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Learning Management Systems

Information about Learning Management Systems (LMS) and the initiatives under way with the LMS development partners

Choosing an LMS

The TKI website provides guidelines and advice for schools to help with identifying what your school needs from an LMS, why you would invest in one, assessing some of the purposes of an LMS, analysing your priorities, and selecting products that will meet your needs.

TKI uses the terms "Online Learning Environments" (OLE) or "Managed Online Learning Environments" (MOLE), rather than MLE. TKI defines an OLE as "a protected online environment that combines and manages a collection of tools and web services to provide enhanced learning experiences. It can take many forms: the school’s intranet, a selection of web tools, or a proprietary software package". An MLE is essentially the same as an OLE or MOLE, although these latter two terms are becoming less used in New Zealand.

The Ministry does not intend to offer nationwide funding assistance to schools to purchase an LMS (unlike SMS). However a small number of schools may receive funding assistance to participate in implementation trials. The purpose of these trials is to collect meaningful and measurable data, from participating schools, on the implementation process so that learning lessons can be gathered that can then be published as recommendations for other schools.

LMS development partners

At the end of 2008 the Ministry tendered to select a small number of vendors as development partners for the Ministry’s Managed Learning Environment (MLE) project. At the start of the first term 2009, the Ministry announced the names of the successful vendors:

Edtech with "Ultranet";
Editure with "MySuite”, specifically their "MyClasses" LMS;
a partnership comprising:
- Catalyst with "Moodle";
- Dataview with "KnowledgeNET".

The Ministry has chosen to work with LMS developers because the LMS is regarded as the central hub of the teaching and learning activity (curriculum and pedagogy). The above vendors will be funded by the Ministry to further develop their products to meet the evolving interoperability standards. This will mean that schools will be able to share resources and, over time, work seamlessly in the greater managed learning environment.

Students will be able to enjoy the new style of learning opportunities and retain a digital record of that learning that can mature and move with them. An MLE includes facilities for online collaboration and publishing, file (digital) repositories, eportfolios, communication, content management and delivery, social networking, planning, course and assessment tools, federated search engines, identity and access management, parental portal, and all the commonly used SMS modules.

Schools can now purchase an LMS from one of the Ministry's preferred providers and be assured that the ongoing development pathway will in part be directed, supported and funded by the Ministry. LMS vendors that were not selected for the MLE tender will still be able to access the specifications to enable the required interoperability, however they will not be financially supported by the Ministry.

The MLE concept in New Zealand is still immature and the total development time will be several years. The first obvious changes noticeable to schools are the availability of SMS-LMS interoperability, where certain SMS-originating data is shared with the school’s LMS, and the Digital NZ search engine being available from within the LMS.

As enhancements become available other benefits will include:

better student outcomes from increasingly adaptive teaching approaches, with the student at the centre, and able to take advantage of the evolving technology;
increased family engagement through the provision of a parent portal and timely reporting showing learning activity and achievement; and
additional MLE modules and services available through the provision of funding assistance to take selected LMS vendors on an enhanced development path.

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LMS development initiatives in progress

The Ministry has signed contracts with each of the three LMS development partners and a number of development initiatives are currently underway.

DigitalNZ search integration

Most of the LMS development partners have now integrated the DigitalNZ API into their products. This allows all schools using the LMS to access resources indexed by the DigitalNZ initiative.

DigitalNZ is an initiative that “aims to make New Zealand digital content easy to find, share and use. This includes content from government departments, publicly funded organisations, the private sector, and community groups”. See their website for more information.

Available to schools: now. Please contact your LMS vendor for further information.

Identity and access management within the school’s Local Area Network (LAN)

A research paper has been produced by Edtech exploring the creation of a single sign-on for access to applications located on, and accessed from, a school’s local area network. Pilots will be run with selected schools during 2009.

Expected to be available to schools: 2010.

Single sign-On

A research paper has been produced by Catalyst exploring the creation of a single sign-on which will allow users to sign-on once and have transparent access to multiple online services, not just those within the school’s LAN.

Expected to be available to schools: TBA.

Integrating Moodle and KnowledgeNET

Catalyst and Dataview are working together to integrate aspects of Moodle and KnowledgeNET. This includes making Moodle course and grade-book functionality as well as selected Moodle activities, resource modules and blocks available within KnowledgeNET as an optional module for KnowledgeNET schools.

Expected to be available to schools: early 2010.

Development of an open source parental portal

Dataview is developing an open source parental portal application which will provide a school with a stand-alone open source parental portal which can be automatically updated from the school’s SMS.

Expected to be available to schools: around September 2009.

Moodle support network

Catalyst, with the advice and support of the Moodle Reference Group (made up of nominated school representatives), are developing a New Zealand schools edition of Moodle. Supporting this will be a Moodle information and support website for New Zealand schools.

Expected to be available to schools: August 2009.

Content development with open education resources

Re-usable and portable content for New Zealand schools will soon be available via WikiEducator. Some early adopters will be given training in collaborative authoring of OER, WikiEducator will be made easier to use for all teachers for authoring, searching, and reusing OER content, and OER exemplars will be developed to serve as examples for teachers to create, share and reuse digital content.

Changes starting in August 2009.