Education Week - October 1, 2014 - Special Report - S6

S6

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EDUCATION WEEK

n

October 1, 2014

Piecing Together a Smart LMS Strategy > www.edweek.org/go/LMS

Tearing Down the Walls
Between Software Silos

T

o save teachers time and provide them with easier access
to better data about student
learning, school leaders increasingly want to tear down
the walls separating the myriad software programs, apps,
and educational content used
in their classrooms.
Learning management systems can play a
crucial role in making that happen.
But lingering technical hurdles, turf battles
among vendors, and the glacial pace of technology adoption in many school systems mean that
a fully integrated ed-tech ecosystem with lms
software as its hub remains more of a vision
than a reality.
"Right now, a funny mix of digital tools and
humans take the data that is coming out of
disparate online learning programs, analyze it,
and give it back to teachers in an actionable format," said Julia F. Freeland, a research fellow
for the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, a San Mateo, Calif.-based
think tank that supports new digital learning
models. "Down the line, the ideal lms would be
performing some of those functions. But that's
contingent on it getting useful data."
Some progress has been made: In recent
years, many districts have pushed for greater
integration between lms software and student-information systems, leading to tangible
benefits such as automated nightly updating
of course-enrollment information, even for students who have moved between schools.
That work was previously done manually,
often taking weeks.

Connecting Data Silos
But now, a push is underway to get vendors
to go much further. Some forward-thinking
districts, including the 42,000-student Forsyth
County schools in Georgia, are already working
to connect their learning management systems
with teacher gradebooks, assessment platforms,
online libraries of instructional content, and

HOW SOFTWARE
SYSTEMS TALK
TO EACH OTHER

student- and parentmessaging systems.
The goal is to build
a one-stop shop for
teachers to take attendance, distribute
assignments and tests,
grade student work,
examine detailed reports of student progress, and find tailored
instructional resources
from a variety of
sources-all within a
single platform.
Such "interoperability" has recently become a big priority for
districts looking to buy new learning management systems, said Andrew M. Ryff, the director
of marketing for itslearning, a Norwegian company that has recently begun making inroads
in the United States, with clients including Forsyth County, the Houston Independent School
District, and a handful of others.
"Data is very important to these districts, and
having it in these disparate systems prevents
them from seeing the big picture," Mr. Ryff said.
For years, that was the case in Forsyth
County.
Prior to receiving a $5 million Investing in
Innovation grant from the U.S. Department of
Education in 2010, the district relied on three
distinct software systems to track student records, manage instructional content, and conduct assessments.
"It was three different silos," said Jason Naile,
now the district's coordinator of digital learning. "Teachers had to pull grades down from the
assessment engine, enter it into the studentinformation system, and then go to the lms to
assign work."
The transition to a more integrated system
was rocky, including false starts with two separate vendors before Forsyth County eventually
contracted with itslearning in late 2012.
"For too long, districts have suffered with dis-

When a teacher logs into itslearning the
next morning, the software contains updated
enrollment, attendance, discipline, and
academic-performance data for each student.

Forsyth County school district leaders
in Georgia are working to connect their
learning management system with teacher
gradebooks, assessment platforms, online
libraries of instructional content, and
student- and parent-messaging systems.
Following is a look at how the district is
moving in this new technological direction:

If an assessment is planned, the teacher
can enter the district's testing platform, known
as Learning Station, by clicking on a tab within
itslearning. No new logins or passwords are
needed, and the user interface remains the
same, allowing the teacher to quickly find
the quiz, test, or project that he or she wishes
to administer or assign that day. The LMS
also allows teachers to assign project-based
activities.

Each night, itslearning software
communicates automatically with the
student-information system, Infinite Campus,
in the Forsyth County schools in Georgia via
an Application Programming Interface, or
API-essentially computer code that lets
software programs talk to each other.

When the students complete the
assessment, their results are sent right back
to Learning Station. On the same screen the
teacher used to distribute the assessment,
he or she can now see how each student
performed relative to the academic standards
being tested.

parate platforms that didn't work well together,"
said Mr. Ryff of itslearning. "Now, they're really
forcing the hand of private industry to make
sure the tools they're investing in work well
together."

Barriers to Innovation
Makers of other learning management systems are also responding to districts' calls for
increased interoperability, said Donald K. McIntosh, the president of Trimeritus e-Learning
Solutions Inc., a consulting service based in
Vancouver, British Columbia, that helps mostly
North American companies and schools select
learning management systems.
One big barrier is a lack of agreed-upon standards-both for the technical process of how
software systems should pass information back
and forth and for the ways that instructional

Another click sends those results back
into the LMS. Officials from itslearning and
the Forsyth County schools are also working
on functionality that will allow the results
to be sent automatically to Infinite Campus,
eliminating the need for teachers to manually
enter (and re-enter) student scores into
multiple systems.
Rather than spend time on data entry, the
teacher can click on each student's name, or
one of the specific standards that was being
assessed, to find assignments recommended
by itslearning based on the student's test
performance and preferred learning style.

Technical hurdles,
turf battles among
vendors, and the
glacial pace of
technology adoption
are preventing LMS
software from
becoming the hub
of a fully integrated
ed-tech ecosystem

Those assignments are intended to be
accessible through itslearning, too. Forsyth
district officials have worked to build a library
of instructional content that is tagged by
academic standard, grade level, resource
type (for example, video, text, interactive
tutorial), and keywords. The district also
recently required that all its educational
content providers begin working to comply
with technical standards that will allow their
materials to be accessible through the LMS.
Then, with the click of a final button,
the teacher-still working within the LMS,
never having logged into a different software
program-assigns customized content to
each student, beginning the cycle over again.


-BENJAMIN HEROLD


http://www.edweek.org/go/LMS

Education Week - October 1, 2014 - Special Report

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - October 1, 2014 - Special Report

Education Week - October 1, 2014 - Special Report - SR1
Education Week - October 1, 2014 - Special Report - SR2
Education Week - October 1, 2014 - Special Report - S1
Education Week - October 1, 2014 - Special Report - S2
Education Week - October 1, 2014 - Special Report - S3
Education Week - October 1, 2014 - Special Report - S4
Education Week - October 1, 2014 - Special Report - S5
Education Week - October 1, 2014 - Special Report - S6
Education Week - October 1, 2014 - Special Report - S7
Education Week - October 1, 2014 - Special Report - S8
Education Week - October 1, 2014 - Special Report - S9
Education Week - October 1, 2014 - Special Report - S10
Education Week - October 1, 2014 - Special Report - S11
Education Week - October 1, 2014 - Special Report - S12
Education Week - October 1, 2014 - Special Report - S13
Education Week - October 1, 2014 - Special Report - S14
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