Unit 6, Article 25

Changing Course Management Systems: Lessons Learned

Article Summary:

This article talks about teachers trying to convert their Blackboard systems to a Desire2Learn system. The conversion that the author is documenting is taking place at North Dakota University. Since the University is losing funding, they are being forced to eliminate all but one of their course management systems. There are a couple different aspects of the conversion that the author is interested in - accuracy of converted content and the willingness of the faculty to convert their systems. At the end of the study, the author concluded that the course content was converted properly approximately 50% of the time. The general conclusion the author made at the end was that institutions need to give faculty plenty of time to convert their courses when switching course management systems.

Response to Article:

This was a very strange article. In general, teachers don't have much say when it comes to converting computer systems based on a constrained budget. Futhermore, I think it is pretty well-known that when you convert from one computer system to another it is typically a difficult process. The author seemed surprised that there was not more research done in this area of converting course management systems. It seems as if the author thinks universities change their systems just to try something new in order to improve teaching. The decision to convert computer systems because of constrained budgets is simply based on the fact that there is a constrained budget. In many ways, I felt like this article was a waste of time. Of course changing course management systems will not result in a perfect conversion, and it is also pretty obvious that universities need to give professors time to do such a conversion. If anything, if there is one lesson that I can take away from this article, it is that most of the professors surveyed did not think that the new course management system would affect their teaching. Course management systems are typically just a way for teachers to give pertinent class information to students in a convenient manner. Such programs exists to make communication between teacher and student easier, they don't make teachers better teachers.