Is the cloud hastening the demise of the LMS?

Is the cloud hastening the demise of the LMS?:

LEARNING REACHES TO THE CLOUD
The IMS Global Learning Consortium has announced the release latest version of the IMS Learning Tools Interoperability Specification – Version 1.1. This specification provides a way for courses running in IMS-conformant Learning Management systems to securely access remote content, tools and services, and receive back user’s results. This is a big change, and a welcome one.

At long last, we have entered a new phase in learning technologies that is driven by cloud content and services.

Till this point, learning designers have had to choose between creating content with limited capabilities that worked across Learning Management Systems (via standards-based package formats of Common Cartridge or SCORM), or, creating proprietary packages with richer functionality that work only on the system on which they’ve been created.
Access to learning tools like collaboration spaces, wikis, discussions, and blogs was only available if you created proprietary packages and used the native LMS capabilities. Blackboard, for example, provides a rich set of tools; however, they only work on Blackboard. If you use these tools, the packages are not portable, and you can only choose from the set of tools Blackboard has to offer. LTI 1.1 is a game changer – the content and services are not packaged in the course, rather, they reside in the cloud.

With the ability for courses to access cloud content and services, the learning experience is no longer constrained to the proprietary capabilities of the LMS or the limitations of SCORM and Common Cartridge. Rather, learning experiences can be designed that securely access content in the cloud from multiple publishers, and the best online tools and services available, and have it be interoperable across LMS systems.

Imagine being in a course where the reading assignments are being pulled from multiple publishers, and, when you click on a link, you are taken to a quiz on a testing site in Europe; or you launch a group project with your classmates in an online collaboration space; or launch a flight simulator. And each of these remote services communicate user interaction data back to the LMS that can be used to contribute to a grade. The learning designer finally has the flexibility to pick and choose the best content, and the best services available.

Perhaps the unintended consequence of the IMS LTI 1.1 specification promoted by the LMS vendors is that it actually fosters their own obsolescence.

The specification enables courses to access remote content and services. However, the LMS need not be the only point of entry to this content and services. The content and services are out in the cloud and accessible from other non-traditional learning spaces like portals, social network applications, smartphones, and tablets. Learning isn’t the exclusive purview of the LMS.

Learning can now happen wherever and whenever the learner needs it on the device they have at the moment they need to learn it. And now that the content and services are out in the cloud and much more readily accessible, the need for formalized courses is diminishing.

I am looking forward to seeing how this all shakes out. Now that learning designers have choices in what content and tools they use, I suspect we’ll start seeing some robust competition and innovations in cloud-based learning services. The benefactor here, of course, is the learner, who will now have access to the best tools and content that are available.
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Authored by Jeff Katzman, Founder and CLO at Xyleme, Inc.