS Support Your Institution s Goals, Your Technology Strategy, and the Personal Growth of Students and Faculty? Conclusion 3 4 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
If you re in the process of choosing a learning management system (LMS), or you ve chosen one in the past, you know how challenging the decision can be. It requires a significant investment of time and, in many cases, expense without knowing whether or not the system will ultimately meet the needs of your faculty and students. But knowing the right questions to ask during LMS evaluation will help you more easily identify the platform that will meet the needs of your institution and those that won t. The LMS of Today Isn t What it Used to Be Traditionally speaking, the purpose of the LMS is to provide an online space for posting assignments and grades. While this is still true, the LMS has developed far beyond this limited usage into a critical tool for blended learning, competency-based education, distance learning, and much more. As the LMS has evolved, so has the process of evaluating one. In the past, choosing an LMS was primarily feature driven. But choosing any technology based solely on a checklist of features has the tendency to result in dissatisfaction. So now, the focus is on how well the LMS supports instructor and student growth, institutional goals, the overall technology strategy, and personal learning experiences. Great LMSs can be keystones of professional development, collaboration within departmental communities, the management of student organizations, and a wide variety of pedagogies. In other words, if you are going to meet the expectations of your students and faculty and ensure deep utilization, you must consider how your LMS fits into your institution s entire academic culture. schoology.com 3
10 Questions Everyone Should Ask When Choosing an LMS Now that you re thinking about your overall strategy and how the LMS fits into it, here are 10 questions you need to ask when choosing your next LMS. 1. Is the LMS Easy to Implement and Use? Ease of use is one of the biggest factors in whether or not your LMS will be a success and should be an important first consideration when evaluating technology in general. The reality is tools that don t feel readily familiar and require countless hours of training aren t going to be adopted except by a few very ambitious faculty members. There are a growing number of LMS vendors that are catching onto this fact and are placing a great amount of emphasis on ease of use, efficiency, and the overall experience of those using the platform. Schoology, for example, mirrors the designs of technologies both students and faculty use every day. This strategy has helped it become one of the most widely adopted LMSs, with more than 15 million users (as of July 2016), most of which have never received a day of training. schoology.com 4
2. Is the LMS Open? Does it Connect with Third-Party Services, Content, and Tools? Another big consideration is whether or not the LMS is open i.e., will it play well with the publisher content and tools you already use. As the saying goes, don t throw the baby out with the bathwater. What is working for you now should continue to work with your new LMS. In fact, if the integrations are good quality, you may even get more value from your existing tools and content because your LMS will become the hub that ties it all together. CIOs need the LMS to fit into the greater campus technological infrastructure. It must be able to integrate with your SIS, whether through an Open API (application programming interface) or automated SFTP transfers. It s also imperative that your LMS be compliant with many, if not all, of the leading learning technology standards including the major IMS Global Standards LIS, LTI, Common Cartridge, and QTI. Otherwise, you ll burden your entire institution with a rigid infrastructure that s inefficient and incapable of scaling. Academic Technologists and instructors, on the other hand, need the LMS to work well with the tools they are familiar with, such as Google Drive, Turnitin, and Evernote. This dramatically eases the burden of change and should make using multiple tools more efficient. Otherwise, all promises for greater efficiency go right out the window. schoology.com 5
3. Is the LMS Reliable and Dependable? Imagine for a moment that it s time for midterms, and all the tedious preparation flies out the window because the internet went down, the server crashed, or the computers aren t cooperating. The fact is, these things are bound to happen, but if you choose a reliable LMS, then you ll have one fewer IT headache to worry about. If your LMS provider can t promise 99.9% uptime, move along because there s nothing to see here. It s also important to have great support for the.1% of the time you need it. Great LMS companies provide prompt support by communicating status updates and quickly resolving the unforeseen issues. And remember, if you choose to host your own LMS instead of going with a cloudbased one, you are your own IT and support team. While open-source LMS s such as Moodle are free to license, the cost of maintaining them can be far higher than you d expect. PITFALLS A Few Hidden Costs of Free Self-Hosted LMSs Hiring dedicated IT staff Purchasing, maintaining, and updating server infrastructure Upgrading and maintaining the core platform Investing in disaster recovery infrastructure Losing time waiting on fixes schoology.com 6
4. Does the LMS Provide Accessible and Usable Reporting and Analytics? One of the main reasons for using an LMS is gaining access to the insights it can provide you and all of your institution s stakeholders. After all, the ability to provide actionable feedback is critical for improving academic achievement. But just because an LMS has a data reporting mechanism doesn t mean it will be useful. Take analytics on user logins for example. While this data point is often touted as a measurement for engagement, it hardly provides any indication of the sort. What the user did after logging in is a far more accurate representation of engagement, don t you think? User logins paired with data detailing time spent in particular lessons, number of attempts on quizzes, number of discussion comments posted, and performance against learning objectives can give you a good idea whether or not your students are engaged. The answer to this question should also address who has access to the analytics and reporting. Is this information limited to the course level, or do administrators have aggregated analytics dashboards for the entire institution? Do advisors have the relevant analytics they need to be effective? Ultimately, the platform you choose should provide clear, timely, and specific insights to all stakeholders, so you don t have to dig through mounds of data to find them yourself. schoology.com 7
5. Does the LMS Provide Efficiency to Teaching and Learning? Everyone wants to work smarter, not harder, and a great LMS will help you do just that. Through the ability to automate tasks and save time via productivity enhancing features, your faculty will not only become more efficient but also happier. Examples of an LMS working for you include self-graded assessments, notifications and reminders, item banks for tests and quizzes, seamless integration of third-party content and platforms, and a well designed assignment workflow. While most of the examples mentioned above are pretty straightforward, the assignment workflow deserves deeper consideration. Your faculty should be able to distribute learning material, gather student work, and provide timely, meaningful feedback for students more efficiently with the LMS than without. It s also great to have options for personalizing feedback via audio or video commentary. The fact is: instructors spend a good portion of their day collecting and grading assignments and providing feedback. Understanding how they might accomplish everyday tasks such as these via the LMS is crucial. schoology.com 8
6. Does the LMS Support Mobile Access and Distance Learning? Learning isn t as formal as it used to be. More and more, our learning is taking place outside the walls of a traditional classroom e.g., online degree programs, blended learning, and flipped classrooms. Education is becoming increasingly digital, mobile, and globally connected. Today, students and instructors expect their courses and other academic interactions to be just as mobile as they are. This is why your LMS should provide a robust mobile app that parallels the desktop experience to provide greater access to content. There s just no need to be tied to a desktop computer when your LMS can be carried in your pocket. And because 86% of college students have a smartphone, with 80% of them using their devices to access their LMSs1, one of your first questions when evaluating LMSs should be, Is there an app for that? Mobile Learning and Meeting Students Where They Are 86% of students own a smartphone. 80% of them access their LMSs from a mobile device. Data by EDUCAUSE Center for Analysis and Research, September 2014 1Eden Dahlstrom, D. Christopher Brooks, and Jacqueline Bichsel. The Current Ecosystem of Learning Management Systems in Higher Education: Student, Faculty, and IT Perspectives. Research report. Louisville, CO: ECAR, September 2014. Available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar. schoology.com 9
7. Does the LMS Boost Communication and Collaboration? Real-time communication and sharing are the hallmarks of modern technology, yet only recently has this advance made its way into the realm of education. Let s be blunt your LMS needs to enhance communication and collaboration both inside and outside of the classroom. Why? The benefits of effective messaging and effortless sharing of content cannot be overstated. Instructors across all departments need to be on the same page and sharing resources, ideas, and successes. Students need to be organized, advisors need to be informed, curriculum needs to be distributed effectively, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. While most LMSs have a messaging feature, they are bolted on and isolated from the learning environment. But LMSs such as Schoology have recognized that communication and sharing are integral to learning and have built them into every aspect of the platform. It s the difference between the ability to send a message and being able to contribute to the learning experience in context. There s simply no replacement for enabling communication and collaboration via course and group updates, assignments, discussions, shared content repositories, and events. The fact is: students, and a growing number of faculty, want to learn as a community. And when community features such as these are built in to the learning experience, the benefits far exceed boosts in communication and engagement. Choosing an LMS with communication and sharing at its core quickly embeds these abilities, and the values associated with them, into your educational culture and strategy. schoology.com 10
8. What is the Feedback from Your Faculty and Students? Understanding where your faculty and students are today is key to choosing technology that meets their needs. Do they already use an LMS? If so, what do they like most and what do they wish was different? When you consult the people most likely to use the LMS on a daily basis, you accomplish two things. First is getting your faculty and students involved in the decision making process a huge boon when trying to ensure campus-wide adoption. Second, seeking feedback from faculty and students will help ensure the LMS you choose works for them. If you don t know what your faculty need from the system, then you run a greater risk of failure. And while gaining real-time feedback is crucial to finding an LMS that will stick, you should also try to anticipate the feedback from future students. Incoming freshmen will expect greater access to courses and content via easy-to-use platforms. They expect to be able to reach their professors, connect with peers, and collaborate easily. Keeping existing and future users of your new LMS in mind will no doubt increase the satisfaction of both students and faculty, which will have positive effects on your retention and your bottom line. schoology.com 11
9. Is the LMS Adaptable and Scalable to Changing Needs? It s been said the one constant is change. Colleges and universities are living entities, and you need an LMS that is flexible and responsive to the sometimes unpredictable shifts to the institutional landscape. This year, the institution may be in the last phase of re-accreditation, but next year you could be rolling out the pilot of your first distance learning program. Will the LMS be an asset or a hindrance to your initiatives? There are two basic types of scalability that you ll need to evaluate instructional and technical. Instructional scalability boils down to whether or not your LMS will support the varying pedagogies of your instructors over time. Let s say, for example, some of your instructors flip their classrooms and others implement a more project-based model. Will they be able to do so using the LMS? On the technical side of scalability, it is very important that your LMS be open. That means it has the ability to connect and communicate with new and existing third party tools either through an open API or pre-configured integrations and essentially future-proof your institution for whatever comes next. schoology.com 12
10. Does the LMS Support Your Institution s Goals, Your Technology Strategy, and the Personal Growth of Students and Faculty? The last, but definitely not least, consideration you need to make when choosing an LMS is how it will fit into your institution as a whole. A best-in-class LMS will provide learning experiences suited to your learners as well as to your institutional goals both academic and non-academic. Ask yourself: who will be using the system? What are the experiences you desire for these users? Let s say, for example, your university is transitioning to an outcomes- or competency-based model, and you want students to be assessed authentically through creative expression. Your LMS will need to provide seamless and effective classroom workflow for teaching and measuring against learning objectives, as well as ample creative outlets for students to demonstrate their understanding. Most importantly, your LMS should provide a centerpiece for your personal learning environment a place to curate resources, connect with others, and house artifacts of learning. schoology.com 13
Conclusion An LMS is an essential element not only of your overall technology strategy but of your campus culture. Choosing the right one for your institution is seldom an easy decision. While many institutions have become enamored with a collection of features, this has often led to dissatisfaction and implementation failure. The key to successful LMS implementation rests in its ability to deliver learning experiences complementary to institutional goals. Thinking about these ten critical questions will invite focused conversation, put many doubts to rest, and provide a foundation for making a smart choice. Want to see which LMS meets all the above criteria? Get in touch with us to see a short demo and learn why colleges and universities around the world have chosen Schoology. Schoology.com/demo schoology.com 14