An L.M.S. for N.V.C.C.

1. An L.M.S. for N.V.C.C. Moving the college into the information age…

2. System Request • From the President : “Traditionally, faculty members have stood at the front of a classroom and delivered their lectures with, perhaps, the aid of a whiteboard or a PowerPoint presentation…” “...Today’s students want and expect more service” • The college needs a move into an Information Technology driven education delivery system , a Learning Management System (LMS) can be that system.

3. Feasibility Analysis • Technical Feasibility • The college has the technology and the internal skills to design and implement a first class LMS • Economic Feasibility • The use of open source software such as Moodle and the creativity and skills of the IT and Teaching faculty cost can be limited to time on task and little else. This will limit the impact on an already over extended budget. • Organizational Feasibility • The development of an LMS will allow the development of on-campus, blended and on-line course offerings that can cross the boundaries between the disparate campuses as well as open the doors of the college to the world.

4. Resource Request • As the development of a large portion of the LMS will be in-house. Needs will consist of • Time and resources reallocated to data collection in the form of stakeholder meetings and surveys • Time and resources reallocated to development teams and tasking of team leaders from each campus to liaise with faculty and students about the process • Allocation of server resources and access to college databases for the IT staff in the development team.

5. Analysis Strategy • Stakeholder feed back on the development of the LMS is critical to it’s success. • Teaching faculty will be included in the design of the interface along with IT staff • Other staff will be involved in information meetings with their campus designee to the design committee to provide a two-way flow of information • Students from the College Student association will be invited to be on the design committee • General feedback will be solicited via an LMS naming competition linked with a survey about what it should include and be used for.

6. Needs Analysis • postindustrial teaching methods in an information technology age • restructure the way that courses are offered and delivered to the students of the college • attraction of more students both on-campus and online who are better prepared for the workforce of the future

7. System Proposal • The creation and implementation of an LMS • The use of existing staff expertise to create the LMS on open source software such as moodle • The use of cross campus teams of staff and students to create a bi-directional distributed information flow with stakeholders

8. Design Strategy • Initial team made up of four representatives from the teaching faculty, • one from each campus, • Team also includes a similar number of I.T. professionals • The team will develop the basic shell of the LMS. • Subsequently teams of faculty headed by the faculty chair of each department will design specific pages and courses for each department. • Free open source software such as Moodle will supply the basis for the LMS with customizations as needed by the design team.

9. System Specifications • The LMS will consist of • A secure log-in page accessible both on and off site. • Personalized access to current and past course materials • A link to the college online library • An email and chat medium that can be used for student- faculty, and student- student communications. • Customizable course pages. • Components of the system will include • document sharing, • video and audio presentation, • online objective testing, • assignment submission.