I’ve chosen to write briefly about Learning Management Systems (LMS) or as they are starting to be called Learning Environments. I remember attending a conference a few years back where the LMS was referred to in less than positive terms as a “walled garden” due to the constraints placed on not only the information the instructor had included in a course for the learners, but also in that whatever learners had contributed through their work in the course (whether assignments, discussions, projects, etc.) were then “locked” in that walled garden once the course ended. This notion of academic work being lost and/or locked away stuck with me and has contributed to my interest in finding ways to create a different type of learning experience for students that allows them to be truly be lifelong learners and carry with them artifacts of learning. I teach an online undergraduate Pathopysiology course at a small community college and we have to use the LMS which means that while I may be interested in different approaches, I usually can’t implement them. Encouraging students to work outside of the platform in more collaborative ways has been discouraged due to concerns with data privacy. Looking to the future, that notion may change as the LMS tools and functionality continue to evolve based on the research into what best supports student learning in today’s digital society.

There are many looking to the future of what is possible and desired in the tools and software we use to support learners in the delivery of courses and content through computer-mediated environments. In April 2015 Educause published results of a study funded through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that documented five functional areas that an LMS (or what they call the Next Generation Digital Learning Environment or NGDLE) should include. These areas in many ways begin to address the seven affordances outlined in our lesson.

In the report, five areas were identified that must be addressed in Learning Environments if they are to meet the needs of today’s learners. These were summarized by Malcolm Brown in this blog post as:

• Interoperability. The linchpin of the NGDLE, this is the capacity to easily integrate tools, exchange content, and collect learning data. Interoperability enables everything else.
• Personalization. This is the customization of the environment to support needs at the individual, discipline, and institutional levels.
• Analytics, advising, and learning assessment. This is the analysis of all forms of learning data, resulting in actionable information.
• Collaboration. It is vital to support collaboration at a variety of levels, and to make it easy to move between public and private digital spaces.
• Accessibility and universal design. All participants must be able to access content and have the means to produce accessible content. This must inform the design of all NGDLE components.

Those looking to the future include those involved with making decisions about what LMS to select to meet the needs of learners. I’m currently a member of a group in our system charged with working through an RFP process for the system LMS or as we now say “Learning Environment”. Many of the concepts addressed in the lesson about the seven affordances are on the radar of the larger LMS providers such as Blackboard, D2L, Moodle, etc. These companies are creating mechanisms and tools that will better personalize the learning experience through differentiated learning opportunities, allow for easy creation of materials that include multi-modal learning objects or resources, are beginning to build in multiple ways of assessment that provide opportunities for recursive feedback through analytics, and all tout the “anytime, anywhere” nature of what their product can do for the learner. The areas of active knowledge-making and social learning are beginning to appear through or because of the types of integrations with various web 2.0 tools that are outside of the LMS.

The biggest issue with a move to a more effective design and delivery of education through computer-mediated instruction that capitalizes on the affordances available is and will continue to be the lack of awareness and training for most everyone involved.

The Next Generation Digital Learning Environment: A Report on Research, EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, April 2015