Digital Directions - Summer 2013 - (Page 27)
the schools you talk to come from the
vendors,” he says. “What’s more useful is
for you to contact people who weren’t
contacted by the vendors.”
QUESTIONS TO ASK: What has been your
biggest frustration with your current
LMS? If you had to do this all over again,
what would you do differently?
6.
Evaluate the total cost of
ownership, not just the price
of the product.
“The number your vendor is leading with
might not be the total cost,” says Evergreen
Education’s Watson. Be sure to evaluate the
total cost of ownership, which includes not
only the licensing fee, but also professional
development, support, repair, maintenance,
hosting fees, and any network upgrades or
hardware. Make sure you are comparing
apples to apples when looking at different
vendors; some companies bundle different
types of features in different ways.
Ebert, from the Clark County schools, also
recommends considering the cost of
transitioning from one system to another.
“There’s a cost to move your content from
one tool to the other,” she says. Depending
on how the content has been built—directly
into the system or into a third-party system
that will easily export the data—the transition
costs could mount quickly, she says.
QUESTIONS TO ASK: What is the total
cost of ownership for this system? How
much will this LMS cost the district over
five years? What kind of technical support
and professional development are
included in the pricing?
7.
Remember that this is not just a
transaction, but a relationship that
will potentially continue for years.
Make sure the company is a good fit.
Examine its track record. Explore what
markets it has worked in.
“If you don’t have the partnership, then
it’s really hard to fully utilize the product,”
says Givens of the Masconomet district in
Massachusetts. Making sure that the
company has had consistent “up” time—
which means the LMS had few outages—
and that the district would receive
significant technical support and guidance
were key considerations in the
decisionmaking process, she says.
“You can tell a lot,” Givens says,
“throughout the process: How did they treat
you during the evaluation? Did they get
back to you in a timely way? Did they
answer all of your questions? Did they
work with you to really understand what
your concerns were and try to provide
you with whatever resources you needed?”
Ask very specific questions about the kind
of support and professional development
the company will be providing, says Murray
of the Advanced Distributed Learning
Initiative. Especially in large organizations,
the system needs to function smoothly and
be up all the time, she says. There will be
growing pains as teachers and other staff
members begin to adopt the system, and if
it’s not functional or crashes—even for five
minutes—you will lose your audience,
she says.
In addition, the stability of the vendor can
come into play, says Hill of MindWires
Consulting. Find out what will happen to your
contract if the vendor gets bought out, he
suggests. Look at the track record of the
vendor to see where the company is pushing
the envelope and how well it stays on top of
market trends.
Watson says he pushes back against the
word “partnership” when it comes to vendor
and district relationships. “It’s not a
partnership when one person is writing all
the checks to the other,” he says. But he
agrees that cultivating a good fit between
the vendor and the district is crucial. And
looking into the clients the vendor generally
works with can be enlightening, he says.
“Some [LMS] companies are more
specialized at the postsecondary level, and
every software company wants to tell you
that the feature you want is in development
or it’s going to happen, … but you’re going
to have a much higher level of confidence
if that is a provider that’s focusing on [the
K-12 sector],” says Watson. “Figure out
how many clients are similar to you,
because then you’ve got a sense of
whether they’re going to prioritize [what
you need].”
+
Players
In the
Industry
Agilix Inc.
http://agilix.com
Blackboard Inc.
www.blackboard.com
Desire2Learn Inc.
www.desire2learn.com
Epsilen LLC
http://corp.epsilen.com
Instructure Inc.
www.instructure.com
Moodle
https://moodle.org
Pearson Learning Solutions
www.pearsonlearningsolutions.com
QUESTIONS TO ASK: How quickly will the
vendor respond to questions? What level of
support will be available, and who will be
able to access that support? Will there be a
dedicated technical-support person, or will
school officials be calling into a help desk
when there are problems? How quickly will
systems go back up if there is an outage?
What happens if those expectations aren’t
met? What percentage of the company’s
clients is in the K-12 sector? n
Spring/Summer 2013_ DigitalDirections >>
27
http://www.agilix.com
http://www.blackboard.com
http://www.desire2learn.com
http://corp.epsilen.com
http://www.instructure.com
https://www.moodle.org
http://www.pearsonlearningsolutions.com
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Digital Directions - Summer 2013
Digital Directions - Summer 2013
Contents
Editor’s Note
DD Site Visit
Bits & Bytes
Test-Driving the Common Core
Flipped PD: Building Blocks to Success
Virtual Learning in the Early Years
Kindergarten the Virtual Way
7 Steps to Picking Your LMS
Cracking the Code
Powering the Crowd
Digital Directions - Summer 2013
http://dd.edweek.org/nxtbooks/epe/dd_2013summer
http://dd.edweek.org/nxtbooks/epe/dd_2013winter
http://dd.edweek.org/nxtbooks/epe/dd_2012fall
http://dd.edweek.org/nxtbooks/epe/dd_2012springsummer
https://www.nxtbookmedia.com