Moving LMSs to move 'social software' approach?
The bulk of this is from a posting I made to a discussion over at http://icommunities.org/direct/LearnDes
where some learning designers where discussing the possible lifetime of existing LMSs:
"While students pay for courses my guess is LMS's will remain at the
core….eg. you cant get in until you pay your fees.ANy other
technology - even like Blogs, are likely to be treated by institutions
(wait for the rules to come out!!) as a kind of LMS in terms of
ownership." Lyn Smith
I think it is the whole paradigm of tertiary education (or education in general) that needs to change rather than the just the LMSs. If tertiary institutions see themselves as the owners of knowledge that students have to pay to receive, why would they want to invest in technology that took a more distributed, social, vygotskian, constructivist approach 
From a personal point of view, and in my field of application development, why would I possibly want to pay money to enrol in a tertiary course, and to then be forced to log into an lms a couple of times a week (because I know the lecturer will be checking the LMS stats as a measure of my participation and learning!), and read through possibly out of date course notes, and take part in contrived discussions , and submit meaningless assignments, just so I can get a piece of paper to say I have done it?
Without the help of a tertiary institution, or a 'learning management system' I can 'manage' my professional learning much more effectively with existing social software tools, email, blogs, wikis, discussion forums, etc. and can learn up-to-the-minute information about my interest domain, share ideas with real people working in the same domain, find answers to real questions at point of need, and apply that knowledge to solving real world problems.
Abviously there is a bit of generalisation here, and I am making these statements as a basis for some possible discussion, rather than as "I know the whole problem and all the answers" The key thing I think is needed, rather than looking at making LMS's behave more like the social software tools, is looking at how Institutions can take part and use the existing social networking/learning tools, and ways of even providing some qualification pathways for people learning in this way. The likes of the Ultraversity degree programme is a good move in this direction.
January 18th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Right on Glen
I’m with ya! Been singing that worthy song for some time now - you’re the first in quite some time to join in. Recently I had a near heated exchange with an IT guy who mostly made silly remarks about the socially networked Internet being a passing phase. But one thing he did say that has some stick is the experience he had with a course that used a blog, wiki and email list. He said he was really tired of having to manage the navigation and login across those three sites.
I reckon the same navigational stresses are very present in LMSs, and the design of the intergration of the blog, wiki and email list could be causing any number of problems.. personally, I think the best design is to run everything centrally around the blog.. but others may be around the email list. Either way, one of the small pieces that are loosely joined should be central.
Listen to this keynote talk by Rob Curley talking about how much his local newspaper has changed. Imagine if we had 1/10 of the engagement and dynamism of this in education!
January 18th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
[…] Thanks to a link in a recent comment by Leigh on my april 7 2006 post just listened to a keynote from Rob Curley. […]
January 18th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
[…] Curley keynote sparks new ideas for extra curriculum Jump to Comments I dropped a comment on Glen Davies’ post on LMSs and socially networked software, pointing toan ITConversations recording of a talk by Rob Curley. Glen responded with a new post about the talk and has touched on some inportant ideas I hadn’t considered while listening to the recording. “In the new millenium jounralism can no longer be a monologue, it has to be a dialogue with our readers”. Surely that applies to education as well. […]