Course Management Systems: Overview and Implications for Libraries
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07419050710780335 |
| Date | 12 June 2007 |
| Pages | 7-9 |
| Published date | 12 June 2007 |
| Author | Anthony A. Piña |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
Course Management Systems: Overview and
Implications for Libraries
Anthony A. Pin˜a
LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 5 2007, pp. 7-9, #Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/07419050710780335 7
Course management systems (CMS),
such as Blackboard, Blackboard Vista
(formerly WebCT), Desire2Learn and
Moodle, have become the most
commonly used learning technologies at
colleges and universities (Dabbagh and
Bannan-Ritland, 2005). A CMS
provides a place for learning and
teaching activities to occur within a
seamless environment – one that is not
dependent upon time and space
boundaries (Ullman and Rabinowitz,
2004). A CMS allows instructors and
their institutions to manage a large
number of fully online, partially online
(hybrid) or web-enhanced courses with
many students and a wide variety of
instructional materials. In the
technology and education literature, one
encounters several different names for
these systems, including learning
management systems, learning content
management systems, virtual learning
environments and e-learning
courseware (Gibbons, 2005). In this
paper, an overview of (CMS) is given
along with implications for libraries.
CMS features
Dabbagh and Bannan-Ritland (2005)
have classified the major pedagogical
tools of a CMS into distinct areas that
include content creation,
communication, administration and
assessment. Content creation tools allow
instructors to generate or upload course
content, hyperlink to documents or
websites residing inside or outside of the
course and create assignments for
students. Communication tools found in
a CMS include course announcements,
student web pages, e-mail to instructors
and class members, chat rooms for real-
time interaction or virtual office hours,
discussion boards for non-real-time
interaction and virtual groups that
provide chat, threaded discussion and
file sharing ability for individuals within
the group. Administrative tools include
an instructor control panel with the
ability to enroll and remove users,
customize the course, manage content
pages/files/tools and make course
content visible or invisible to users.
Assessment tools include course
statistics for tracking student activity in
the CMS, a test manager for creating
exams, anonymous surveys and pools of
test items, and a grade book for
managing student assignments and
displaying student grades.
Deploying a CMS provides several
advantages to an institution, such as a
standardized interface and a familiar
navigation structure between courses.
The creation and management of user
accounts, courses and other system-
level tasks are done via a web-interface,
allowing the administration of a CMS to
occur from any Internet-connected
computer. The secure password-
protected nature of a CMS limits access
of instructional resources to users
enrolled in the course, which permits
instructors to take greater advantage of
fair use and teach act protections for
instructional use of materials than would
be possible using the institution’s public
web site (Gibbons, 2005; Pin˜a and
Eggers, 2007). Integration with campus
enterprise resource systems, such as
SunGard Banner, Oracle PeopleSoft and
Datatel, allows for automatic generation
of new courses and enrollment of
students into courses.
CMS options
Institutions can choose from several
options for deployment of a CMS. Many
will start with a ‘‘homegrown’’ solution
that may be adequate for managing a
few courses. However, as the number of
fully or partially online courses
increases, it is common for
organizations to adopt a commercial
CMS. The industry leaders for academia
include Blackboard, Desire2Learn,
Angel Learning and eCollege, while
Saba, SkillSoft, SumTotal, Plateau and
GeoLearning are popular in business
and industry (O’Leonard and Bersin,
2006). The Western Cooperative for
Educational Telecommunications,
Edutools web site (www.edutools.info)
features comparisons and reviews for
over 20 of the most popular systems
being used at colleges and universities.
A CMS can either be hosted and
maintained on the institution’s servers
or the institution can choose to contract
with a vendor to provide hosting and
maintenance through application service
provider (ASP) agreement. Self-hosting
allows institutions to retain a greater
level of control over the operation,
upgrades and maintenance of the system
and pay significantly lower fees to the
vendor. However, an ASP-hosted
arrangement may be a more feasible
solution for many organizations, since
the annual fee paid to the vendor is
usually far less than the cost of periodic
hardware upgrades and hiring technical
personnel to manage and maintain the
CMS servers. Other reasons to consider
an ASP is that the CMS would not have
to compete with other campus entities
for limited technology resources,
support and bandwidth. Most ASP
vendors provide 24/7 support –
something that educational
organizations usually cannot afford to
do (Pin˜a and Eggers, 2007).
As commercial CMS companies
grow larger and less personal and as
their products become more complex
and expensive, many are questioning
whether their needs can be better met by
open source products, such as Moodle
and Sakai. The appeal of open source is
both financial and programmatic.
Vendor licensing fees – which can be
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