Comments on: Why All LMS's Are 'Pretty Good/Bad' http://mfeldstein.com/why-all-lmss-are-pretty-goodbad/ What We Are Learning About Online Learning...Online Fri, 18 May 2012 06:39:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Edufountain: Virtual and Personal Learning Environments My Thoughts – Fountains of Fontaine http://mfeldstein.com/why-all-lmss-are-pretty-goodbad/#comment-1384 Edufountain: Virtual and Personal Learning Environments My Thoughts – Fountains of Fontaine Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:44:48 +0000 http://mfeldstein.com/?p=961#comment-1384 [...] the nature of innovation in a the world of virtual learning environments. Michael Feldstein wrote an article about a year ago arguing that all LMS’s have become become fairly even in terms of [...] [...] the nature of innovation in a the world of virtual learning environments. Michael Feldstein wrote an article about a year ago arguing that all LMS’s have become become fairly even in terms of [...]

]]> By: Clark Shah-Nelson http://mfeldstein.com/why-all-lmss-are-pretty-goodbad/#comment-1383 Clark Shah-Nelson Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:48:46 +0000 http://mfeldstein.com/?p=961#comment-1383 Absolutely, Michael! As someone who has taught and/or supported faculty on nearly every big North American LMS in the past decade, none of them is a VLE-topia. Each has great features coupled with very annoying gaps in functionality that affect productivity at all levels. I would love to see what Google would do with the LMS... (told them as much several months ago - http://getsatisfaction.com/google/topics/google_learning_management_system?utm_content=topic_link&utm_medium=email&utm_source=reply_notification Looks like their first step was to hook up with Moodlerooms for Google Apps integration? http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/02/lms-and-google-apps-first-comes-love.html You are absolutely right about Web 2.0 - it's not that the VLE needs to necessarily have the functionality of these web 2.0 sites in them, they just at least need to support embedding of widgets, iframe, etc. (which some are still slowly coming along with...) so that users can incorporate the web 2.0 sites into their courses better. Absolutely, Michael! As someone who has taught and/or supported faculty on nearly every big North American LMS in the past decade, none of them is a VLE-topia. Each has great features coupled with very annoying gaps in functionality that affect productivity at all levels.

I would love to see what Google would do with the LMS… (told them as much several months ago – http://getsatisfaction.com/google/topics/google_learning_management_system?utm_content=topic_link&utm_medium=email&utm_source=reply_notification

Looks like their first step was to hook up with Moodlerooms for Google Apps integration? http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/02/lms-and-google-apps-first-comes-love.html

You are absolutely right about Web 2.0 – it’s not that the VLE needs to necessarily have the functionality of these web 2.0 sites in them, they just at least need to support embedding of widgets, iframe, etc. (which some are still slowly coming along with…) so that users can incorporate the web 2.0 sites into their courses better.

]]> By: Dori Digenti http://mfeldstein.com/why-all-lmss-are-pretty-goodbad/#comment-1382 Dori Digenti Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:16:49 +0000 http://mfeldstein.com/?p=961#comment-1382 Mike, great info! I have added your feed to the CTL blog at Berkshire Community College. Thanks for all your help with our search. Mike, great info! I have added your feed to the CTL blog at Berkshire Community College. Thanks for all your help with our search.

]]> By: Michael Feldstein http://mfeldstein.com/why-all-lmss-are-pretty-goodbad/#comment-1381 Michael Feldstein Fri, 06 Mar 2009 12:54:40 +0000 http://mfeldstein.com/?p=961#comment-1381 With his permission, I'm going to post some comments on this post that were emailed to me by Mark Wilcox. Mark is a colleague at Oracle and a former WebCT developer. Mark writes: <blockquote> A note for your point on how hard bug fixing in LMS can be. Back when I was at WebCT - I was the lead implementer for WebCT Vista. And while at one school planning for the migration from CE 3.5 to Vista, we hit a roadblock. The roadblock was that there were no automatic locks on the gradebook. In CE 3.5 (going back to 1.0) if a test was auto-graded, the grade was locked. It was one of the features we had to get rid of in Vista because so many people hated it. Except for one school which had figured out how to manipulate CE's grade book (back in the day it was just a flat-file text file, which is also why if you see my own code you will sometimes see me separate data by ":::" :)) to use the lock feature for some university function. That is when I realized that one person's bug is another's feature :). And then there was the time, where the WebCT implementer at a school went completely crazy on FERPA. And thought that if the person had marked "do not share my name" meant that the person could even be anonymous in class. It wasn't a school legal ruling - they had just decided this on their own. And that is when I made sure they went to talk to their legal department because besides being extremely hard to do (and not sure of any value in class) - had put the school in a potential legal situation. Finally - then there is the time, we had to keep girls & guys separated at a school in the Middle East :). For a while, WebCT had become "eHarmony" for an online school :). </blockquote> With his permission, I’m going to post some comments on this post that were emailed to me by Mark Wilcox. Mark is a colleague at Oracle and a former WebCT developer.

Mark writes:

A note for your point on how hard bug fixing in LMS can be.

Back when I was at WebCT – I was the lead implementer for WebCT Vista. And while at one school planning for the migration from CE 3.5 to Vista, we hit a roadblock.

The roadblock was that there were no automatic locks on the gradebook. In CE 3.5 (going back to 1.0) if a test was auto-graded, the grade was locked. It was one of the features we had to get rid of in Vista because so many people hated it.

Except for one school which had figured out how to manipulate CE’s grade book (back in the day it was just a flat-file text file, which is also why if you see my own code you will sometimes see me separate data by “:::” :) ) to use the lock feature for some university function.

That is when I realized that one person’s bug is another’s feature :) .

And then there was the time, where the WebCT implementer at a school went completely crazy on FERPA. And thought that if the person had marked “do not share my name” meant that the person could even be anonymous in class.

It wasn’t a school legal ruling – they had just decided this on their own. And that is when I made sure they went to talk to their legal department because besides being extremely hard to do (and not sure of any value in class) – had put the school in a potential legal situation.

Finally – then there is the time, we had to keep girls & guys separated at a school in the Middle East :) . For a while, WebCT had become “eHarmony” for an online school :) .

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