In January, a broadcast email was sent out with a Course Management System survey regarding the use of Semester Book and Blackboard at LSU. This is an issue I feel strongly about, as I am constantly frustrated by both Semester Book and Blackboard. I completed the survey, and in the comments section I basically wrote an essay.

Early this week I was invited to be on the Learning Management System Sub-committee, a part of the Flagship Information Technology Strategy (FITS) that will decide which single CMS to use as part of FITS Recommendation 7.01.

We had a committee meeting today and I am quite satisfied with the requirements that have been set out for the new CMS. I was also pretty pleased to see that several of the systems being considered for evaluation are open source. Unfortunately, this won’t be a quick thing – we are to make our final recommendation by August 2007 and then it will take a year for it to be implemented for August 2008.

I’m looking forward to working on this project – it should be interesting to see how it all works out, especially in regard to the open source vs. proprietary debate, some of which took place this morning.