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PRWeb assists companies and organizations release news on their products and services, with extended reach through online searches. LoudCloud Systems, the creator of LoudCloud Learning Ecosystem, for Higher Education, promoted an enhanced version of their current product through PRWeb in July of 2012. The new LoudCloud Learning Ecosystem, for higher education, includes greater flexibility for teachers and administrators; a task centered design, a redesigned behavioral reader, and enhanced analytics on students, administration, and teachers. LoudCloud Systems establish themselves as an emerging leader in learning management systems in 2010, and has continued to impress the education industry with new products and upgrades. The learning solutions offered by LoudCloud are intuitive, collaborative, adaptive and intelligent. The system collects data on users and personalizes their learning experience based on each individual's learning styles. LoudCloud Learning Ecosystems, for Higher Education now offers more than 100 discreet rights, but also allows for segmented branding within one system for larger institutions.  LoudCloud Systems offers services for higher education and K-12 institutions. Administrators and information technology personnel are the intended audience for this article. The reader should remember LoudCloud wrote the article, with supervision by PRWeb. 

According to Patton, human resource departments tend to be one of the last areas within higher education to adopt new technologies. Over the past few years vendors have begun developing new products based on college and university needs, especially in the human resource area.  Most human resource departments have an enterprise resource planning system (ERP) or a Human Resource Information System (HRIS), which is used in conjunction with compatible, or sometimes not-compatible, vendor services. SunGard continues to offer more and more human resource services, including an effort certification system, which monitors and collects data on how many hours certain employees are spending on research, if their salary is paid through a grant. In the mid 2010s, SunGard and PeopleSoft partnered to create an applicant tracking system that offered three programs in one: a position description model, a performance management module, and an applicant-tracking model. While some improvements have been made, human resource departments need to embrace the new technologies, and utilize the offered services in the front of the office, as well as the back. Most of the examples within the article are large, state universities, such as Florida Atlantic University, Oklahoma City Community College, and the University of Utah. Duke University is mentioned, however, Duke is a large, elite university with more financial resources than most other private institutions. The question remaining is if the cost of human resource modules are justified at smaller institutions? Hopefully the future will bring options to colleges and universities with a few hundred employees, rather than a thousand. 

The author of this article is a writer for University Business, an online higher education publication. The article summarizes how lectures can not only be recorded digitally but also streamed live over the internet, with minimal effort by participants. Lecture capture systems (LCS) give the ability to slice and dice archived recordings into more manageable and meaningful segments. The author shares how as some lecture capture solutions have changed to software or web-based platforms, the definition is being stretched to include content faculty are producing at home, or even recordings of hybrid class sessions capturing both the in-class and online activity. Users see a partitioned screen displaying the presentation material and video feed, along with navigation options. Although video of the professor is thought to enhance distance learning sessions, it is usually skipped when the result is not interactive. In some situations, a video is used to display a demonstration, as often happens in medical classes. The author stresses that the audio is extremely important and if it is not great quality, it reduces the usefulness. Editing can be done to add title slides, remove dead time, or eliminate lessons that might have made sense during class but could be considered meaningless afterward. Long lectures can also be broken into shorter segments for students to use as study guides. Overall, the author suggests that faculty should keep the student as a user in mind when developing content. A helpful checklist is provided for administrators who are considering how to implement lecture capture: What is the institution's goal for having a lecture capture system? What needs are evident through observation of faculty? How involved will the IT staff have to be in training and using the system? Can faculty members operate it themselves? Will the system integrate with a course management system? Is the system scalable? How scalable does it need to be? Or is portability better? Wha

This is a valuable directory of 150 learning and performance tools. The learning platforms are listed in alphabetic order, beginning with numbers, and ending at xylene content management system. It includes all the popular and well-known management systems such as Moodle, Blackboard, Instructure Canvas, Desire2Learn and Haiku learning management system. A bright yellow star precedes all free systems. This is a valuable page for anyone interesting in the market for a learning management system or looking for information on what is available.

Fischman introduces OpenClass, a learning management system that is the product of the combined efforts of Pearson Publishing, and Google. OpenClass is free, and combines the utilities of course management with social networking, and community building. It also allows users to access materials in e-books and YouTube videos. While it is not as popular or in widespread usage like blackboard and Moodle, some colleges believe that it can be used simultaneously with other learning management systems. One of its most positive strengths is its Facebook type news stream that posts class activities and comments, as well as highlights students in a class and their comments, making it easy for students to identify peers to interact with. It also has features for collaboration and information sharing for both students and faculty. Critics from Blackboard such as Matthew Small, the chief business officer doubts that the OpenClass can be integrated into the university like the Blackboard, which connects to student information systems, and meets the requirements of college policies and regulations. Never the less, the biggest selling point of OpenClass is the fact that it is free. This article would be of interest to educators and institutions interested in learning about new learning management systems

This is a list of the top five learning management systems as compiled by Gilford Education Group. The group provides assistance to many e-learning and online learning institutions on selection and evaluation of their learning management systems. The five learning management systems are Adrenna Work Force 7 and Adrenna Academic, Blackboard, Desire2Learn Learning Suite, Moodle, and Sakai OAE. Adrenna has two platforms, the Adrenna Work Force 7 and the Adrenna Academic. The former is designed for professional education workforce with a focus on online training and development. It has facilities social learning, collaboration and authoring. The latter Adrenna Academic is designed for the academic environment with many features including mobile learning. Blackboard is said to build technology that provides a variety of learning pathways including collaboration. Desire2Learn fosters collaboration and supports different learning environments. Moodle is used in a lot of institutions, is free and valuable for designing online courses. Lastly the Sakai OAE fosters collaboration and user sharing based on the needs of students, educators and researchers. This article is a useful resource for anyone who wants a brief overview of learning management systems.

The author of this article is a faculty member and software specialist of Computer Information Systems at Bentley College. He discusses that in today's Web 2.0 world, wikis have emerged as a tool that may complement or replace the use of traditional course management systems as a tool for sharing course information. In the article, he describes best practices for using a collaborative web application known as a wiki to change a traditional course management system. A wiki is a useful tool for involving students in the process of creating and sharing course content. While course management systems have specialized features such as online grade books and exams, useful exclusively in academic environments, students are not likely to encounter these tools outside of a college classroom. By introducing a wiki for collaborative course management, students also learn to interact with a useful real world tool. This allows them to complete some tasks that would be more difficult using a traditional course management system. Since students and faculty can both post information to the wiki, the role of the instructor changes from being the leader to being a partner with the students in their own learning process. The author shares some of the educational uses, such as tools for teams to perform group projects, creating literature reviews for research projects, participating on signup sheets, summarizing readings, posting project summaries, communicating with students, and even sharing class notes. Educational concerns are also shared, such as: wikis lack features that are needed for acceptance within the educational community, access control to protect certain public pages (such as the syllabus), or providing private spaces for collaboration. The author views this as problematic because anyone can change anything. However, he also shows that this aspect may promote a sense of community among its users. He predicts that the course management system (CMS) of the future must be

MIT - center for information systems research research. Some interesting topics on governance of IT in systems. Some good policy application.

Manoj Chacko, Steven Johnson, Munir Mandviwalla, Ilya Rogov and David Schuff, members of the department of management information systems, Fox School of Business, Temple University posted a video to reveal the rational behind their groundbreaking media site, mis.temple.edu. The purpose of the video is to illustrate educational changes from the last generation to the current one. The reality of the learning process is a shift from semi-structured, planned communication and sequential work, to extremely unplanned communication and multitasking. Technological input has also evolved from mere emails and web-based course management tools, to include social media tools. The authors believe that previous learning systems did not enable innovation and community building within a highly hierarchical college system where students had no access to their personal information. The challenge is therefore finding a system where courses and academic community can not only bridge the boundaries, but foster greater communication amongst the stakeholders. For that to be feasible, social networks, related data storage and communication tools must be created. Of course there are prerequisite factors such as an all inclusive and non-hierarchical culture, along with public and private access and individual control. The technological tools should also be uncomplicated and user friendly to achieve the desired end of collaboration and information sharing. This video is targeted at students, as an advertisement to enroll at Temple University.

This case study details the definition of an IT problem (too many projects backlogged) and the realization of a larger systemic problem (adopted technology not meeting needs of users) which led to a deep analysis of campus systems, stakeholders, and IT governance. The case is an example of a user community hungry for technology and hopeful that technology will solve their problems and an IT organization willing to support more technology use. The solution was IT governance, a process to more carefully evaluate user needs and proposed solutions and balance that with existing infrastructure and long term strategic planning. Value here is in the title: not often does higher education admit to failure and this is part of my thesis - that failure must be part of the culture in order to manage emerging technology effectively. CIOs and other campus leaders must be willing to acknowledge that something isn't working, admit failure or defeat, and move on. This must be done quickly - in an agile environment. The value here is that this case study illustrates my theory.

This article is written by a staff reporter for a higher education technology blog. She shares information from the results of an annual survey on higher-education computing, The Campus Computing Project survey. This survey asked Information Technology administrators at 543 colleges and universities questions about mobile applications and investments in campus technology. The main topics covered in this article are: how campus information-technology officials face fewer budget cuts in their departments, their opinions of the competition for college and university business from learning-management-system companies, and the uncertain views of massive open online courses (referred to as MOOCs). A majority of campus information-technology officers agreed that MOOC's offer a capable model for the "effective delivery" of instruction online. This article also reports that the study revealed that more than two-thirds of those surveyed indicated they were uncertain about whether MOOC's offer a solid business model for campuses to "realize new revenues". The author shares how survey results pointed to the increasing competition between MOOC providers like Udacity and Coursera and that the market for companies that sell learning-management systems (LMS) is becoming more competitive as well. The number of survey respondents that use Blackboard's learning-management system had dropped from 71 percent (in 2006) to 45 percent (as of 2012). Other LMS companies, such as Desire2Learn, Moodle, Sakai, and Instructure's Canvas have been more successful as a result. The author shared that although budget cuts in technology departments are going down, 27 percent of survey respondents reported budget cuts this year, compared with 50 percent in 2009. However the author shared that public institutions may still remain at-risk for budget cuts. This information would be useful for higher education technology professionals, particularly those who are making decisions related to technol

Joshua Kim, the Director of Learning and Technology for the Master of Health Care Delivery Science program at Dartmouth College, often writes for Inside Higher Ed. In this article, Kim shares ten questions posed to him by Rachel Hanel, a student and employee at Kaplan University. Hanel presented ten questions to Kim based on his experience with learning management systems (LMS).  Kim believes higher education institutions should based their LMS selection off of the quality of the product, the quality of the company, and the size of the user community, not just price. Kim also points out the direct and indirect costs associated with each LMS must be evaluated before making a decision. Students are looking for an LMS utilized by faculty members, while faculty members have a wide range of requests from an LMS, making the selection of a LMS for a college or university difficult. A few products and services to watch break into the LMS market over the next few years are Instructure Canvas, OpenClass, and Coursekit, in addition to Moodle and Blackboard, whom already hold most of the market share. According to Kim, institutions should put education first when reviewing LMSs. College and university personnel, specifically those looking to switch or add a LMS, are the intended audience. 

Marla Clark, an editor at EdTech magazine, covers the four most effective, and highest in priority, IT investments in the United States in 2012. Clark uses data from a variety of IT surveys, collecting information from more than 550 college and university IT administrators. The intended audience is anyone interested in technologies influencing higher education. The first technology described is the mobile application. More than 60% of the campuses participating in the survey embrace mobility within their IT structure. Public universities lead with more than 77% offering mobile apps in connection with the institution, with private schools at 67%. The second efficient technology is cloud adoption. While many colleges and universities have been slow to transition to cloud technologies, those that have, are utilizing the options more fully. Now institutions are moving calendars and learning management systems to the cloud, instead of just storage and archival materials. Integration of IT into classroom/course instruction is the third item on top of colleges and universities' priority list. 74% of the institutions participating in the survey indicated curriculum integration is a top priority for the next few years. Finally, almost exactly half of the colleges and universities surveyed believe massive open online courses are a viable course delivery module. Of the 50% that look favorably on massive open online classes, more than 60% are unsure of how to earn revenue using the technology.

InCommon is a nonprofit group that offers software to colleges and universities with a shared standard allowing for secure single sign-on. Vendors collaborate with InCommon, allowing for seamless transmission of information from one college to a variety of vendors. Using InCommon allows institutions to streamline their different online services, simplifying the process for all users. The software is free, however, a $700 registration fee is required, in addition to an annual fee of $1,000 to $3,000 depending on the size of the institution. The real costs are associated with switching vendors compatible with InCommon and adding enough servers to back up the entire system. If a server goes down, all of the single sign-on services shut down as well, so reliable and back up servers are required. While InCommon certainly offers a useful product, colleges and universities have been reluctant to join. The initial cost of joining, switching vendors and updating servers can be very expensive. The University of Georgia, for example, has decided to use proprietary software, instead of InCommon, to save on cost. Other institutions are waiting until important vendors, such as Blackboard, join InCommon. Without key vendors on board, the costs cannot be justified. Even though InCommon has not been adapted on every college campus, the organization doubled its membership numbers every year between 2005 and 2010.  

This article summarizes the requirements for an authentic version of a personalized learning environment, making the case that no existing system currently meets the multidimensional needs of learners. As a solution, the author proposes a new model that will meet this need, defining culture, attitude, personality, and behavior as necessary dimensions to consider in a learner-based model. The new model suggests a method to select, discover, and adapt the content considering all of the factors assessed by a "learner's profile", which looks at the relationships between these factors. This new model would be important to consider in implementing new Learning Management Systems into curriculum and working with faculty as they are using new technologies with their students. The author is a Computer Science faculty member at the University of Applied Sciences in Worms, Germany.

Steve Kolowich, a technology reporter for Inside Higher Education, discusses the learning management systems (LMS) of the future. The article, geared towards an audience of higher education professionals, as well as those interested in higher education technology, highlights three up and coming LMS providers: Coursekit, Instructure Canvas, and Chegg. Instructure Canvas is an open-source LMS, offering its services to more than 100 institutions, including Brown University and Auburn University. The program is marketed to administrators, as well as individual instructors. Coursekit, another LMS, is free and currently only markets to individual professors. In addition to course management, Coursekit plans to offer students assistance in locating books and homework help, in the future. A significant difference between Coursekit and other LMS is their creation of a social network oriented around education.  Chegg, formerly a solely text rental organization, has rebranded the company into a social education platform. Although Chegg is not a LMS, some of the services offered are similar. Students can search texts associated with courses at their institution, utilize a homework help center and speak with a tutor in India, and buy and sell notes through Notehall. Based on Kolowich's description of three promising LMS-like services, Blackboard (the current majority LMS market shareholder) should be prepared for a new wave of competition.

Gordon Friedman, president of the non-profit National Laboratory for Education Transformation, employs metaphoric prose to portray the relationship between technological advances and faculty inertia that has hindered the advancement of higher education into the twenty first century. He uses the term cloud to refer to the virtual, server-based world, and fog to depict the technological apathy and bureaucratic red taped nature of higher education that refuses to tap into the data mine available through technological systems. The cloud offers a transparent and cost effective way to systemize institutional operations. Friedman clarifies that what he advocates is not mindless extrapolation of data, but rather a shift to embrace the reality of twenty-first century students, who exist in a world where their personal data is captured by the various web applications they routinely patronize. Unlike these applications that use captured data to construct the essence of their customers, higher education remains an impersonal enterprise that does not utilize the existing data to design a more personal learning process. To Friedman, online courses, digital curricula components and apps are not sufficient, because unlike the cloud, information flow is one directional. This article is directed at higher education institutions. To lift the fog, Friedman states that colleges ought to adopt three principles of the cloud namely: identity formation and management whereby students develop a sense of ownership through the maintenance of their own identities; social networks and learning communities where learning is student centered and self paced; and data mining and assessment faculty collect and use student data to monitor the teaching and learning process.