Our institution has already selected the LMS and we've been using it for 10 years. Although I was not part of the team that selected the LMS, now that I have experience with it, I'm in a much better position to review and recommend an LMS for our institution.
When our Institution rolled out the Online division, the most cost effective LMS was chosen. Moodle is free and therefore saves the school money. Moodle does have many useful features and is a great beginning LMS for a school that is just starting their online division. However, it is lacking on the technological advances that many of the other systems now boast. I believe that as an Institution grows, so must its technology and services. I hope we adopt a more advanced LMS that offers many more features that better service our students.
We, the faculty, looked at and compared various LMS's and determined that BlackBoard was the program that best worked with our program and was the most cost-effective.
It is important to take into account the needs of the students and budget of the school
we have the online department who management system.
By a very complex process where no one seems to have clue on what it is and wants to outsource.Currently trying to navigate that process.
How will the course management system be (or has been) selected at your institution?
This process is extremely complex and is actually driving me crazy. I am the one responsible for making this decision. We are a brand new completely online fully accredited University and since we haven't even begun having students yet, I have to figure all of this out. I truly want to make this decision only once. I don't want to have to try something and then switch later, but I think for budget purposes, we should stick with a free source and once we grow, then switch to a paid source. Blackboard seems to offer the most functionality and has the best user reviews (both by faculty and students) but it does get pricey as you increase students....but then again, if the students are coming, the money comes, and then the price of Blackboard shouldn't be a factor? I don't know. I think we are going to choose SONIS web as our LMS because they integrate well with Moodle, which we will use initially, since it's free and once we grow, I think we will switch over to Blackboard. Still deciding on this one though.
Heather,
Your rationale seems sound, there are plenty of schools using Moodle and open source does provide some distinct fiscal advantages, particularly for a "start-up" institution. Because you are accredited, I'm assuming you are further down the road than I first imagined. Once you make the decision on your LMS, you will be surprised how quickly the rest will fall into place. Once that decision is made, you will also be able to locate independent contractor curriculum developers who have experience with open source and specifically Moodle, to help you.
Dr. Robert Roehrich
