Learning management systems take on K-12 role

With online learning on the rise, more K-12 schools are adopting LMS software
By Jennifer Nastu

e-School News

Online and blended learning have taken off in the last few years—and that has spurred more interest in learning management system (LMS) software among K-12 schools.

An LMS is a software program that allows for the administration, delivery, and tracking of classroom or online events and eLearning programs. A robust LMS facilitates the planning and organization of online learning [2] events, as well as the centralization and delivery of content, discussions boards, and other online resources. It lets teachers communicate with parents, assign and collect projects online, host discussions, and track a student’s progress.

As more K-12 schools experiment with online instruction, many are discovering they need an LMS to manage these various efforts. But, just as online and blended learning can take many forms within a school system, the market for software platforms that can help with online learning is quite diverse as well.

Read more on how to choose and implement an LMS here [3].

In this Special Report, we’ll take a closer look at what an LMS is, what it should be able to do, and how to choose a system that best meets your needs.

LMS vs. CMS software

An LMS differs from a more basic content management system (CMS), although both can play a role in online instruction.

While a CMS allows users to upload content and gives a website a consistent look and feel across all pages, an LMS is where you “actually house the courses,” says Bradley Mitchell, LMS administrator for the South Carolina Department of Education.

Unlike an LMS, a typical CMS doesn’t allow for interactive features such as discussion boards or online tests and quizzes, Mitchell explains.

Other programs that include some of the interactive features of an LMS—such as the ability to communicate and collaborate in an online environment—do exist. Some of these tools are offered by publishers to go along with their online textbooks, but these often end up like silos within a school, with one teacher using one product and another teacher using something else.

Other online platforms, such as Edmodo or Sophia, are free “social learning” environments for sharing information, while still other products—like Edline and eChalk—offer tools that let educators create course websites and communicate with parents and students.

Although these systems might be a good fit for schools with more modest requirements, some of these online services are little more than file exchange systems, says Jamie Woodard, technology administrator for the Virtual School [5] in Clark County, Nevada.

“A learning management system is structured; you don’t just make label changes where you have things called ‘classes’ or ‘assignments,’” Woodard says. “You can assign values, grades—everything is built around the idea that it’s a class, there’s a certain amount of content, and the students will have to show the ability to know that stuff.”

The LMS is “basically our building,” Woodard goes on. “As a school that is accessed entirely online, when you click on a class, it’s like walking into a classroom. Each teacher has a central area which is like their classroom, where they have all their assignments, all their content.”

The need for an LMS is not limited to online-only classes, however. LMS software also can be used to supplement traditional instruction, where the course work that happens within a brick-and-mortar classroom is managed within an LMS that helps educators keep track of student achievement, communicate with parents, and so on.

Teacher development is another activity that can take place within an LMS: The training and content can be offered online, which then can be tracked to see, for example, which activities have been completed by which teachers, how teachers are performing, and what areas need more focus.

“This way, you don’t have to have everyone taking the day off, closing down the school to give teacher training. You can do it all online,” says Phill Miller, vice president of product strategy for Moodlerooms, a company that provides a learning management platform based on the open-source Moodle LMS.

The LMS market is undergoing a stark transformation, Miller says. While the postsecondary market has reached near-total saturation, with 95 percent of postsecondary institutions using an LMS, the K-12 space has been slower to adopt LMS solutions. But that’s changing, Miller says, as schools increasingly offer online classes for remediation, as an alternative to summer school, or to give students the opportunity to take advanced classes they otherwise would be unable to provide.

Until now, many schools that offered online or blended learning (a combination of online and face-to-face instruction) offered those options through packages from companies such as K12 or Connections Academy, which host and manage everything themselves—so the school does not have to handle those pieces. Now, however, more and more schools are beginning to choose online classes from different providers, and they want a single online platform to help them manage all these offerings. As a result, Miller says, many institutions are recognizing the need for a full-fledged LMS.

Proprietary vs. open source

Along with a rise in the use of LMS software among K-12 schools has come another seismic shift: School leaders increasingly are mulling the use of free, open-source LMS solutions such as Moodle and Sakai, which can offer the same types of features that can be found in proprietary software.

Some say an open-source solution is the right choice because it is more easily customizable, says Karen Billings, vice president of education for the Software and Information Industry Association.

But one of the major differences between open-source and proprietary software is that open-source software doesn’t come with a team to manage the solution, so schools must either host and support the LMS themselves or contract with a company to do this for them. Hosting and supporting the software themselves “requires some technology skills and time and resources from district staff, so the trade-off is total cost of ownership,” something schools need to look at closely, Billings says.

Besides the customization aspect, another factor that helped drive interest in open-source alternatives was the protracted court battle between Blackboard Inc., the leading maker of proprietary LMS software, and Desire2Learn, one of its chief rivals, over what many observers considered to be an overly broad software patent held by Blackboard.

The patent eventually was ruled invalid, and the two companies settled their lawsuits in late 2009—but not before many school leaders began seeking non-proprietary LMS options amid all the ruckus.

For its part, Blackboard argues that it’s important to have technology partners that can grow to meet a school’s needs.

School leaders should look for an LMS partner with “the ability and the budget to innovate around new technology,” says Blackboard Senior Vice President Brett Frazier. “You don’t want to buy a solution that’s right just for today, because tomorrow, the likelihood is that it won’t meet your needs, or it will meet your needs for one thing but you’ll end up with five different things for different needs, and you’ll be stuck with trying to manage them separately. That’s a trend we keep hearing.”

A robust tool like Blackboard allows schools to jump-start their use of technology, says the company’s Frazier, who added that Blackboard also offers a free solution, called CourseSites, designed to ...

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Jennifer Nastu is a freelance writer living in Colorado who writes frequently about technology in education.