http://www.infodiv.unimelb.edu.au/
telars/talmet/melbmonash/
media/LMSGovernanceFinalReport.pdf
Stephen’s already recommended it, but I’ll second that recommendation – this is an “interesting and well-informed” report and another one you should try to get in front of as many decision makers’ faces as possible. I’m really grateful to have read it, if only for the references to Paul Pangaro and M.C. Geoghegan that I am looking forward to following up.
It’s not meant as a technical paper so it can’t be faulted for not providing a solution to this:
“the trick for universities may not be to try to create the same spaces within the confines of the university computer network, but rather to make sure that members of the university are able to forge links between their university identity and their other online learning communities.”
Easier said than done.
I do think the section on “Reviewing the business case for LMS” could be strengthened, there’s some straw men there, but that’s nit picking. The biggest missing piece for me concerns acknowledging the key role in institutional learning of ‘credentialing’ – not to reduce it to that, but to acknowledge that in the nirvana of self-forming online learning communities and self-directed learners someone is going to have to start talking about the relationship between that learning and the powerful role of credentialling (and to be fair, this isn’t just the institutions of higher ed involved in this, it’s governments, accrediting bodies, professional organizations, etc.). If you don’t think it’s an issue though, I can point you to 1000 cabbies with medical and law degrees from other nations who would beg to differ. – SWL