Posted by gmasky on April 21, 2010 at 1:29am
Can we first list out the components of a good LMS. We can then determine what is already available in Drupal and the gaps that need to be filled.
We were testing the Fronter LMS and here are some of the Components and sub-components
• Personal Work
• Learning
• Collaboration
• Publishing
• Administration
and the sub-components are here http://com.fronter.info/mnu1.shtml#
Comments
good start
I think many if not all the features listed under Learning at the fronter website would be useful. Maybe it would be easier we we copied the list here? In any case, at my institution, the highest priorities would be portfolio, SCORM support, collaboration tools, and integrated support for a classroom response system.
We have a lot of faculty who are hooked on classroom 'clickers'. Our current system is a small device which uses radio to allow students to respond to questions during class, and have their responses recorded on the professor's laptop. Right now our system is in flux because the company we picked was bought out, so everything is on the table. Some of the systems under consideration provide non-proprietary, web based response systems, including web forms, phone texting, etc., which means that any student with an existing mobile device can answer, even if it is just a non-web-enabled phone. BUT, we don't have any contenders that are truly integrated with our LMS (Sakai). I think if there were a good Drupal tool for collecting student data during class, it would be a compelling option, and I think such a tool could be built within Drupal. Maybe it even exists? It would have to do far more than the built-in 'poll', but be far simpler and more reliable than the existing Quiz module. Ideally it would be something faculty could author questions for from within PowerPoint, since that is what they are used to doing.
The other thing that I think Drupal might be well-suited for and which is huge on University campuses right now is the portfolio. Sakai has a portfolio system, and we already have provided our students with Google Apps accounts, so this is a crowded space, especially when you add in faculty/programs currently providing Dreamweaver portfolio templates to their students. Ideally, a campus portfolio would need to combine the strengths and avoid the pitfalls of all three by providing:
Maybe it is off topic to go on and on about portfolios in an LMS forum, but I don't think so. For universities, at least, it is becoming a must have feature, and why would you not want your portfolio to be integrated with your course tools?
I think Drupal as a straight
I think Drupal as a straight up LMS might not be the best approach. Here's a posting I made about what this might look like but I think we should leverage / integrate other CMS/LMSs together into Drupal and then use a glue module to route data / paths in and out of each system. I'd love to see a Droople-like of system -- http://btopro.wordpress.com/?p=47
Ex Uno Plures
http://elmsln.org/
http://btopro.com/
http://drupal.psu.edu/