Not using LMS’s for online instruction

With today’s emerging social networks and 21st Century learning styles there has been a lot of debate, whether or not social network sites such as facebook, Blogger, NING, pbWorks, and many others should replace traditional learning management systems ( LMS) such as Blackboard and MOODLE for online content/instruction delivery.

Before we go and burn our LMS’s like many women did their bras we might want to make sure that we are not in violation of any federal laws. Online and hybrid course materials are required to be shared across systems according to the Department of Defense. Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) modules need to reusable throughout various systems.

For example, software such as softchalk, CourseLab, Adobe Captivate, and Camtasia can produce SCORM compliant media and are often used to create modules that can be directly tied into an existing LMS. These technologies do not only allow for interaction but they let the average instructor create rich internet ready content that does not require much if any programming knowledge. I know as an educational institution if we offer all online or web-based training of any kind it needs to be SCORM compliant. If you are not familiar with SCORM here is a Web site that will help understand why this is so important. http://www.scorm.com/scorm-explained/

I think we as educators need to be very careful that we follow these standards before we just ditch our LMS’s