The LMS is Dead!

Have you come acrosss OpenClass yet?

It's a new kind of learning environment that goes beyond the LMS. It’s open to everyone, easy to use, and completely free — and it's making an amazing impact on education. (quote)

The ambition for the OpenClass LMS, utilising cloud and Google Apps for Eduaction seems to be centred on transforming outcomes by leveraging modern social technology to encourage collaboration and communication for students, faculty, institutions, and administrators around the world. (partly quoted)

There is a Take a Tour option that’s worth looking at because it provides a nice insight into the appearence and feel of the system in operation. I look after a Moodle installation here at the college and its hosted internally, a good option really as you get to have control over many issues such as upgrades and local management of the system, so I am not to sure how these would translate for cloud based solutions, but lets see.

Will OpenClass compete with Moodle, who can tell. One thing is for sure though, and that is competition is always good, at least that’s my view, so let’s sit back and see what happens in the coming months.

I for one have signed up to the service and will be staying in touch with developments and interested to see the uptake and use for this new and welcome initiative.

Do take a look at the video, it does seem to suggest to me that there is a certain implicit assumption, though I could be wrong, that by leveraging the benefits of social networks we will see a transformation in outcomes and the student experience.

If you are using Moodle or any other vle for that matter, do you make use of the social networking tools such as WiKi, Forums and Chat, and if so, have you been drawn to any conclusions? If you have then please feel free to reply to this post.

Personally, I make use of these features regularly. Take a look at the chart here, it measures transactions from twelve students over a one month period; in fact the chat was about double the figure shown as some were using msn and I only included Moodle stats. Is this typical of your own experience, please comment. My experience is, and a recent effort on my part just last week proved to be little more than a self fulfilling prophesy, that unless a grading outcome is clearly established as part of the activity, as was the case for the transaction results in the screen shot, then all to often I find Forums are empty and chat rooms silent, do you find the same? please comment.

Kind regards Barry