I know that a lot of people may not think of an LMS as “instructional technology”, but in fact it is one of the most commonly used types! UMB currently uses Blackboard Vista, and I have found it exceedingly simple to deal with (plus the LMS-IT people are amazingly helpful!). It is password-protected, so only registered students can access the materials; and LMS-IT populates the roster for you from the PeopleSoft roster. This also means that some things that can’t be posted on a “public” website can be posted within the LMS (often copyright-protected materials; for instance, some answer keys for course materials that are posted on a publisher’s password-protected site give permission to re-post for class use as long as it’s on another password-protected site). This certainly saves a bundle on photocopying – basically, if you could photocopy it and hand it out in class under the “fair use” policy, you can scan and post it on the LMS.

[Disclaimer: I am not a legal expert; this is my understanding of the way it works. If anyone thinks that they have better info, please post a comment and let the rest of us know!]

I must confess that I am not taking full advantage of the LMS as yet; it is possible to give timed quizzes online, for instance, and to release information to a subgroup of the class at a particular point in time. Those features, I suspect, are of much more use to pure online courses; my class is, fundamentally, an in-person lecture course with web enhancements.

One of the features that my students have taken full advantage of, however, is the threaded discussion. They’ve used it to ask questions (and then the whole class can see the answers; which means I don’t get asked the same question fifteen times); often, they answer each others’ questions (and then I don’t have to!); they used it early in the semester to look for discussion swaps; all kinds of things go up there.

I’ve also found it very easy to post things such as sample exams. On the previous course website (a public site), there were basically two ways to update the site. Either use Contribute (and don’t get me started on that!) or update a local copy of the web page and then FTP both the new page and whatever new materials were added to the server. With the LMS, I just log in, and click on “add file”. Browse for the file on my computer, and it uploads into the folder that I was just in. Much simpler! I can add links to websites just as easily; I can add folders and put things in them to unclutter the main page with just a few clicks, and it immediately shows me what the changes look like.

So, bottom line, I am very happy with the Blackboard Vista LMS, and encourage everyone who currently has a course webpage on a different server to give it a try!