ST. NORBERT COLLEGE LMS REVIEW
What is a learning management system?
Since 2009, St. Norbert College has been using Moodle as the primary learning management system (LMS) for students and faculty across campus. The LMS is leveraged for online, hybrid, and traditional face-to-face classes to provide web-enhanced learning to our students. Instructors provide course syllabi, instructional materials, and assignments, which students can access anytime and anywhere. In turn, students can communicate with their instructors, upload assignments, and access their grades.
ITS in partnership with Academic Affairs, will conduct a review of our existing LMS to determine if it best meets today’s needs as well as supports future needs of the college.
Additional considerations for a platform include: assessment of learning outcomes, real-time interaction/collaboration tools, integration with synchronous web conferencing solutions, ePortfolio, digital badging, and reporting tools.
Why is St. Norbert College doing this now?
The Learning Management System (LMS) is one of the most heavily used systems by students and professors. Courses contain readings, quizzes, homework assignments, grades, and other integrations that help facilitate teaching and learning.
Like many institutions, St. Norbert experienced a large increase in usage of the LMS as a result of the pandemic. That usage has continued to stay high in subsequent years.
We also recognize the impact of a mobile experience for today’s students.
In support of the college’s strategic priorities of providing a signature student experience that flourishes far into the future and is relevant and compelling, it’s critical that our LMS is situated to best meet these needs.
How is this going to happen?
ITS in partnership with Academic Affairs are working with students and faculty to accomplish the following:
- Gather data to determine LMS feature/functionality priorities of faculty, staff and students.
- Evaluate Moodle against these features and functionality.
- Compare this with other LMS providers.
- Make a recommendation to stay with our current LMS or explore an alternate LMS.
When is this going to take place?
Phase 1 of this project began at the beginning of 2022 and Phase 7 should be complete at the end of April 2023. See the timeline below for key milestones of the project.
We intend to make a recommendation to the Academic Technology Advisory Committee at the end of our review.
