Valdez Teresa Learning Content Management Systems: What Are They For?

While reading these articles and trying to understand the differences between the CMS, LMS, and LCMS, I finally had a sort of epiphany to what the Learning Management System was. I was reminded of my time as an undergrad, when the Internet was in its infancy (or at least adolescence) and the only online content we had were e-mails and list-servs. I thought specifically of certain professors who must have spent an awful lot of time researching and finding information that was specific to what they were teaching. I majored in Radio-TV-Film production, and I wonder how much has changed since then. My professors were fantastic and fascinating people and often they couldn't find material for their courses that was specific enough to their own subject, and several professors wrote the texts for the courses themselves. Sometimes, however, we were forced to buy several textbooks for one course and read only a chapter or two here and there. This could get to be pretty expensive, but one thing I dreaded more than this was photocopied course packets. Professors would assemble various articles and chapters from books into one spiral bound packet for the course, and although they probably saw this as a less expensive option than forcing students to purchase dozens of books, I hated those things. The photocopies had no color and were often hard to read so I missed out on a lot of readings.

Now I can imagine professors collecting information online, I wonder if the copy places that made those course packets are still in business. With an LCMS, they could have all of their favorite articles or media pieces available to change at any time. They could customize for undergraduate or graduate courses. I see the LCMS as sort of an online course packet, but way better because not only can it be customized for a course, it can be customized for a particular student. For example, if I was back in one of my film history classes watching Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, my LCMS might have articles written about the film, commentary and interviews by Alfred Hitchcock or other filmmakers and critics, and clips put together by my professor illustrating examples from the film. I could even choose which type of delivery method I preferred. Then my professor, who also teaches a class on cinematography, could reuse some of the RLOs for that class without having to photocopy a whole new course packet. Wow.