Welcome to the website of the Library and Information Resources Technology Committee’s (LIRTC) elearning group. Faculty members of LIRTC in collaboration with Instructional Technology, have been asked to assess our use of our learning management system and develop recommendations for a system that will best serve students and faculty at Wooster. The committee’s goal is to gather extensive input and feedback from the broad campus community (with a special focus on faculty and students) and will use this space to provide regular updates on the process and findings.
During the spring of 2011 the group focused its task on reviewing our current learning management system (LMS) – woodle. Given the growing popularity of faculty using other elearning solutions such as wordpress (voices), wikis (confluence), or other outside software such as google docs, in addition to or in place of woodle, the group sought feedback from the campus community from April through May of 2011 on how these systems are meeting campus needs.
In focus groups with faculty and students we asked the following questions:
- What would the perfect LMS look like?
- What elements/features would be included?
- What elements/features wouldn’t be included?
- What technologies should it work well with, if they are not to be included?
Based on the answers we drafted a survey sent to all faculty and students asking them to indicate their desire for specific tools along with their general satisfaction with current elearning tools used on campus. Notes/results from the focus groups and surveys can be found on the feedback/reports page.
Based on the feedback gathered, in May of 2011 the group decided to conduct a limited pilot in the fall of 2011 using Canvas by Instructure. Sakai was also considered, but the version we considered will not be available until the spring of 2012. A small group of faculty were selected to participate in the pilot.
- Pam Pierce, Professor and Chair of Mathematics, is piloting Canvas in her First Year Seminar
- Jim Hartman, Professor, Mathematics, is piloting Canvas in his Math courses.
The group is also aware that several other faculty members are using the free version of Canvas outside of our pilot.
Depending on the results of the fall pilot we may expand the pilot to additional faculty in the spring of 2012. We may also conduct a small pilot of Sakai in the spring semester.