e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: Altius

  • Ellucian Buys Helix LMS, But Will It Matter?

    At this year’s Ellucian users’ conference #elive15, one of the two big stories has been that Ellucian acquired the Helix LMS, including taking on the development team. I have previously described the Helix LMS in “Helix: View of an LMS designed for competency-based education” as well as the subsequent offer for sale in “Helix Education puts their competency-based LMS up for sale”. The emerging market for CBE-based learning platforms is quickly growing, at least in terms of pilot programs and long-term potential, and Helix is one of the most full-featured, well-designed systems out there. (more…)

  • Helix Education puts their competency-based LMS up for sale

    Back in September I wrote about the Helix LMS providing an excellent view into competency-based education and how learning platforms would need to be designed differently for this mode. The traditional LMS – based on a traditional model using grades, seat time and synchronous cohort of students – is not easily adapted to serve CBE needs such as the following:

    1. Explicit learning outcomes with respect to the required skills and concomitant proficiency (standards for assessment)
    2. A flexible time frame to master these skills
    3. A variety of instructional activities to facilitate learning
    4. Criterion-referenced testing of the required outcomes
    5. Certification based on demonstrated learning outcomes
    6. Adaptable programs to ensure optimum learner guidance

    In a surprise move, Helix Education is putting the LMS up for sale.  (more…)

  • Helix: View of an LMS designed for competency-based education

    Within higher education, we tend to talk about LMS solutions based on an institutional perspective – which systems can serve as the official LMS for an entire institution. While this view is important and forms the basis for my LMS graphics, the emergence of new educational delivery models has led to the development of some interesting program-specific LMS models. One example that I have already written about is 2U’s platform (built on top of Moodle and Adobe Connect) for their specific Online Service Provider (OSP) business.

    One educational model that is becoming more and more important is competency-based education (CBE). One of the challenges for this model is that the traditional LMS – based on a traditional model using grades, seat time and synchronous cohort of students – is not easily adapted to serve CBE needs. As described in this CBE primer:

    OBE [Outcome-based education] can be implemented in various modalities, including face-to-face, online and hybrid models.

    Competency-based education (CBE) is a narrower concept, a subset or instance of OBE, where the outcomes are more closely tied to job skills or employment needs, and the methods are typically self-paced. Again based on the Malan article, the six critical components of CBE are as follows:

    1. Explicit learning outcomes with respect to the required skills and concomitant proficiency (standards for assessment)
    2. A flexible time frame to master these skills
    3. A variety of instructional activities to facilitate learning
    4. Criterion-referenced testing of the required outcomes
    5. Certification based on demonstrated learning outcomes
    6. Adaptable programs to ensure optimum learner guidance

    (more…)