As an educational technology leader, I’m stunned by this move and wondering how it demonstrates customer partnership. By adding to an already overwhelming number of products, is the hope that LMS purchasing decisions will become so byzantine that schools will just default to the name-brand market leader?

At WebStudy, we like to make things simple. We offer software as a service. Through our commitment to customer partnership, we work to understand the unique and changing needs of each customer. We understand that colleges across the country are being forced to trim their budgets, as online enrollment continues to rise.

That’s why we shifted to all-inclusive pricing a few years back. With WebStudy Learning, everything is included in one price. All modules, features, functions and upgrades are included.

Another priority for most colleges is LMS technology that is reliable and effective. That’s why we’ve developed a 24/7 Helpdesk that is actually there for you, any hour of any day.

WebStudy Learning LMS is also known for its easy migration, zero downtime, continuous FREE product upgrades and maximizing student engagement. But don’t take my word for it. Talk with some of our customers, who you can listen to here.

WebStudy understands the challenges you face. The challenges of having to do more with less. And in my experience, bigger isn’t necessarily better.

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I bn usin Twitter N my soc classes 4 a year &  IMHO Twitter is Gr8 N th Classrm

I’m sure some of you are cringing RN right now.

However, when properly implemented from a social learning perspective (see Gisele’s previous post on this topic), social media and other social web tools can effectively create a richer learning experience for students and instructors alike.

Let me offer a few examples of how tools like blogs and Twitter and wikis can be used effectively and without disrupting the stability and equanimity of your classroom or the work you’ve already constructed in your LMS. First, some assumptions:

1. Most students use one or more of these “tools”: Twitter, Facebook, wikis, blogs.
2. The instruments for interacting with these kinds of sites are already in the hands of most (if not all) of your students.
3. They will be used during your lectures and discussions, whether you permit  it or not.
4. These tools can be very good avenues to knowledge.

If you can relate to at least two of these assumptions, I’d say try some of these approaches outlined below.

Twitter can be a powerful presence in the classroom, particularity if you teach more than one section of the same course. I read three newspapers almost every day and each of these papers allows you to tweet articles into the twitterverse (for the uninitiated, this is the part of the new Knowledge Ecosystem where all Tweets live). So I require all my student to look for a hashtag (a keyword proceeded by #) that identifies articles I want to discuss for that day or the next. For my Social Problems course I attach #SOC370 to the article and the students can find it with a simple search of Twitter. Many use their smart phones or tablets or computers to look at the articles as we discuss and most have already read the piece. I test on these articles as well.

Blogs, discussion boards and wikis are useful in LMS systems like WebStudy for developing ideas and sharing thoughts as students begin to collaborate on projects and presentations. I’ve found this particularly effective to follow a group’s development of an idea or approach to a problem. I look at them without the students having to submit something to me but I can comment only on the ones I see problems with.

Facebook and Google+ can broaden the scope and include folks external to your course, curriculm or school. But by inserting a link into your LMS, you ease the navigation for participants and protect the privacy of the other students in the class by keeping some aspects internal to the LMS. Once in Facebook or Google + you can add additional folks to your working group (say an external mentor or advisor or an Internship supervisor) that can help advise the group. This gives the students a taste of the real world and helps them to branch out of the Academy and into places they will spend the rest of their lives as professionals. And I can tell you: they like it.

But exactly what is so attractive about LMS and social technologies to students and instructors? And how is it effective?

As Stanley Fish illustrated this very point in a recent opinion piece in the New York Times Blog space:

As I see it, social learning disrupts education and creates fertile ground for the creation of a global Knowledge Ecosystem — or that space we used to call “education.”

Enjoy, and share with your colleagues!

Soon after EduCause, I came across a 2009 white paper by the Frank Ganis with the Gilfus Education Group called, “Social Learning Buzz Masks Deeper Dimensions.” This analysis of social learning put current efforts to push social media into education in a better context. Though we think of social learning as a new phenomenon, sparked by social media and web 2.0 tools, models of social learning have existed since the early 1900s.

Hence, it becomes fairly obvious that social learning  isn’t about the social media technology embedded in a LMS. Social learning is a process; therefore it  is about  how learning is structured and how  learning behaviors in groups are encouraged by instructors. According to Ganis, social learning is simply learning that happens in a social group and the process that learners use to modify their understandings based on others’ behaviors.

Ganis points out that the term “social learning” is often falsely applied to educational technology solutions or web 2.0 tools. Social media and web tools may be efficient for creating several feedback cycles between individuals in a group, and very useful for back-and-forth exchanges faster than ever imaginable, but the technology alone is not what makes social learning. Ganis reports, “The term “social learning’ should not be used to describe learning platforms which simply include social media capabilities, but the movement is more precise if labeled “Social Technology in Learning.”

Like Ganis, I am a strong believer in the promise of education technology and social learning. He is on-target when he says, “Creating a well-crafted social learning platform would most likely require a deeply collaborative effort among a group of technology experts, educators, social learning theorists, psychologist, sociologists and students.” All of these minds have to come together to implement what Ganis sees as the foundational elements of social learning, such as effective academic measurement tools, seamless user experience and interface design in informal and formal settings, and performance rewards.

Sound familiar? All of us in the LMS industry have seen the effectiveness of this in action: the right mix of experts working together to create a multi-faceted tool that is by it’s nature social. Add-on tools simply cannot create the same social ecosystem as educational technology that is social from the ground up.

Focus on Learning spotlights the “learning paradigm” and “Learning College” concepts, which encompass theories and practices that put student learning and inquiry at the center of the community college’s mission. This reader is a collection of articles, studies and essays that trace both the history and the future of the Learning College, as well as best practices.

At WebStudy, we are so pleased to have the opportunity to support this work. We seek to put learning at the center of our LMS development, and we are proud to focus on the needs of community colleges. Tech trends will come and go, but only tools that put learning at the center of their mission will truly impact student learning and college success.

You can preview Focus on Learning at the League for Innovation’s site. In the coming weeks, I’ll be discussing it in more depth.

My perspective remains the same: There is a steep learning curve for institutions to unify their efforts with any new technology, particularly to provide quality support and responding to user needs. This poses a grey area related to costs that likely can exceed the actual license costs. It begs the question: what is your school’s Academic Technology Strategy?

The types of products and services we saw on the EduCause showroom floor can be a hindrance or a help. That all depends on how far into the strategic decision-making process the campus is and who is attending the show. The IT folks think that have direction until they bring home the latest information on diverse applications and unanswered questions about interoperability. The academics ask, “How is this going to assist us in our academic mission?”

To emphasize this dilemma, let’s look at the terminology that Kyle Bowen, the Director of Informatics at Purdue University described, FAVEs vs FIVEs. That’s faculty against everything (FAVE’s) vs faculty into virtually everything (FIVE’s). This dichotomy poses a problem on campuses seeking to articulate an educational technology vision, as they have to meet the needs of two complete different audiences. It is challenging to find solutions that meet the needs of both. (By the way, if you are a FIVE, check out what Purdue is doing in mobile apps: http://www.educause.edu/Community/MemDir/Profiles/KyleDBowen/58744)

The presentation that had the most immediate relevance was Steve Rheinschmidt, from Iowa Community College System. ICCOS has a culture in place (largely due to a unified consortium) that allowed them a unique opportunity and measure and, ultimately, increase student success. This allowed them to achieve alignment on defining an “at risk student”: one who is a first-time online student and/or one who has three or more online courses. Additionally, after the semester started, they identified the following risk parameters: 1) student enrolls after semester start, 2) grade to date is below 70%, 3) stopped attending after five consecutive days, 4) logs in fewer than3x/wk and 5) the student activity online is less than 3 hrs/wk.

Ultimately, I think these types of understandings of faculty and students will do more to formulate coherent, useful academic technology policies than anything we saw on the showroom floor. All flashy marketing messages aside, what matters is a match-up between the goals of the school and track record of the technology service provider. A system like ICCOS is uniquely positioned to understand exactly what their goals need to be in terms of academic technology. So to answer the question I posed in the first paragraph: the answer must always be “part of a larger strategic direction.”

If you haven’t heard about OpenClass yet, here is the basic message:

• OpenClass is a free LMS that combines course management, social networking and community building tools.
• OpenClass was reported to be the result of a collaboration between Pearson, a large educational publishing and technology company, and Google Apps.
• Their target market is institutions where instructors have primary curricular control and independent decision making.

I can see problems with even these basics. Proprietary LMS do some things well that something like OpenClass may not, particularly ease of continued use, compatibility and compliance. Without adherence to clear inter-operability guidelines, LTI and IMS certification, let alone integration with SIS, digital content, course cartridges, combined with the necessary security measures needed to be FERPA compliant… Well, it is hard to call that free.

I wonder about Pearson’s role as both a content provider and an LMS. There seem to be a few unwritten rules in higher education: 1) content providers are LMS agnostic; 2) LMS providers are content agnostic and; 3) SIS providers have to remain LMS agnostic. Many schools will probably be uncomfortable with violating these rules, even if they can’t necessarily name them.

Media coverage can lead a person to believe that OpenClass was a joint effort between Google and Pearson. Yet the folks at the EduCause Google booth reassured customers that anyone can make use of Google Apps, as long as they adhere to their guidelines. WebStudy Learning, for example, has integrated Google apps and it’s highly probable that most LMS systems do or can if they would like. Google is LMS agnostic and will remain LMS agnostic. Why? It’s the only proper way to serve higher education customers.

Schools will continue to vet LMS applications based on the depth and breadth of the functionality and service support. They need software that can reliably and effectively deliver course materials, and they need support services with a track record of availability and problem-solving. This is ultimately what helps faculty have control over course delivery — not having to worry.

Don’t underestimate trust and a proven track record as huge factors in LMS selection. Both Desire2Learn and WebStudy have over twelve years of satisfied customers, and I know that this has made a difference for sales. We have the experience necessary to not only give students access, but lead them to success.

Well, not exactly. At least not as I see it. Over the past decade, educational technology – and online learning more specifically – has been focused on access for students and instructors. Now we are at the beginning of a decade in which the focus is on success.

This is becoming enormously clear in the LMS market, particularly for the technology service providers that are committed to student success. We are moving from piecemeal products that simply deliver bits of course material in alternative formats to a holistic integration of technology into curricula. I anticipate that when the community college leadership combines an integrated technology model with what we know about today’s working student, they will start seeing more successful courses and, ultimately, more engaged students.

We aren’t going to see any brand-new technology service providers to come up with the right solutions, though. Evolution within the same application is the key. Higher education can’t afford to keep paying five to six figure license fees to different providers and hope that they will play well with others to make integration seamless and free.

These evolving solutions must be developed through a user-driven process that simulates the curriculum design process at every school. I hope to see educational technology move more and more in this direction, where progress is driven by what helps schools succeed as a whole.

Wynnewood, Pa. – September 6, 2011 – WebStudy (www.webstudy.com), a technology service and learning management system (LMS) provider, today announced several major enhancements to its WebStudy Learning LMS, most notably a new, streamlined, easier-to-use graphical user interface (GUI) for its timeline.

The GUI redesign gives WebStudy’s popular timeline a crisp, fresh form without sacrificing function. Features such as drag-and-drop ordering streamlines an instructor’s workflow, improving an instructor’s ability to customize and organize course sessions and materials to meet the needs of a variety of courses and learners. It also features:
• The ability to expand and collapse the timeline sessions for a customizable view
• A toolbox in the timeline editor that puts useful shortcuts at instructors’ fingertips

“WebStudy has differentiated itself not just with our intuitive LMS, 24/7 support and zero downtime, but also by creating long-term relationships with users,” says WebStudy President Gisele Larose. “The new timeline look and feel incorporates our User Group’s request to simplify course navigation and editing. Plus, we’re pleased to release new features our customers have asked for.

New WebStudy Learning features that meet the needs of faculty and students include:
• Grading Rubrics functionality, giving instructors the ability to create grading rubrics for a specific course, shared between all courses or shared at an institutional level. These are easy to create and edit for many types of assignments, including essay questions.
• Speed-Dater©, a one-of-a-kind feature that allows schools to adjust all dates in a replicated course – all at once rather than one at a time – so that they align with the new semester.

“Course replication can be a point of difficulty for instructors and wasted time for LMS administrators,” says Curt Corbi, WebStudy’s Chief Technology Officer.” Typically LMS administrators handle course replication, but in the past new course session dates had to be updated one at a time – either by the administrator or the instructor. Speed-Dater streamlines this process, allowing them to change all course session dates at one time.”

Further design enhancements and new features will be rolled out throughout the 2011-2012 school year, as WebStudy continues its commitment to support instructors in engaging students. To request a product demo, use this form: http://www.webstudy.com/wordpress/get-started/webinars/

About WebStudy
WebStudy, Inc., (www.webstudy.com) is a technology service provider committed to maximizing student engagement and retention in higher education. The company’s flagship learning management system (LMS) product, WebStudy Learning, has its roots in a student-professor collaboration and an educational consortium. Because of its academic origins, WebStudy Learning mimics the way teachers teach and students learn. The WebStudy Learning LMS seamlessly integrates technology both in and out of the classroom to empower faculty, engage students and enrich learning.
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For those of us who are entrenched in programs aimed at making a difference, it’s clear meaningful changes will be seen in longer-term research.  The accomplishments of Achieving the Dream are recognizable in the 130 participating schools that have put forth dedicated resources focused on a school’s ability to scale up a successful program.  Dedicating resources during a time of shrinking funding is no small feat.

My observations come from my previous background in corporate training at Nova Care, where we were responsible for the continuing education of 12,000 clinicians in more than 1,000 facilities.  Managing clinicians is similar to managing faculty. My experience in healthcare echoes the results in this analysis – it takes 7 to 10 years to build the infrastructure and a culture of acceptance for creating that “culture of evidence.”

The authors of the study might choose to respond to this critique with a more detailed description of their results.  More specifically, the diverse levels of implementation that the participating schools have completed.

Together, let’s focus on the participating schools and best practices used to achieve campus consensus—Only after faculty and administration are unified in their combined efforts to improve student outcomes will we see results.  It is also important to recognize that a successful outcome for some of these students may be completion of one course.

As a provider of learning management systems, WebStudy Inc. recognizes that the next level of evolution will focus on curriculum completion.  Once all the tools are in place, and service is reliable, our community colleges will show record levels of advancement.