Running head: UNIT THREE, COURSE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS AND LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS Hassaan 1

CMSs VS LMSs Mohamed Hassaan University of Houston-Clear Lake INST 5035 Creating Digital Resources Dr. Richard Smith February, 2014

Running head: UNIT THREE, COURSE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS AND LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS Hassaan 2 My Area of Research My name is Mohamed Hassaan and I will earn my Master of Science this semester the spring of 2014. I am majoring in Instructional Design and Technology. At UHCL I had meet with great professors who stretched my abilities in doing researches and proposals using technology and many tool. For me, my personal and professional area of research and interest is including: Training Developing (as trainer and instructional designer I do the best to update my abilities and the tools I use to deliver a face to face training session or online ones for individuals or groups) Creating Tutorials Resources (including handy printouts, digital files, and video tutorials)

Using CMSs and LMSs There is no doubt that using LMS (Learning Management System) become necessity for higher education instructors and instructional designers. Moreover LMSs have been used in public schools as well before going to college. Most people know that LMSs is a website that host to online classes and distance education instructors and students cannot survive without it. That is right; but I just would like to say that LMSs has nothing to do with beginning of distance education as the worlds first distance education course has been established in Boston with lessons sent by mail in 1728. We are now in 2014 and using the internet to gain knowledge is something we do every day. If most colleges, universities, and some schools using LMSs; private companies, trainers, and other have created other tools to host content online and to be delivered as well. They call it Course Management Systems (CMSs) or Learning Content Management Systems (LCMSs). Consumers may see that learning management systems (LMSs) and course management systems (CMSs) really have two very different functions or has the same functions as well. It is unfortunate that both have such similar names and a shared acronym, which only serves to confuse e-Learning buyers even more. The primary objective of a learning management system (LMS) is to manage learners, keeping track of their progress and performance across all types of training activities. By contrast, a course management system (CMS) manages content or learning objects that are served up to the right learner at the right time (a comparing chart provided at the end as Extension Credit). CMSs Providers: Edmodo and Weebly With Edmodo (edmodo.com) teachers are in the center of a powerful network that connects them to students, administrators, parents, and publishers. This network is providing the

Running head: UNIT THREE, COURSE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS AND LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS Hassaan 3 building blocks of a high quality education. Edmodo makes it simple to track student progress. All grades and badges assigned or awarded through Edmodo are stored and easily accessible. Teachers can get the pulse of their classrooms through student reactions to quizzes, assignments, and discussion posts that capture understanding, confusion, or frustration. Weebly (weebly.com) is perfect for creating classroom websites and student e-portfolios with powerful multimedia features. Users can add pictures, videos, audio players, documents, maps, and photo galleries easily by dragging and dropping. Use Weebly's unbranded audio and video players so that teachers and their students do not need to venture out to YouTube or similar services to add high quality audio and video to your sites. Can educators imagine that students in elementary school can use Edmodo and Weebly? There are fifth grade teachers using Edmodo in their classrooms. They set up a class account and teachers post assignments on their page. The students complete the assignments online and can post discussions and comments. It seems to work pretty well for what you seem to be looking for in CMS. They also use Weebly site for the computer lab. They direct kids to the games on the website and read the posted content, lessons, videos, and links; but we do not use it for submitting assignment since it does not has the enrollment option yet while Edmodo has it. LMSs Providers: Blackboard and Moodle Blackboard Inc. is an enterprise technology company that is primarily known as a developer of education software; in particular Blackboard Learn, its flagship learning management system. Founded in 1997, Blackboard became the most well know LMS in higher education market The company provides education, mobile, communication, and commerce software and related services to clients including education providers, corporations and government organizations. Blackboard is not cheap and costing our education system millions of dollars each month. Blackboard has merged with WebCT; the most former competitor for Blackboard in market. As a result, many people look at Blackboard as a virtual educational monopoly!!! Moodle (acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) is a free software e-learning platform. Moodle as a developed learning management system is currently attracting millions of users every year. As of June 2013 it had a user base of 83,008 registered and verified sites, serving 70,696,570 users in 7.5 + million courses with 1.2 + million teachers. However, Moodle first year costs can jump into $72.000.00 regard to the cost of Moodle license, install and initial set up, site hosting and branding, database, trainingetc. My recommendations I do recommend CourseSites for both LMS and CMS users as it has both functions. CourseSites is a free version of Blackboard with less options, hosted online course creation and

Running head: UNIT THREE, COURSE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS AND LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS Hassaan 4 facilitation service that empowers individual K12 teachers, college and university instructors and community educators to add a webbased component to their courses, or even host an entire course on the internet. You even choose your own URL, so students can find your page easily. CourseSites may cost users time and more hours of virtual training to become familiar with; but because it is simply has more option than any other free LMs or CMS. CourseSites can also compete with the paid ones. I do also recommend Weebly for both LMS and CMS users. It is a friendly personal website where you can easily share you information. It can be the Learning web for faculty where students can find all info or handouts that teacher post. Having the habit of hosting website and post and express your feelings and knowledge is such amazing advantage that all should have and share.

Running head: UNIT THREE, COURSE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS AND LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS Hassaan 5 Extension Credit CMSs VS LMSs Chart CMSs LMSs

Primary target users

Content developers, Training managers, instructional designers, project instructors, administrators managers Learning content Learners

Provides primary management of Management of classroom, instructor-led training Performance reporting of training results Learner collaboration

No

Yes (but not always)

Secondary focus Yes

Primary focus Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Keeping learner profile data No Sharing learner data with an ERP system Event scheduling Enrollment (has maximum number of enrollment) Backup and restore Creation of test questions and test administration Dynamic pre-testing and adaptive learning Management of classroom, instructor-led training No No No (Yes on some advances CMSs) Most do not Most do not

Not always

Yes

Not always

Yes

Running head: UNIT THREE, COURSE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS AND LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS Hassaan 6 Reference Section III -- Key Definitions: Compare and Contrast. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://fig.forest.net/brandonhall/lcmskb/section3.htm Retrieved from http://scripts.cac.psu.edu/staff/g/m/gms/fa07/IST440W/LMS%20and%20LCMS_%20What's%20the%20Difference_.pdf