Putting Faculty First

The learning management system world might be changing soon with the announcement of Open Class from Pearson. Pearson introduced Open Class at Educause 2011, the interesting fact is the learning management system is focused on faculty. Previously universities were required to make a university wide commitment to an enterpris system, one size fits all. Open Class is a cloud alternative that allows adoption by individual professors. Each professor can customize the learning management system to fit their unique requirements. Best of all, the system is free and the IT department does not have to buy servers or hire administrators. An early view and buzz suggests Open Class will be a strong competitor to Blackboard and others.

Another interesting fact is Pearson has integrated Open Class with Google Apps. Imagine a student logging on to their Google account to access their course materials, very interesting. Now imagine a student wants to work on an assignment with a peer, they make IM contact and decide to use Google Docs to complete their work. If they need to talk Google + is available.

Over 500 universities are testing Open Class. Will faculty use the new learning management system? Time will tell.....

Additional thoughts by Michael Feldstein on his e-Literate blog. Feldstein's review give faculty insight on the similarities and differences between Blackboard and Pearson's learning management systems.