Introduction
Learning management systems (LMS) are a vital tool in the management of learning processes for organizations, offering a wide variety of features from data storage to course management. In the modern era of increasingly digitized learning, LMS software is serving as a viable and accessible method of large-scale education. This analysis will seek to determine whether a county school district should adopt a new LMS to enhance the educational process for its students.
Organization Background
The selected organization is a county public school system that provides public education for over 50,000 students, grades Kindergarten through 12. The county system is large and well-funded, with 72 total schools and program centers. The system offers a rich curriculum at all levels, with a wide variety of subjects as well as extracurriculars. It also attempts to provide a range of after-school programs for students which include choices of athletics, academics, and creativity-based activities. The county also holds constant workshops, both in-person and online, for its teachers and staff in the attempt to maintain high levels of competency and professionalism among the employees.
Current Systems
Currently, the school district utilizes several outdated systems that lack interconnection and are continuously overwhelmed. One system is used to track classes, schedules, grades, and contact between teachers and students. A separate system existed which served as file storage, allowing instructors to upload materials to students based on their class. It was also used for quizzes and tests as the system allowed us to upload or create questions.
Finally, a third system was in place which served an administrative purpose, allowing to sign up for classes or extra-curricular activities. These systems did not interconnect or communicate, forcing to create a unique database of classes, students, and instructors each academic year so that it could be appropriately used. Despite being forward-thinking in such as that county students were given school-issued laptops for the year, the IT infrastructure was lacking innovation, technological capabilities, and upkeep necessary for a modern digital classroom.
Key Stakeholders
A learning management system in a school district will consist of several key stakeholders. First, there is the district administration, consisting of the superintendent, school board, and other administration which will be the primary decision-makers in which new systems and technology to implement. In school systems that have adopted LMS, 96% of decision-maker stakeholders indicate the benefits such as engagement, retention, and performance among both students and employees (Majumdar, 2016). The second stakeholders with access to the system will be IT support and administrative staff.
They are responsible for setting up and maintaining the technical aspects of the system. The final stakeholders will be the system users, which consist of instructors and learners. They will access the LMS for educational purposes and should have access to materials. Teachers can create and publish learning content and set up online courses according to their instructional needs. Students, on the receiving end of LMS, should be able to seamlessly access educational materials and courses in the system.
Specific Needs
The LMS can significantly benefit the school district in its attempts to become modern and innovative while offering innovative methods for educational planning and learning. The first need that LMS can fulfill is unifying its systems and databases into one interconnected platform which can function for a variety of purposes, ranging from offering assignments to signing up for classes. Integrational capabilities are vital to ensure that data and features are easily shared across an organizational system.
This directly correlates to the second need of system usability as the learning management systems must be easily accessible and navigated by its users. This impacts learning effectiveness and experience in the use of educational software (Orfanou, Tselios, & Karsanos, 2015). Despite the beneficial features that LMS may offer, without an intuitive design and user-oriented interface, it will lack the user participation necessary to make such technology a good return on investment.
An LMS feature which is important is support for digital learning. In the attempt to streamline its spending and resources while offering a wider range of educational programs, the school district is attempting to digitize many of its learning resources and courses. The capability of the system to offer digital classrooms with all available features such as live seminars, collaborative discussions, and interactive resources should be available. The fourth need is for the availability of data tracking and reporting capabilities. The systems should track a wide variety of information such as student progress, learning tendencies, average grades, and other quantitative data which can be analyzed to provide instructors and administrative staff with reports on participation and effectiveness of certain features or programs.
Finally, cybersecurity is paramount in LMS since it will include personal and confidential academic data. Security helps to ensure a protected learning process for students and the safety of access to any uploaded resources and databases.
Assessing and Selecting LMS
The priority need for LMS is integration in the specific case due to the poor state of current systems in use and it being one of the leading parameters set out by the district administration. The second most important aspect is support for digital classrooms as the county attempts to offer more services online. This would be both beneficial in terms of costs as well as free up infrastructure, human, and monetary resources for other purposes. The third priority is usability as the LMS should ultimately be a popular and commonly used tool by instructors and students.
Without user-friendly usability, it will lack active users, experience numerous complaints, and fail to return on investment. Security and tracking capabilities are not as relevant, but still important. They are a background support tool and do not actively resolve specific issues. However, these aspects may potentially be impactful in improving the LMS or ensuring better participation.
Open access LMS are freely distributed by companies and do not have initial costs to implement. These systems are better for smaller-scale organizations or for initial distribution as they are significantly lower risk. Open access systems have its benefits of quicker bug fixes and security patches, and several community-created features in terms of add-ons (Rafi, Samsudin, & Hanafi, 2015). Although initially free, open-access systems do incur costs in server and upgrade fees.
Proprietary systems require significant licensing fees to use within an organization. However, they are commonly extensively developed, with numerous features that can be modified and developed (at extra cost) to meet the unique needs of an organization. There are significant integration capabilities in both types of systems, but proprietary vendors commonly offer a marketplace of features that have been developed to be fully integrated with the central system. Furthermore, proprietary systems have private servers with more security and data tracking which open-access cannot offer or guarantee (Ülker & Yilmaz, 2016).
Ultimately, the best fitting LMS for education is proprietary as it ensures cooperation and development of features uniquely focused on meeting all the listed needs. Proprietary systems offer options in integration, security, and usability that a school district requires to meet its parameters. Finally, both technical and non-technical factors play a role in the long-term strategy as the county will seek to align its technology offerings with educational needs.
References
Majumdar, A. (2016). Learning management system trends: What do the stakeholders and users say?. Web.
Orlando, K., Tselios, N., & Katsanos, C. (2015). Perceived usability evaluation of learning management systems: Empirical evaluation of the System Usability Scale. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 16(2). Web.
Rafi, A., Samsudin, K., & Hanafi, H. F. (2015). Differences in perceived benefit, use, and learner satisfaction between open source LMS and proprietary LMS. In B. Gradinarova (Ed.), E-learning. Web.
Ülker, D., & Yilmaz, Y. (2016). Learning management systems and comparison of open source learning management systems and proprietary learning management systems. Journal of Systems Integration, 7(2), 18-24. Web.