Roundtable:
Choosing the right Course Management System for your Online Program
Sessions 2 and 3 Notes
Guest Expert: Mike Thun
One size does not fit all- depends on long term educational objectives which have to be defined early on -- follow those to choose a system that will work.
KY Virtual Schools- Blackboard vs Moodle.
Some schools are already using Moodle in their classroom and the state has already bought BB for the whole state, which was available at a heavy discount.
@ $350 for 0-70 students, this does not include the support.
Designed a podcasting community to train teachers to work with students- need to be effective in both ends as needed to work with teachers
In KY BB is mostly for online PD and for students it is for AP and remediation courses.
Check on advantages of each CMS that is available out there so that you can make an intelligent decision:
· Edutools.info- website to compare CMS functionality side by side
· Hosting- decision for the organization, resources, bodies to host it locally or
Application Service Provider- like BB or other
· Working with multiple clients and CMSs that clients and constituents would need--want to provide in a system that can be used universally among each
Virginia- 4 support centers, distributed before they moved to central wide system which was then D2L. D2L was chosen as SREB evaluated all CMS and being a state agency we worked with SREB’s RFP. SC went their own way as their procurement office
SREB has a RFP template that is available for states to use when they need to select a CMS for their project.
Some key points about the different CMS’s:
· D2L- very user friendly, edit content, communication features (built in email, pager, IM, blog and chat feature) editing features are intuitive.
Negative- student info management (Maestro) very reluctant to integrate with other 3rd party software, D2L’s customer service-- you have to schedule a week ahead to open a ticket. D2L in AL is integrated with their state wide registration system for students and the professional development.
· BB negative- user statistics for a class are not that efficient, back end tool like snapshot which lets you access data from the user database can be used to provide the extra information which is otherwise not readily available.
· Registration systems-
KY used STI and are moving to web based Infinity Campus
Integration with other subsidiary systems needs to be in place and is essential for the smooth flow of the project. Some of the subsidiary systems to keep in mind are:
· Student Information Management system
· Registration System
· E-Commerce
· Professional Development Tracking System (certification)
· Database management- Marketing and PR
· Technical support
ETLO/SREB/ISTE Online Learning Institute http://edtechleaders.org/forms/conf2007/oli07_archives.asp
July 2007