introduction
Course Management Software
Course management software can be defined as a software system designed to facilitate management and student experience in e-learning. Few types of softweare go by as many names and monikers as does. Course management software is also, in some contexts, known as:- Managed Learning Environment (course management system)
- Learning Management System
- Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)
- Learning Management System (LMS)
- Course Management System (CMS) - not to be confused with the more common CMS: a Content Management System, which is unrelated to online learning
- Learning Content Management System (LCMS)
- Managed Learning Environment (MLE)
- Learning Support System (LSS)
- Learning Platform (LP)
Course Management Software should make it possible for a course designer to present to students, through a single, consistent, and intuitive interface, all the components required for a course of education or training. Although logically it is not a requirement, in practice course management systems always make extensive use of computers and the Internet. A course management system should implement all the following components:
- The syllabus for the course
- Administrative information including the location of sessions, details of pre-requisites and co-requisites, credit information, and how to get help
- A noticeboard for uptodate course information
- Student registration and tracking facilities, if necessary with payment options
- Basic teaching materials. These may be the complete content of the course, if the course management system is being used in a distance learning context, or copies of visual aids used in lectures or other classes where it is being used to support a campus-based course.
- Additional resources, including reading materials, and links to outside resources in libraries and on the Internet.
- Self-assessment quizzes which can be scored automatically
- Formal assessment procedures
- Electronic communication support including e-mail, threaded discussions and a chat room, with or without a moderator
- Differential access rights for instructors and students.
- All these facilities should be capable of being hyperlinked together
- Easy authoring tools for creating the necessary documents including the insertion of hyperlinks - though it is acceptable (arguably, preferable) for the course management system to be designed so that standard word processors or other office software can be used for authoring.
In addition, the course management system should be capable of supporting numerous courses, so that students and instructors in a given insititution (and, indeed, across institutions) experience a consistent interface when moving from one course to another.
There are a number of commercial course management system software packages available, including notably BlackBoard and WebCT. An emerging open-source player, Sakai, should be evaluated by anyone considering one of the aforementioned solutions, as the product is well-funded and supported, and is free as in beer.
A major problem with current solutions is that there is no easy way of transferring a course site from one package to another, so that the considerable investment in time required to fit a course to one course management system package is likely to be wasted if an institution changes its course management system supplier, if an instructor moves from one institution to another that uses a different course management system, or if institutions using different course management systems wish to collaborate. This problem has been getting easier and easier with each iteration of software by the major players. It is in the companies best interests to make it easy to import other formats of courses into their course management system and as such this has been improving. For simple courses this process can be mostly automated for Blackboard, WebCT and Sakai.
Despite aforementioned problem, universities and other institutions of higher education are increasingly turning to course management systems in order to:
- economise on the time of teaching staff, especially when they are also involved in research and administration. The extent of the economy is not yet clear, but using a course management system almost certainly absorbs less instructor time (and requires less expertise, while producing a more professional result) than creating a home-grown website for a course.
- provide a service for students who increasingly look to the internet as the natural medium for finding information and resources
- facilitate the integration of distance and campus-based learning or of learning on different campuses.
- increase class sizes and enrollment while keeping staff increases to a minimum, educating more students, getting more bang for the buck or, more cynically, increasing profits while trying to minimize the degredation of educational quality