Hey there. My experience is in the field of education – K thru higher ed. Right now, my world is the world of learning management systems (LMS): adaptation, implementation, growth, and sustainability. This blog is about what I’ve discovered through this process – the universals that I believe to be inherent in any adaptation and implementation of an “LMS” system – regardless of the audience (public vs. private; corporate vs. non-profit; no matter what size…).

My experience has been with Moodle, WebCT 4.o, Blackboard, ETUDES, ETUDES NG, and various publisher LMS sites – not to mention being on the peripheral of Sakai, Angel Learning, and Desire2Learn.

My vision, however, transcends what currently exists in terms of LMS systems and is looking towards the future of this movement.

Covered in this blog: systems, processes, policies, procedures, and the nitty gritty of how-to design the system down to the individual courses residing on the system. New technologies, open-source software, open-education resources, reusable content objects, and much more will also be discussed. Additionally, I’ll talk about the law: FERPA, Section 508 (Accessibility – also Section 504 and the ADA), Intellectual Property, Copyright, GPL and Creative Commons, etc.

All of these topics are within the realm of the instructional designer. No one really understands just what we do, or who we are, or what our expertise is – but they sure appreciate the end results.

So, this blog is written for the designer – but also has a larger audience in mind. I aim to reach the instructional designers, IT support folks, the administrators, policy makers, individual instructors, support personal, and techies and non-techies alike. However, those with techie exposure and experience will likely get the most out of my blogs.

All right – let’s blog.

- Mare