Cost Evaluation Criteria for LMS

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.