Technology Advisory Group

An update on the Learning Management System search, courtesy of LMS Work Group leader Connie Wisdo:

In February, the three chosen LMS vendor finalists presented their products to the University Community.  Roughly 30 people in total attended each vendor’s presentations.  Of the 30, about a dozen faculty members consistently attended all three demonstrations, and engaged in meaningful Q & A with the vendors.  CAS, PCPS, KSOM and WML faculty were represented.  Members/leaders of the Faculty Technology Advisory Group, and 4 of the 6 faculty from the LMS Evaluation Working Group were among them.  A handful of students also made up the audience, mostly CTLE Tech Cons.

The vendors covered the 15 most important features identified by our faculty in the survey conducted last December/January , and attendees completed evaluation sheets which were based on those 15 features.  Preliminary analysis of the evaluations indicated that Blackboard and Desire2Learn had comparable ratings and both were rated higher than Moodlerooms.  On a scale of 1 to 5, Blackboard’s average rating overall was 4.71 and Desire2Learn’s overall average was 4.64.  Moodlerooms’ overall average was 3.71.  (However, it should be noted that technical skill deficiencies of the Moodlerooms presenter hampered the overall demonstration, and her technical support dialed-in to the demo through Webex, rather than being here in person.  We believe this may have had a negative impact on the ratings for Moodlerooms.)

The LMS Evaluation Working Group met this past week to review the evaluation results and the comments provided by attendees.  Members were in general agreement with the overall evaluation ratings, but obviously want to reserve final judgment until we’ve had the opportunity to work in the test sandboxes being provided by each vendor.  Two of the three sandboxes (D2L and Moodlerooms) have already been set up, and we expect Blackboard will have its sandbox available for our group next week.

The group members will conduct their testing  over the next 6 weeks, using rubrics based upon the group’s original list of required LMS features, and will meet in mid-April to compare results.    If you should have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me.

As a reminder, there are six faculty representatives on the LMS Work Group – Maureen Carroll (math), TAG member Teresa Conte (nursing), Tara Fay (biology),  Julie Nastasi (OT), Wesley Wang (economics/finance), and Keith Yurgosky (communications, part time).

Many thanks to Connie and the rest of the Work Group for arranging the demonstrations and giving us the opportunity to see the products!