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Navigate 2 - LMS Trends

Answer: What trend that will make the most impact on digital learning over the next five years? How do you foresee this trend impacting online learning? Will this trend be a learning fad or will it become an essential part of online learning in the future? Explain.

 I believe that the MOOC movement will prove to have the most significant impact on digital learning in the next five years. I believe we will begin to see two major trends:

  1. An emergence of more organizations (educational institutions and for-profit businesses) that offer MOOCs and Learning Management Systems.
  2. A growing disparity between large, well established schools and the local community college.

MOOCs & LMSs:
In an article I read for this unit about the intersection of MOOCs and LMSs, a clear trend was noted among some of the "big brands" in online learning, namely Coursera and Canvas, as well as Blackboard. These companies that have built their reputation as LMS providers seemed to have crossed into the world of MOOCs by providing a means of -- as the article puts it -- improving "course discoverability."

 As learning continues to migrate online, and as more organizations are looking for means of hosting the online content that they have created/curated (or purchased), schools and universities will continue to look for a one-stop shop for the MOOCs and LMSs.

 GROWING GAP AMONG SCHOOLS/PROVIDERS:
Some argue that MOOCs may widen the gap between large educational institutions and smaller for-profit schools or low-cost local colleges. This article is an example of this viewpoint. Larger, high-ranked universities with lots of resources (and big reputations) have the potential to continue building upon their "brand" of education, while reducing operating costs. All the while, smaller schools that depend on local, commuting students may be negatively impacted as they develop MOOCs to compete with the big name schools. Even now, nearly 6 years after the publication of the aforementioned article, it's still a little too early to see exactly how universities will be impacted financially. But one thing is certain: learning and online education will [continue to] be impacted by MOOCs.
OVERALL OPINIONS:
I don't think that we have fully realized at this point what the fully potential of MOOCs will be, but I do recognize that they offer distinct advantages and benefits.

 MOOCs

  • stress the importance of networking, a skill necessary for continued learning and success in the "real world"
  • present virtually endless possibilities for differentiation, as there is no single path that the learning follows
  • promote independence as well as interdependence
  • provide a means of offering personalized learning, an area that I see really growing in the next 5-10 years
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