I have mentioned many a time on this site that the use of an LMS has got to make sense within the ecosystem of tools that an organisation makes use of. However, having recently taken over day-to-day responsibility for one in my new role, I have been thinking again about how they can be used.
The VLE/LMS is dead debate has, in my opinion, long become a bit boring.
My experiences so far, in my first months in my role, has reinforced my views. Overall, your LMS may well be dead but it does not mean that is best for everyone. This largely comes down to the platforms and communication channels you have available to you.
There is much talk currently about platforms, the school of thought being you need to control the platforms that people use so that the social (conversational) and push (advertising, etc) can be monetized, as well as the users and their data. Facebook is the platform in this chain of thought – especially with Oculus and Live making their moves into the real world. Now, of course, part of the VLE is dead debate was that we could distribute to users via Facebook and elsewhere that meant the platform was no longer needed. This ignore the fact that for many organisations, at least education companies/suppliers/institutions, the organisation is the LMS. It is the face of the company to the users/clients/students and often the authoring and collaboration place for staff.
For many non-education/learning focused organisations the LMS is, of course, not high on the lists of priorities for any staff. Therefore, it is then a case of understanding how it can help. Distribution by geolocation, time, etc. is surely then the future, no longer relying on ‘time out’ to go away and do learning in a training room where productivity is impacted rather than enhanced.
This stub has been in my drafts for a while so I thought I would post it.
Whose Education Is It Anyway? 