There is an apparent tension between ease of use and giving a faculty member control over the presentation of course materials. The easiest to use Learning Management Systems are like a fill-in-the-blanks template. It is hard to go beyond the boxes they provide. For the average faculty member, is there a middle ground?

ADMINISTRATIVE PERSPECTIVE:

• Yes—to a degree. LMSs provide the core tools that are necessary for every learning environment: information distribution and access; content management; communication tools; assessment tools; and class logistics management tools. With some degree of variation this meets many common needs.
• No. There is such a wide variety of needs given the unique learning environment demands from humanities and arts to foreign language to natural sciences, that it will be difficult to meet the nuances inherent in every discipline in one online environment. Modularity and the ability to "plug in" components that meet focused needs will help address this issue. That assumes, of course, that individuals or companies will invest the effort to create components for very specialized needs.

FACULTY PERSPECTIVE:

• Yes, as faculty members master basic functionality and are given access to extended functionality, they will be more inclined to be coached by webpage designers and trainers to add in what HTML can provide. Furthermore, many faculty are discovering that presentation software offers them extended control over the presentation of course concepts, symbols, and images.
• But, multimedia still does not function well from these applications, but close cooperation between LMS developers and Microsoft, in particular, seems to be addressing these issues. Faculty are also being coached on the different and appropriate uses of the web and compact disk for speedy and accurate delivery of course objects.

The Learning Management Systems industry is immature. Companies come and go. What are the implications of choosing an LMS? Are you better protected by building your own?

ADMINISTRATIVE PERSPECTIVE:
It is true that companies will come and go. It is also true that transitions are hard. The protection against having your intellectual property encapsulated by obsolete and proprietary packaging is to insist on the vendor adopting existing standards. Currently IMS, the Instructional Management System Project specifications are the best currently available for this purpose. Even if your old vendor and new vendor adhere to these specifications, it does not mean that a transition from between the two delivery environments will happen easily, but it increases the likelihood of success.

FACULTY PERSPECTIVE

• When a key person leaves the relationship... There are always issues with a change in key players. To date we have found that if a key person at the LMS developer leaves, the relationship and development of the LMS for that site faltered. LMS developers may be improving this situation with multiple expert contacts. Some LMS developers fail to support clients in a timely fashion; this varies from developer to developer and over time within each development firm. We are not always better protected by building our own. The experience has been that when key person(s) leave the University, the development, support, and the maintenance of the proprietary product may falter in the same ways.
• I need transferability: The key faculty concern regarding this question is transferability. Will my course transfer easily from LMS to LMS? If I develop file formats for one LMS will I be able to use them in another? Until licensing and prices settle down, faculty are nervous about investing much time in a course. This risk is less for faculty whose publishers work with a variety of LMS developers. In fact, publishers (or LMS relationships with key textbook publishers) may likely determine which LMS developers survive. Faculty are or should be advised to develop course materials in files and to maintain backups of all course content, even announcements.