From the Executive Summary of the Final Committee Report:
An LMS II Strategic Review Committee was formed in January 2005 to examine options for a new enterprise Learning Management System (LMS) to carry CSU, Chico into the future. The solutions considered were Blackboard, Desire2Learn, WebCT Campus Edition, and WebCT Vista, as well as leading open source options Moodle and Sakai. All but Blackboard and WebCT Vista were demonstrated to be deficient during the preliminary investigation and were disqualified from further consideration.
• Case Study: CSU Chico Evaluation Questions - LMS features (posted on October 20, 2006)
This is the 15 page list of evaluation questions the committee used as part of the evaluation process. It contains questions regarding functionality, adaptability, and support issues.
• Case Study: Idaho State U, 2006 (posted on October 30, 2006)
"The learning management systems (LMS) Focus Group Report evaluates feedback by Idaho State University (ISU) faculty members, students, support staff, and assessment officer review of WebCT 6.0, Sakai 2.0, and Moodle 1.5 LMS software packages."
• Case Study: U of Iowa 2005 (posted on October 30, 2006)
"Beginning in February 2005, the University has been searching for a single enterprise CMS vendor whose product is:
- easy to use and intuitive, encouraging faculty adoption despite busy schedules,
- yet also has a full-featured enterprise architecture, allowing efficient implementation of complex tasks, supporting advanced systems integration and distance and nontraditional initiatives."
• EduTools site (posted on October 19, 2006)
"This site was built to assist higher education in using a more rational decision making process to review the many options for a course management system.
This site reviews each product by researching and describing more than 40 product features."
• Educause: Article on Open Source vs Proprietary. (posted on October 25, 2006)
(PDF) In the article "Pioneering New Territory and Technologies", see the section starting on page 124: "Open-Source Learning Management Systems: As Good As the Commercial Ones?" for a thoughtful perspective on the state of the art from the Educause Evolving Technologies committee.
• News: Drop Patent, Educause Urges Blackboard (posted on October 30, 2006)
The leaders of higher education_s main technology association have written a powerfully worded letter urging Blackboard to relinquish the rights it gained under a controversial patent of online learning technologies in the public domain and to drop a patent infringement lawsuit it filed in August against a Canadian competitor, Desire2Learn.
•Open Source Articles:
Open Source: Definition
"Special Report:Open Source Vision," By Matt Villano (Campus Technology, 7/1/2006)
Increasingly, colleges and universities are turning to open source as a way to meet their technology infrastructure and application needs. It's time to weigh the benefits and the challenges.
Open Source Software: Should You Bet Your Career On It? By Stephen R. Acker and Peter E. Murray (Campus Technology, 7/19/2006)
For most universities, a decision to introduce new software should be made with the expectation that the choice will hold for three to seven years until the campus again finds its groove. So change is not taken lightly, and the risk of change must be projected over time and discounted back to the present.
• Reference Docs: Oakland University (Minn) (posted on October 23, 2006)
Check out Oakland's "Learning Management Software Transition Papers". They did an evaluation and generated some interesting and informative documentation. Not sure how they arrived at Moodle s their open source alternative - still reading.
• Resource: Michael Feldstein's e-Literate blog (posted on October 30, 2006)
Feldstein is one of the best and most often cited folks who tracks the state of affairs in e-learning and in particular the LMS world.
• Resource: Swiss Evaluation - Killer Criteria (posted on October 30, 2006)
Worth checking out the list that the Edutech group used for deal killers in their evaluation of open source LMS's, as an example of how they are identified and applied.
• Resource: Swiss Evaluation of Open Source LMS's (posted on October 30, 2006)
" In 2005 the edutech group was repeatedly asked by members of the Swiss e-learning community to report on the quality of current open source (OS) e-learning management systems (LMS) or course management systems (CMS). Since our last evaluation in 2003, which considered only commercial products, many open source products have improved in quality and gained considerable acceptance in higher education organizations."
No comments:
Post a Comment