OER, LMSs and Platforms

In January, I suggested that promoting the use of OER with LMSs would benefit both OER and LMSs.  I've been in Twitter and email exchanges lately with people who don't distinguish between LMSs (learning management systems) and 'platforms.' The term Platform these days tends to refer to a whole bunch of different things. Including LMSs in with all of the other things that are included in the term platform isn't going to serve the promotion of OER. Doing so is similar to what David Wiley refers to as "theory neutrality." Wiley says, "Software vendors and standards bodies describe their learning object related work as being “instructional theory neutral.” Were this the case all would be well in learning object land. Problematically, a more accurate description of their products is “instructional theory agnostic,” or in other words, “we don't know if you're employing an instructional theory or not, and we don't care.” As stated above, it is very likely that the combination of learning objects in the absence of any instructional theory will result in larger structures that fail to be instructionally useful."

Putting LMSs in the same category as platforms is a weak attempt at being all inclusive; my point in suggesting that OER and LMSs will benefit each other is to highlight what LMSs will do for teachers who use them in concert with OER. A LMS "delivers and manages instructional content, identifies and assesses individual and organizational learning or training goals, tracks the progress towards meeting those goals, and collects and presents data for supervising the learning process of the organization as a whole.^[4] A learning management system delivers content but also handles registering for courses, course administration, skills gap analysis, tracking, and reporting.^[5]  Platforms don't necessarily do those things above, and doing all of those things with OER is what needs to happen in order for teachers and the institutions they're a part of to adopt OER more often.

Teaching is still largely done as a function within a larger system, and rightly so. Teaching and learning are community activities. Sure, teaching and learning can happen and often does happen as part of a one to one relationship, but it's that relationship within the context of a larger institution that gives the larger meaning to the teaching and learning. Learning happens in colleges that are part of a university; learning happens in classrooms in schools that are part of a district that are part of a state system of education. The LMS serves as the mechanism that defines the learning in the larger context. If OER is to be more relevant in schools of all kinds it needs to be explicitly and intentionally connected to the larger systems of the institutions. It's OK and even preferable to use the term LMS. The quicker that happens the better.