Meanwhile, back at the farm

What follows is a paper that I prepared for my internship at BYU-Idaho.  I present it here as I feel the content is applicable to many of my visitors.  It is also available as PDF in the “Papers” section of my blog.

A Widening Gap

The Causes and Associated Risks of the Growing Divide Between Faculty and IT

I. Introduction
There is a widening gap between university information technology (IT) departments and the faculty departments[1]  that IT serves. That gap is manifested by the growing number of faculty that are implementing their own technologies in the classroom without involvement from IT.  Factors that are contributing to the growing gap include the consumerization of IT, complexity of enterprise systems, and students influencing faculty to be early adopters.  This gap poses significant risk both to the faculty and to IT in general.

This paper outlines the contributing factors that are growing the gap and some of the key risks to IT and faculty.  By identifying the driving forces behind the widening gap as well as the associated risks, IT departments will be better equipped to develop strategies for monitoring and managing the forces at play rather than implementing costly fixes that will result in an increase of the gap and potentially have a negative effect on IT reputation.

II. The widening gap
Historically, the enterprise (or place of employment) provided individuals with the latest and greatest technology primarily because of the associated cost.  This has also been true of the university environment where IT provided faculty with the infrastructure and software needed for the classroom.  During the last 10 years, however, more and more technology has been made available to faculty and control over that technology is now shifting away from IT. This trend, called the consumerization of IT by Gartner, is the key force widening the gap. “Falling prices and broadening distribution have made technology a commodity that is accessible and affordable to consumers, to the extent that they represent as large a global market as business users. As a result, providers… are starting to switch the focus of their innovation and product designs toward individual consumers.  …The rise of Web 2.0, wherein users are exploiting a broad array of options, opportunities, content and services in the form of mashups, has created an open market of capabilities available to all, and that is outside the control of the corporate IT function.” (Smith & Prentice, Key Issues for the Consumerization of IT, 2009).

A 2005 Gartner Press Release also states, “The growing practice of introducing new technologies into consumer markets prior to industrial markets will be the most significant trend affecting information technology (IT) during the next 10 years…” (Gartner, 2005).  Universities are not immune to this trend.  What follows is a brief description of some of the specific drivers and potential outcomes behind this trend as it pertains to the university setting.

Abundance of free or low cost learning tools
Any tool that can be adapted to help students learn more effectively is considered a learning tool generally speaking.  Perhaps the greatest adoption of learning tools has come from the plethora of online applications (referred to as Web 2.0 or mashups above) that can be used to enhance the learning experience. The classroom has moved beyond desks, chalkboards, and paper notebooks into the online world where students can interact with each other and with the teacher at virtually any time from any place.  Good examples of online applications that have crept into classrooms include YouTube, Google Apps, and iTunes-U[2].   These tools are not only easy to use, but they are either free to use or available at very low-cost.  As these tools are refined, faculty will desire to augment the classroom experience by using these tools to help engage students and increase learning.

Faculty have less need to rely on IT for technology
Historically, all technology used in the classroom has been owned and administered through IT.  This is no longer the case.  Aside from Internet access, most faculty rely on IT support only for specific systems they are required to use such as course registration systems and ERP[3]  portals.  The technology they want to use online comes with very low friction for its use.  Faculty no longer need to involve IT in integrating these tools in the classroom.  This is especially true when the friction for IT to setup the technology, with its accompanying approvals and timelines, is outweighed by setting it up themselves.

IT constraints focus resources on core systems
Running a campus-scale IT infrastructure is an enormous and costly challenge.  IT departments must ensure the campus has adequate Internet access, networking and cabling, ERP systems, administrative systems, inventory systems, human resources systems, etc.  These systems are critical for day-to-day function of the university.  Because of this, budgets and resources are constrained to operating and maintaining these systems.  In most cases, anything ancillary to these systems gets decreased attention or even rejected altogether.  The long-term result of this will be that specific faculty needs receive a justified low priority and will only be considered when resources can be acquired to meet their needs.

Discovery of solutions is moving out of IT
While IT has been primarily responsible for the discovery, acquisition, and implementation of technology in the past, the Internet (search engines especially) has greatly increased the availability and discovery of new technologies and tools that will fit specific faculty needs.  With some exception, these tools can be easily acquired leaving the implementation up to the faculty member to deploy as needed in their courses.  Vendor relationships, which accompany large systems implementations, are not needed to the same extent for smaller specialized tools as they are for their enterprise-class counterparts.  The combination of these two factors makes it very easy for faculty to perform the discovery of their solutions without any involvement from IT and will continue to play a large role in widening the gap.

Focus of IT on enterprise software
Because IT departments are primarily focused on large-scale system implementations, they are comfortable with the idea of implementing enterprise-class systems to solve faculty needs[4].  Because of the size and cost of enterprise systems, project approval and implementation require a great deal of analysis and discussion resulting in months, or even years, before the technology is implemented.  Such implementations are not only costly, but are usually deployed all at once giving faculty little opportunity to try or pilot the solution.  Satisfaction in the final result is difficult to achieve especially if it complicates or requires more time to do simple tasks they didn’t have to do before.

Other factors that can potentially widen the gap between IT and faculty as it pertains to enterprise solutions are at play as well.  First, finding a one-size-fits-all solution is next to impossible because of the varying skill levels that the solution must serve.  Second, enterprise software is rarely designed for a classroom, or university, implementation[5].   Much effort must be applied to modify out-of-the-box configurations to fit the classroom environment.  While trying to fit the needs of the entire faculty, enterprise systems can present a wide range of functionality and complexity that leads to improper use and end-user frustration.

Historical failures in adoption of IT systems
Many of the trends already stated lead to a failure in faculty adopting systems deployed by IT.  A series of these costly deployments will not only affect the reputation of IT with faculty, but will lead to administrative levels of the university becoming disenchanted with IT’s inability to gain their promised returns on investment.  Should this happen, the gap will widen as different departments within the university will actually encourage faculty and other users to search for solutions on their own.

Faculty autonomy
One unique characteristic of universities that most corporate enterprises don’t experience is the autonomy that is enjoyed by faculty.  Encouraged by their legal standing (Euben, 2001), faculty are naturally resistant to any outside force attempting to dictate the best tools to use in the classroom.  As options are made available to them outside of IT they will, and are encouraged to, adopt solutions that allow them to design their courses as they see fit. This autonomy especially widens the gap between dogmatic IT departments and self-governed faculty.

Innovative student’s influence on faculty
Students can play a large role in influencing which technologies faculty are adopting. Students are more inclined to be innovators and early adopters because they are consistently looking for good solutions to augment their learning.  As they find good solutions, they share those with classmates and faculty.  Faculty that are interested in improving the learning environment quickly learn from the students the techniques and tools that they are using.  This influence will continue to drive faculty to use solutions that are easily accessible and do not require any intervention from IT.

III. Risks associated with the gap
The common thread through the factors driving the widening gap between IT and faculty is the idea that faculty want quick and effective solutions to enhance the learning experience and the best place to look for those tools is online.  As the gap widens, however, there are an increasing number of risks that threaten not only the IT department, but the university and the classroom itself.  While the consumerization of IT is not new, little has been developed in identifying the key risks involved as well as strategies for dealing with those risks, especially as it pertains to the university environment.

With online technology being the primary source of risk for faculty, what follows is a description of identified risks that will come as a result of being passive about the gap as they pertain to the university setting.  This is not meant to be an all-inclusive list, but is presented as a basis for creating strategies to either close the gap between faculty and IT or help IT become more comfortable addressing the gap.

Obsolescence of online technology
When faculty adopt an online technology to use in the classroom, they run the risk that the technology will become obsolete before it can be fully implemented.  The online world is competitive in nature and trends come and go quickly.  Should a faculty member spend large amounts of time developing course material and learning activities based on an online technology that becomes obsolete, she will have to spend more time researching another tool to meet her needs.  The difficulty here is that rarely do newer tools act or work like the tools previously used.  Faculty will then be required to invest more time restructuring their curriculum to comply with the newer technology.  This process, could, if repeated often, result in the faculty member requesting more time and resources from IT to help find a more permanent solution.

Increased support costs
Although online software has a reputation of being easy to use and simple to implement, often the user (in this case a faculty member) quickly finds himself in over his head in trying to get the technology to act a certain way.   When this happens, faculty turn to the technology experts in the university, IT, for help.  If this were to happen once in a while it would not be so difficult to handle; however, with the widening gap, more and more faculty will be trying different solutions.  IT will be asked to support far more specialized applications than they have resources.

Damage to university reputation
As faculty move more and more content from IT systems to their online learning tools, more content is available for public consumption.  In addition, if faculty use online tools where students put their assignments and other content online that places that content where it is openly consumable and subject for a world-wide audience to review.  While this may be advantageous for learning, it can quickly lead to others reviewing that content with malicious intent.  Should a student or faculty publish information that may incriminate or criticize the university in any way it could quickly spread throughout the Internet and damage the reputation of the university or faculty.

Ownership disputes surrounding course content
Many online technologies encourage their users to place large amounts of content online.  Because that content no longer resides on university-owned servers, questions about the ownership arises.  Is the content owned by the university?  If not, does the content denote that it is generated from the university?  Should the faculty member move to another university does she have the right to take it with her?  These questions and more can lead to potentially contentious situations and litigation.

Perceived university endorsement
When faculty use an online technology which requires the students’ use, that technology can be perceived to be officially endorsed by the university and IT department.  This is particularly true if the faculty member attempts to “brand” the tool with university logos and colors.  Because of this perception, students and on-looking faculty may feel that it is the role of the university helpdesk or IT department to provide support for that product.  That perception may also lead to a general acceptance for all material on that site as being publicly available.  For example, if a faculty member begins using a Facebook group to communicate with students in a particular course, the students could potentially believe that the group is an officially-sponsored group by the university and invite their friends to join, exposing content and communication to an unintended audience.

Exposure to ads and indecent material
The primary source of funding for online technology are advertisements.  Most business models for strictly online entities are grounded in providing users with free use of the produce so long as they allow advertisements to be shown periodically and, in some cases, injected into their content.  This can be distracting to the learning experience and, in combination of the perception of university endorsement, lead students to believe that the advertisements are sanctioned by the university.  Ads are not the only risk of exposure.  Many sites, such as video sites and social networks, provide great learning material but also place the student within a few clicks of indecent material in the form of violence, drugs, or pornography.  While it could be argued that the student could access this material himself anyway while online, the fact that they were brought to these sites by the university places the blame on the university itself and not the student.

Susceptibility to malware, spyware, and other malicious software
During the discovery of potential learning tools, a faculty member may be accessing sites that download malicious software such as malware and spyware.  While these threats would seem obvious to experienced IT staff, faculty may be susceptible to online attacks.  This is especially dangerous if the faculty member invites students to participate in a learning activity online only to learn that all participants were affected by the malicious software.  IT resources would then be required to help clean the software from the users’ computers and attempt to recover any lost data.  In some cases, the malicious software could lead to stolen faculty and student identity information which could lead to expensive damage control and legal fees.

Inconsistency for students
Students generally adapt well to the technology requirements they face.  However, if students are using different tools in several different classes, they are expected to not only learn the course material, but the many different tools used in their classes.  When the students have difficulty learning or using an application, they will naturally desire support from the university to help them either through a helpdesk or a student technology center.  The additional cost to provide this support could pose a significant risk to IT budgets.

IV. Closing the gap
The current methodologies for managing consumer products in universities are only making the gap bigger.  Closing the gap will require new thinking and new strategies. “Enterprises need to acknowledge the changes that are occurring in IT ownership and use, and find ways to accommodate the expectations and aspirations of their workforce in their IT infrastructure and deployment. The consequences of ignoring these dynamics will be rising dissatisfaction among employees and a growing loss of competitive advantage” (Smith & Prentice, Consumerization Gains Momentum: The IT Civil War, 2007).

It’s important to note that the gap is not caused by the technologies themselves.  Policies focused on banning technologies will fail[6].  The methodologies and strategies developed must be focused on building relationships of trust between faculty and IT.  IT must be able to trust that faculty will use solutions that will not only provide better learning experiences but will allow IT to manage the risks associated with the solution.  Faculty must be able to feel support from IT in their decisions to use the technology they desire.
Closing the gap will require new risk management and IT governance strategies that are yet to be developed. In the meantime, IT departments can begin to embrace new technologies as they come and develop ways to monitor their use.  Planning should begin immediately to assess the course of action that IT will take to close the gap. A little governance and relationship building will go a long way to helping both faculty and IT feel comfortable with the gap allowing for collaborative efforts and actionable plans.

[1]To simplify the reading of this document faculty departments will be referred to as simply faculty and information technology (IT) departments will be referred to as IT. In addition, many universities have an Academic Technology group that functions as the go-between for faculty and IT. Because of the broad applications of these departments in different universities, they are not considered in this paper. Academic Technology departments generally take the side of either IT or faculty and as such don’t have a significant impact on the gap itself.
[2]As of this writing, there is a group of online users maintaining a list of collaboration tools that could be used in the classroom at http://www.mindmeister.com/12213323
[3]Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems as they pertain to the university setting vary in the scope of their implementation.  At their core, they provide student information services (SIS) which involves course enrollments, student transcripts, and other student information.
[4]The classic example of enterprise-class software for the classroom is a Learning Management System (LMS) such as Blackboard, Moodle, and Sakai.  For an analysis on a proposed architecture of an LMS that tries to close the gap talked about in this work see the following blog post by the author: http://michaelfarmer.info/blog/?tag=lms-proposal
[5]The enterprise software that immediately comes to mind are content or document management systems such as Microsoft SharePoint and its open source counterpart Alfresco.  These solutions work great in the corporate enterprise but require a great deal of development work to integrate them into a university environment.
[6]Many studies have been done by Gartner and other research groups that confirm this statement.  The research done by Gartner already included in the Works Cited section of this paper all allude to this outcome.

Works Cited
Euben, D. R. (2001, November 13). Who Grades Students? Some Legal Cases, Some Best Practices. (University of Michigan AAUP Chapter) Retrieved April 7, 2009, from http://www.umich.edu/~aaupum/Euben.html
Gartner. (2005, October 20). 2005 Press Releases. Retrieved March 25, 2009, from http://www.gartner.com/press_releases/asset_138285_11.html
Smith, D. M., & Prentice, S. (2007). Consumerization Gains Momentum: The IT Civil War. Gartner .
Smith, D. M., & Prentice, S. (2009). Key Issues for the Consumerization of IT, 2009. Gartner .
Smith, D. M., & Prentice, S. (2008). To Deal With Consumerization, CIOs Should Ask ‘Why?’ Not Just Say ‘No’. Gartner .
Wallin, L.-O. (2007). A Framework for Assessing the Risks and Benefits of Using Consumer IT in Enterprises. Gartner .

What follows is a draft of a document that I prepared that outlines a proposed architecture for Learning Management Systems.  Because of it’s length, I have separated it into four posts, Executive Summary, The Emerging Meme, LMS in the Enterprise Architecture, and Key Online Application Integration.  They will not all be posted at once but as they do you can see them here.

Key Online Application Integration

The proposed architecture shows five pre-built adapters in the Open Adapter Framework.  These adapters would be provided to allow immediate integration with already popular online applications.  These adapters integrate general RSS, Delicious, Facebook, Google Apps, and Twitter into the LMS out-of-the-box.

The general RSS adapter allows users in a group or course to easily add an online RSS feed to their group.  RSS is a common method for syndicating content on the web.  By providing this functionality, users will be able to bring online content directly into their groups for research and study.  RSS is widely used to syndicate blogs as well.  This adapter would allow the users to bring content from their personal blogs into the group to encourage collaboration and to contribute to the group.

A Facebook adapter would allow two-way communication between the LMS and Facebook. This adapter would bring Facebook features, such as the wall, chat, and friends, into the LMS.  Conversely, content from the LMS could be pushed to Facebook as well.  An example would be the ability to have a user update their Facebook status from within the LMS.  Because of the breadth of features in Facebook, not all possibilities are explored here.

Another popular online tool that could be integrated into the LMS is social bookmarking.  Delicious has been the most popular tool on the web for sharing bookmarks.  Because users of delicious can categorize, or tag, their bookmarks, sites can be shared with others regarding specific topics very easily.  Consider the following use case:

An instructor wants the students to do some online research about a topic they are studying.  The instructor creates a tag for the topic in the LMS and then shares that tag name with the students.  As the students perform their research, they bookmark the sites they find interesting and add the tag created by the instructor along with their notes about the site.  As the students bookmark their sites using delicious, the LMS aggregates those sites and displays them for all members of the course to review.  The next time the class meets they review together the interesting sites they found.

Google Apps is being widely adopted by universities because of the ability to collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Currently, students need to know the email addresses of the other participants to share the document with them.  Integration into the LMS would facilitate not only the sharing of Google App content but would provide a simple repository within the group or course for the documents themselves.  This would provide simple organization and availability to all content related to the group or course.

Micro-blogging using tools like Twitter can create dynamic learning environments.  Twitter allows users to post small (140 characters) bits of information about what they are doing and the interesting things they discover.  There are two main ways Twitter would be integrated into the LMS.  First, the LMS allows students to link their Twitter account with their LMS account so that they can easily find and follow others in their group.  Second, a live updating search feature would be incorporated to allow users in a group to watch the public timeline for key search terms (see tweetgrid.com for an example).  Integration of Twitter into the LMS would provide a way for users to build lasting relationships and share information about what they are learning dynamically and in a non-obtrusive way.

Online Applications Index

What follows is a list of popular online applications that are being adopted by universities to increase learning.  All of these applications are good candidates for building adapters for the Online Adapter Framework.

Image Tools: Flickr, Picasa
Blogging Tools: WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, TypePad, MovableType
Micro-Blogging Tools: Twitter, Yammer, Identica, Laconica
Wiki Tools: PBWiki, Wikispaces, Wikidot, WetPaint
Online Chat: AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, GTalk, Skype, Meebo, Campfire
Social Networks: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Ning
Online Broadcasting: Ustream.tv, Mogulus, Qik, Kite.tv
Audio/Video: YouTube, TeacherTube, iTunesU, Hulu, Vimeo
Web Sharing: Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon
Social Bookmarking: Delicious, Magnolia, Diigo
Online Applications: Google Apps, Microsoft Office Live, Zoho Apps, EtherPad, Basecamp, Backpack (from 37 Signals)

What follows is a draft of a document that I prepared that outlines a proposed architecture for Learning Management Systems.  Because of it’s length, I have separated it into four posts, Executive Summary, The Emerging Meme, LMS in the Enterprise Architecture, and Key Online Application Integration.  They will not all be posted at once but as they do you can see them here.

LMS in the Enterprise Architecture

The following is a diagram of the proposed role of an LMS in a typical enterprise architecture.

Open Learning Architecture

The architecture is made up of four key components: the Presentation, the IT Core, the Learning Management System, and the Open Adapter Framework.  The details of each of these components and their integration together are described below. The key ideas communicated in the diagram are the relationships between the components, the physical separation of each component, and the role of the LMS as a facilitator of context and information to the different components.

IT Core

The IT Core consists of enterprise applications that are deployed on the university infrastructure.  In addition to providing information about faculty and students, the IT Core fills other responsibilities as well. As the IT Core consists of many systems that support the university, only those that apply to the integration of the LMS are represented in the diagram.  Each component is described below:

Flash Media Server: Server used to provide streaming audio and video.  Most of the digital media owned by the university is provided through this server and is made available through a player that can be embedded into virtually any web site.

CMS / DMS / Portfolio: The content management system (CMS), also known as a document management system (DMS) is used as a repository for documents and files.  These repositories are under version control and are made searchable through a common web interface.  Users can share documents using a static URL which links directly to a document. The portfolio system would ideally be linked into the existing CMS system.

Identity Store: The identity store currently consists of an integration layer and a set of Active Directory and LDAP identity systems.  These systems contain simple identity information and provide authentication services to other enterprise systems.

University ERP: The ERP system for the university contains the current student and employee information as well as the course to user relationships.

Learning Management System

The Learning Management System (LMS) serves as a provider of course and group context as well as a grade book. Course information is stored locally and is synced with course, student, and faculty information from the university’s ERP system. The users of the LMS create the group taxonomy. The grade book stores scores and final grades for students.

The group taxonomy simply provides a framework for organizing individuals in the system. It also contains a set of tools that can be used by the group. Groups are created either from existing courses or groups or completely ad-hoc. The following are a few use cases describing groups:

An instructor wishes to create groups of students in their course to assign specific assignments to each. The instructor uses the “create group” functionality within the LMS to create the groups from a list of students registered in the course.

A university society wishes to create an online workspace where they can collaborate on events and projects. The leader of the society uses the LMS to create a group and then is given the opportunity to invite the other members of the group to participate.

A group of students within the same major form a study group to help one another with assignments and upcoming tests. A student uses the LMS to form a group and then sends a URL to those that want to join. The other receiving students navigate their browser to the URL and request to join the group.

Groups are the foundation of all gathering that occurs at the university. They provide users with a workspace to collaborate and share information. The tools that they use are tools integrated into the LMS through the adapter framework.

Courses are specialized groups with added tools and are created by the system based on a taxonomy that comes from the university ERP and are created and destroyed by the system. Courses have one or more instructors and a set of students. The additional tools that are made available include a grade book and a course syllabus. Other tools built on the adapter framework can also be included by default.

The interfaces to the LMS are a crucial in that they provide the groups and courses with the tools that the users in the group will use. These interfaces also provide back-end developers with a way to get group and course taxonomies from the system such that they can provide context to their external applications. The following table shows some examples of API calls made through the interfaces.

In addition to an open service based API, the LMS includes a SCORM 2004 interface for adding and retrieving scores from the grade book. This interface allows the creation of SCORM compliant assignments and tests by the university and provides great flexibility in the medium by which they can be created.

Presentation

Two major factors affect the presentation layer of the LMS: an extraordinary range of the technical ability of the user base and university branding. As such, dynamic user interfaces that can be completely customized by the university are critical in the success and adoption of the LMS. In a traditional LMS implementation, the user interface is largely static based on the design by the engineers who built the system. The presentation layer, however, will be better suited to the user-base if it is created and maintained by the university. This will allow administrators to enable and disable functionality, incorporate university approved branding, and integrate online and self-hosted web technologies seamlessly.

One approach to this level of customization in the past has been to use a customizable portal with boxes, or portlets, that contain custom content from various sources. While this approach allows for some customization, the user is still locked into a designated wire-frame. This limits branding and custom look and feel. These portal systems are also often based on out-of-the-box development platforms that require extensive back-end development to customize. This increases the rigidity and cost of customizing the look and feel.

A better approach is to provide a basic multi-column wire frame built on an open framework based on popular languages, such as PHP or XSLT, and give the university complete control over layout and look and feel. The university could then utilize commodity web developers, such as students, to provide customization and branding. An example of this approach is the popular WordPress blogging platform that provides basic functionality with complete customizability. This framework provides developers a multiplicity of options to mashup information from the LMS with core IT data as well as online application data in a seamless and consistent environment.

In the proposed architecture, the presentation layer of the LMS is completely separate from the core systems. This allows the university to tie their existing CMS system and the LMS into the university web space. The flexibility that this architecture provides would promote a single and consistent view to all the tools the university and the web have to offer in a consistent and integrated environment.

Open Adapter Framework

Because the proposed architecture focuses on the core value proposition of the LMS and not on providing learning tools such as blogs, wikis, and other collaboration tools, there needs to be a way to provide the course and group context to external tools in a low cost manner.  The portion of the architecture designated to provide this is the Open Adapter Framework (OAF).

The OAF is a software development kit (SDK) providing web developers the opportunity to build integrated adapters connecting online, and custom applications into both the LMS and the Presentation layer.  The SDK provides the following key features:

• API documentation to the LMS
• A secure method for connecting to the LMS
• Hooks for authentication
• Hooks for the presentation layer
• REST based APIs
• Embeddable JavaScript
• Example pre-built adapters

Another key aspect of the OAF is an online developer community where adapters can be shared and downloaded fitting many of the initial needs of the university.  All adapters follow open source methodologies in their development and distribution.  This approach will encourage developers to not only build adapters for major online learning tools, but will decrease the amount of overall effort needed to integrate popular online tools into the LMS.  The following use cases can then be put into effect:

A university wants to integrate a wiki tool that has been adopted by many of the students in the Business College. The software engineering group browses the online open adapter repository to see if anyone has contributed an adapter for this wiki. An adapter is found, downloaded, and installed on the OAF.  The popular wiki is now available as a tool for all groups and courses in the LMS.

After searching the online open adapter repository, no adapter could be found that integrates a discussion board tool that was recently purchased by the academic department.  The tool supports basic web services and has embeddable components. The IT group employs a small team of students, provides them with the Open Adapter Framework SDK, and kicks off a project to build the adapter.  In less than two months, the team has finished building the adapter, integrated the discussion board into the LMS, and contributed the adapter back into the online repository for other schools to use.

What follows is a draft of a document that I prepared that outlines a proposed architecture for Learning Management Systems.  Because of it’s length, I have separated it into four posts, Executive Summary, The Emerging Meme, LMS in the Enterprise Architecture, and Key Online Application Integration.  They will not all be posted at once but as they do you can see them here.

The Emerging Meme

The current model for building and deploying a Learning Management System (LMS) is to create a system where teachers and students login to manage course information and utilize collaboration tools.  Course information includes anything from a course syllabus, a grade book, and documentation related to the curriculum.  Collaboration tools are provided as chat, email, announcements, and discussion boards.  In more advanced implementations of an LMS, collaborative workspaces, wikis, and blogging tools are made available.

This implementation breaks down, however, as more enlightened learning models vs. the traditional “Sage on the Stage” are implemented in higher education.  These learning models focus on lasting learning and decentralized group projects.  In addition, as more courses are provided online, traditional LMS implementations fail to level the playing field, so to speak, between the online students and students gathered physically in the class room.

Consequently, if the LMS is to facilitate these newer learning models it must be able to adapt from traditional course-centric taxonomies and embrace more ad-hoc groupings of teachers and students.  While the need for course taxonomy for academic purposes will always exist, an LMS can facilitate increased learning by allowing for ad-hoc group taxonomies as well.  The ability to create groups within a course has been a standard feature in an LMS for some time; however, the process of creating and managing those groups has not reached full maturity.

Another problem facing the traditional approach is the influx of very usable online applications and social networks that students and faculty use outside the LMS.  Examples include Google Docs, Twitter, and Facebook.  Because these applications are generally the sole focus of the companies that create them, they are able to develop and deploy advanced functionality very quickly.  Students and faculty are continually being introduced to these solutions leading to a rapid adoption rate leaving the built-in functionality included in the LMS widely unused.

The key value proposition of any LMS is IT systems integration and user experience consistency by providing the course or group context to a wide set of learning tools.  By focusing on aspects of the learning experience that cannot be found online such as the course/group taxonomy, the grade book, and integration with core IT systems, an LMS can capitalize on its core value rather than providing outdated learning tools.  An LMS can also serve as a bridge between core IT systems and online tools utilizing established web standards such as REST-based APIs and embedded JavaScript.

Traditional LMS implementations involve monolithic architectures that require more advanced programming techniques and methodologies for integration with core IT systems.  To capitalize on the value that an LMS can bring, however, more open services based architectures are better suited.  By decreasing the friction needed to integrate the LMS with online applications and IT systems, the LMS provides more accurate and real-time context to the available tools.  It also decreases the time needed to do the integration.

The LMS must also serve as a bridge between online applications and IT systems.  By providing an open API based on web services, organizations can employ commodity development resources, such as teams of students, to provide the majority of the integration work.  In aggregate, this greatly reduces the cost of ongoing development work needed for integration.

In short, by focusing the functionality of the LMS to open programming interfaces, course and group taxonomies, and a grade book rather than on implementing sub-par learning tools the LMS increases its value to the organization.  Such an LMS will also integrate more easily in modern service based architectures decreasing the time and cost to deploy the solution.

What follows is a draft of a document that I prepared that outlines a proposed architecture for Learning Management Systems.  Because of it’s length, I have separated it into four posts, Executive Summary, The Emerging Meme, LMS in the Enterprise Architecture, and Key Online Application Integration.  They will not all be posted at once but as they do you can see them here.

Executive Summary

Universities face a growing dilemma that involves technology and the classroom.  As technologies on the Internet grow increasingly sophisticated and open, the ability for Information Technology departments to integrate these new technologies decreases.  In addition, enterprise class software with its intrinsic size and scope doesn’t inherently provide the agility needed to bring the user experience and functionalities that smaller, more open solutions provide.

The Learning Management System (LMS) is not immune from these trends.  Leaning more toward enterprise class software and less toward open web based software in its architecture, an LMS is unable to provide the functionality and features that both students and teachers want to use.  The key value of an LMS is, therefore, not to provide all the functionality its users desire, but to provide integration with core IT systems and course context to the users online experience.

The following proposal focuses on integration as the key value proposition of the LMS.  Because of this, the architecture described is very different from typical architectures based on traditional LMS implementations.  The proposed architecture is a service-based architecture presented at a high level to communicate the overall picture rather than delving into the actual implementation details such as service oriented middle-ware and specific communication protocols.  This higher view will allow for discussion of guiding principles and encourage innovation rather than being stifled with specific details.

The architecture is based on four key components: IT Core, LMS, Presentation, and the Open Adapter Framework.  Each of the components is described utilizing, where applicable, use cases to explore the functionality of the end product.  The details on each section will be limited to explaining basic functionality rather than specific technologies or implementations.

The last two sections of this proposal outline key online applications that are recommended for integration.  The first section, Key Online Application Integration, outlines five online resources that are popular tools used by students and teachers.  The following section, Online Applications Index contains a simple list of online applications that should be considered for integration into an LMS due to their ease of use, open APIs, and ubiquity.

This is a monumental undertaking to redefine learning technology. I applaud your study and articulation of the problem and the direction you set forth for creating the next generation. This is the right way to go and doing so will be inevitable. I’m very interested in seeing some prototypes and working examples of how this can be accomplished. Five years ago I would have thought Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) would have brought the desired modularity. Having read much about the failure of many SOA initiatives, I now question whether that is the right approach.

I believe that future initiatives to implement modularity (malleability as you call it) into the learning experience will involve integration of web based applications delivered through a common interface. In other words, utilizing existing integration standards such as REST compatible API’s from highly specialized online services into a single framework that can provide a consistent user experience. An example would be to provide a single access-point for Google Docs and Facebook groups where documents could be shared to members of the groups in a very low friction interaction.

Do you know of any current initiatives to articulate a possible software architecture and identify existing technologies that could be implemented and tested under the guidelines you’ve specified?

Originally posted as a comment by mikefarmer on The End in Mind using Disqus.