Learning Management Systems

When a course (or part of a course) is available online, often a learning

management system is used to help the instructor put the course information online. The course is then available for student access as well.

 

A system used to manage the tasks involved sending or receiving course information is called a Learning Management System (LMS), or Content Management System (CMS).  An LMS will usually have functionalities such as assignments, quizzes, forums, a messaging system, and grades as well as a way for instructors to create and organize the course content online without having to know HTML.  Two commercial examples of an LMS are Blackboard and WebCT (now owned by Blackboard).  There are also many open source alternatives such as Moodle, Claroline, and Dokeos (see webshot).   

 

In secondary and post-secondary education, learning management systems are beneficial because they allow students to have access at any time to their course information. They also give teachers an opportunity to use the internet resource without website development and maintenence knowledge. At the elementary school level, however, it might be difficult to use this type of system because students are still learning to read, write, and type. Logging on to a website and accessing information would probably be too much for them. 

 

The Air Force has an LMS called Advance Distributed Learning Service (ADLS), and it's a place where most military course are being converted to.  It allows a user to go to one place to access the training they need and to be able to acces their completion certificates at any time.   You can log into ADLS at any time and can take training right from a computer.