A workshop was held on June 15 th , by the Distance Learning Centres Project, to introduce Learning Management Systems LMS and electronic course authoring tools to senior strategists and technical officers of domestic education providers. LMS are server-based software systems that enable distance education providers to administer courses and students over the Internet, and students to access courses and interact with tutors and fellow students in support of the learning process.
Course authoring tools are software packages that can be used to transfer course material electronic format. They often support interactive and graphical content and publishing in various formats for computer-based training i.
The workshop was intended to raise awareness of these systems as a potential way for education providers to deliver DE, and included hands-on sessions to demonstrate their ease of use. The workshop also aimed to test some specific LMSs and course authoring tools that had been identified, evaluated and installed on the DLCP server by the project before the workshop.
The evaluation is included in this report. Both are open source packages, free to download and use, widely used and supported. Two course authoring packages were also evaluated and included in workshop. The former, eXe, is a simple and easy-to-use package targeted at the course owners who might not be highly skilled in computing, whereas the sophisticated Lectora package is targeted at the supporting organisations PFnet and Youth First Computer Centre YFCC , who would be able to offer course creation as a service to the education providers.
In evaluating the workshop, participants reported that LMSs such as ATutor would be appropriate and helpful as tools to facilitate distance education. They reported that the LMS had much or all the functionality required, and furthermore might help address resourcing problems, such as distribution of course materials. However, further capacity building would be necessary.
