Seems to me there’s been a whole bunch of articles and blogs lately putting forward the idea that the LMS will be a thing of the past… well not exactly, but perhaps not so… central to student learning.
After arguing that we’ve been pursuing systems to impose bureaurocratic control rather than empower the learner, Parkin’s argues on his blog that:
Learning software vendors still doggedly pursue their vision of reusable learning objects that integrate via a central standards-conformant LMS. Meanwhile, trainers who really want to encourage experience-sharing and dynamic learner-created content are scrambling to understand blogging, RSS, and peer-to-peer networks.
Many LMS vendors don?t ?get? learning. Can it really be that they don?t ?get? the internet either? Are they so afraid of being non-intermediated that they will fight real progress every step of the way or are they about to help us evolve?
I came across Parkin’s article above, from an elearningspace.org article “Learning Management Systems: the wrong place to start learning” (which I found from Leigh’s blog). In this article, George Siemens argues that (from the intro):
Learning Management Systems (LMS) are often viewed as being the starting point (or critical component) of any elearning or blended learning program. This perspective is valid from a management and control standpoint, but antithetical to the way in which most people learn today.
In this article George is not arguing that LMSs are bad, but just pointing out their disadvantages - they are Learning Management systems, not necessarily effective Learning Environments.
The more I think about these arguments, the more I think that a Technology course (such as Website Design) should empower learners through the use of freely available distributed tools (e.g. www.blogger.com) to continue learning after the formal course ends. Just need to find out how we can use a good combination of blogging, websites and LMSs.
Should I comment here or on your blog?