With the emergence of strong open source contenders in the Learning Management System (LMS) arena, many schools are evaluating whether to stay with one of the commercial LMS products such as Blackboard/WebCT or moving to one of the open source solutions which are free to use, but offer no corporate support. There are many factors contributing to such a decision beyond price including migration from a current LMS, technical and faculty support and buy in. In the end, it is a decision that an institution needs to be well informed to make. This panel will discuss the approach of several small schools in making this decision. Each panelist will share why they chose their LMS, give a short demo of the interface and some of the features of the LMS, discuss the implementation process and describe any lessons that they have learned during the process.
Determining the desired relationship between IT professionals and faculty is an important step in setting expectations and developing programs to achieve that relationship. Two colleges discuss how they have found a balance between a small staff and the rising interest by faculty to integrate technology into their classrooms and research.
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