Our company/school has a team that has decided on the LMS that is to be used. I remember when we first started offering online courses, the LMS was WEBCT; it was then changed to Angel for a few years, and now we use eCollege; I think it is the easier to use. I've also been trained in eCollege, to be able to help our online students, as was our On-Campus Liaison for online students.
First, you should join the American Society for Training and Development, ASTD. You would have access to a wealth of information including LMS systems.
There are magazines, e-zines, technology papers and of course lists and checklists of how to compare LMS systems.
There is an annual Technology Training conference that covers all the latest trends and products.
I have attended one conference and the amount of information available is amazing. It was very helpful when I was in a possition to start an online program.
Second, as the course module describes, you will need to ask youself how much money do you have to spend and what resources do you have to support your system. One very important part of creating a LMS is to have your IT department behind you every step of the way.
I was fortunate to have an IT co-project manager. This person was able to sift through the technical issues and help clearify the direction we wanted to go.
We looked at the three main players in LMS systems (I will not mention names here) and found that they are all roughly the same. Over the course of my undergrad and graduate work I have been both a student and instructor on all of these. One of them is an open-source and free package, I liked it but my supervisor is concerned about support. I did not like the major player in the field because of financial issues (I felt they are very expensive) but I have to admit that the support has been great.
We have the grading issue that someone else mentioned but our admin system does have modules available to link the LMS system to our campus management system in the future. If you contact me off-line (I hope that is allowed) I will be happy to share any information and thoughts that I have had on various LMS systems.
-Chris
Going to the website listed in the course that describes the strengths and weaknesses of LMS's will help. I don't have that right in front of me, but I'll look it up.
The major problems are:
1. Connecting to existing grade reporting software (instructors balking at moving grades from LMS gradebook onto institutional forms)
2. Not purchasing enough technical support so students/instructors complain (you can never get rid of 100% of complaints, but ease of use is a key component)
3. Underestimating the traffic on the server (especially at end of the week or end of term/semester)so the server goes down. This is less of a problem if you have outside "hosting." Your IT department will soon report server capacity as an issue, so long range planning is important. [That's why I recommend having different weekly deadlines for different departments--to take the load off Sunday night at midnight EST.]
