I’m doing a little research and could use your help. I have a growing suspicion that the distribution of LMS platforms for programs that do large amounts of pure distance learning is different than the mix of LMS’s among institutions that mainly do web-enhanced (which is most of the higher ed market, frankly). If you are at college or university that has a substantial program of pure distance learning (i.e., the students never or almost never meet face-to-face), please add a comment to this post or {encode=”[email protected]” title=”email me”} with the following information:
- The name of your institution
- The approximate number of pure distance learning students you have in your program
- The platform you use
- The reasons why you chose that platform.
Thanks in advance for the help. If I get a decent amount of data, I’ll report back the results here.
At CUNY’s Borough of Manhattan Community College we’re running about 37 sections of “pure” DL this fall (30 students maximum per section, with some students in more than one section, of course).
We’re using Blackboard, not by any choice of our own, but because that’s the CUNY centralized decision–for all 17 campuses. There are some campuses where a small minority (very few) of DL courses use another LMS, but that number is vanishingly small.
At BMCC, though, we have far more web-enhanced courses (over 100 sections) and all of those are using Bboard, too. I think this pattern is also repeated at all the campuses of CUNY. The central decision and central contract has made Bboard nearly ubiquitous, with only a miniscule number of sections, either DL or web-enhanced, using any other (or no) LMS.
I taught “Basic Computer Skills” course in the fall 2010 totally online. In fact, I was in West Africa throughout the semester. I mainly used email to guide my students throughout the course. I had 36 students at the beginning, but only 30 finished the course. At ENMU and throught New Mexico institutions of higher learning, we use Blackboard. Previously we used WebCT.