Learning Management System 31
The system must be highly intuitive. Access, delivery, and presentation of learning materials must be transparent. The learning experience must be automated and per-
sonalized to the needs of the individual learner. Users must immediately be familiar with the functions of tools or menu available within the LMS, without the need of in-
tensive training.
3. Scalability
The infrastructure must scale easily and incrementally to meet growth in both in- creased instruction capacitybandwidth and user volume. LMS should support in-
creasing number of users, courses, or even institutions for collaboration for example.
4. Administrative Capability
The LMS includes registration, tracking, curriculum management, and feedback me- chanisms. The administrative capability of LMS must help instructors in managing
their courses, system administrators in managing the e-learning system and maintain- ing the LMS itself, and also students in acquiring learning materials and resources and
submitting assignments.
5. Service and Vendor Stability
The LMS provider is financially sound and is expected to stay in business long-term. Further, the vendor has a proven track record for superior support after the sale. The
LMS developer, either commercial vendor or non-profit open-source organization, must responsible in developing the software and make it up to date to meet future us-
ers needs or to remove bugs that may exist.
6. Compatibility and Interoperability
The system must integrate well with third-party content providers and multiple ven- dors hardwaresoftware solutions. The LMS should comply with open industry stan-
dards for Web deployments XML, SOAP, or AQ and support the major learning standards AICC, SCORM, IMS, and IEEE. In addition, the LMS should be imple-
mentable on the diversity of computer systems or platforms such Windows, UNIX, or Linux servers.
7. Pricing
Level of investment required to purchase or to implement a system that meets organi- zational training needs. As mentioned before the costs include initial setting, imple-
mentations, and maintenance costs. This may also include costs for preparing human resources to use the LMS.
8. High Availability and Product Stability
The LMS is based on an infrastructure that can reliably manage a large institutional implementation running 24 hours seven days. The LMS is robust enough to simulta-
neously serve the diverse needs of instructors, learners, and administrators.
9. Security
The LMS selectively controls access to system assets like content, services, course of- ferings, learning objects, student records, and so on. The LMS should provide security
for the system and also data. This may include the ability of LMS to detect unautho- rized users to enter the system.
32 Learning Management System
C. Problems and Trends with LMS
There are some problems involving the reserching and selecting LMS. Beshears 1999 quoted Bates 2000 from his “Managing Technology Change” several problems, such as:
1. Free Style Course Websites vs. Learning Management Systems • Some instructors or lecturers always want to use their own personal home page to
interface their courses instead of using LMS provided by university. • The campus may select a favored LMS, but lecturers should not be forced to use
the favored LMS. This problem may result in integration problem if university wants to integrate the e-
learning system with their academic system, such as student database, administration database, and so on.
2. Make vs. Buy • Some institutions may favor incrementally developing an in-house Learning Man-
agement System e.g. by expanding the on-line class schedule. • Why not both? The contra is that it would be cheaper to support one enterprise
level LMS. However the pro argument is that if the campus decides to link one or more commercial packages to the registration system etc., this doesnt preclude
the option of also incrementally developing a LMS in-house. The option of doing both may avoid conflict. It also gives lecturers more options.
3. Use one LMS or use different LMSs together? The pro reason for campus using a single Enterprise Level Learning Management Sys-
tem is that students could have a unified portal view of all their course websites on the system. However, the contra side is that instructors would have a limited set of op-
tions to choose from. The compromise solution is having a favored LMS, but also of- fers a select number of other systems that can also be connected to backend registra-
tion databases. Of course, more than one LMS could be integrated with the registrars databases, but probably not hundreds of separate LMS e.g. one for each department.
Although easy to use and widely installed, LMSs pose a few challenges for their users. Some other issues regarding the use of LMS are see e.g. Curliner, 2005; Wikipedia, 2006:
1. Course Design Flexibility Problems Challenges in customization Each training organization manages its operations in a particular way — and most
LMSs are designed to manage operations in a different way. For example, most LMSs provide instructors with a limited flexibility in designing course. LMSs typically come
with standard sections that instructors must provide, and the section names are not easily altered. However some open-source LMSs support multilingual interface that
enabling course designers to use sections or menu in their own language.
Although LMSs can be customized and this has become easier with time, many cannot handle every unique need of a training organization. Organizations may have
to do commission custom programming to achieve their goals.
2. Transferring course content problems
