When a university asks its current learning management system (LMS) vendor what’s the difference between their 2002 and 2003 LMS products, the vendor calmly states, “about $50,000.” This quip underscores the recent transition of learning management systems from departmental postscript to institutional necessity. Understanding how vendors have transformed their products into critical infrastructure helps forecast where LMSs may evolve. The systems must maintain the features that led to widespread adoption, but expand to provide new rationales for continued reliance.
It is useful to briefly discuss the evolution of LMSs and to understand the pertinent acronyms that illustrate the pattern of LMS development.
A course or content management system (CMS/LCMS) is a system for managing course content. Typified by Blackboard 5 or WebCT Campus, a CMS is the content repository which stores, manages, and maintains learning content. The CMS separates the content from its delivery so that content can be authored once and reused in many courses. In higher education, the CMS was born from local solutions to Web-enhanced course delivery.
A learning management system (LMS) is a system for managing learner progress through courses.
Exemplified by Blackboard 6 or WebCT Vista, an LMS interacts with the student to manage access to learning content and support services. The LMS manages the learning process and is learner-focused, rather than content-focused. In higher education, the LMS was born from local student information systems.
Today’s learning management systems started as local solutions and evolved into proprietary vendor products. According to Acadiment (2004), the current CMS/LMS market is dominated by three companies: Blackboard (38%), WebCT (32%), eCollege (11%). Other companies account for the remaining 19% of the market. The “other” category includes home-grown systems (such as the University of Phoenix’s rEsource and the University of Maryland University College’s WebTYCHO), pioneers (such as VCampus and FirstClass), newcomers (such as IntraLearn and Angel), and systems with a strong corporate training presence (such as Saba and Docent). Three years ago, the market was extremely fragmented, but as further consolidation occurs, only a handful of products will survive.
Where Do We Want To Go?
The products that survive will continue to improve learning for both students and faculty. From a student perspective, the CMS concentrates on individual needs: greatly expanded syllabi detail learning expectations; online testing and gradebooks provide immediate feedback. The student/consumer has come to expect the same universal access, efficient responsiveness, and accommodation he or she is receiving elsewhere in an economy shifting from manufacturing to information services.
From a faculty perspective, the LMS solves administrative headaches: over the past 10 years, less than 5% of higher education technology budgets were devoted to the administrative aspects of instruction or to instruction itself (Byrne, n.d.). The LMS offers automatic registration, tracking, and a comprehensive record of communication.
Instructional management systems in the future will continue to solve these service problems for students and faculty but must also evolve or be replaced by custom solutions. Already, several free LMSs have emerged from both the North American and European communities. While proprietary systems offer stability, and although Gartner Group projects that 80% of institutions implementing an LMS in the next year will use a proprietary system, Scalise (2004) notes, “A proprietary LMS is like a municipal bus. It may get you to where you’re going but you can’t change the route or the engine.”
How Will We Get There?
The following technology trends should be integrated into future systems to provide custom routes:
LMSs should be based on XML to allow the interchange of data among disparate but industry-specific systems using a common vocabulary.
LMSs should center on learning objects to allow recognition and recombination at different levels, instead of being stuck in the course mentality.
LMSs should disaggregate rather than integrate tools. Because few institutions utilize all the capabilities (Biesinger, 2002) of six-figure monolithic systems, higher education requires a menu approach. This requirement is reflected in the emergence of the Open Knowledge Initiative, a collaborative focused on the development of modular tools.
LMSs should be customizable to the unique pedagogical needs of different disciplines with integration implemented via Web services.
LMSs should focus on collaboration (Trondsen, 2003) and incorporate communication tools ranging from instant messaging to blogs. New collaboration technologies enable the transfer of tacit knowledge.
How Will We Know When We’ve Arrived?
When instruction returns to the “why” while the CMS handles the “what,” when enrolling in a course is more straightforward than buying a hamburger, when distance discussion is easier than a phone call, and when the technology is as transparent as the classroom window, the LMS voyage will be complete, and the learning journey can begin. And, as all educators know, it always was and always should be about the learning, not the toys.
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