The obligation of colleges to support a Course Management System

Information technology has certainly streamlined many processes, made campuses more "green" by eliminating paper forms, allowed instant communication for efficient business processes, and made it possible for those located far away from campus to participate in courses and entire degree programs. It has also ballooned a new line item in the budget to support these services. As college and universities depend more and more on a course management system for their online and hybrid courses (and programs), the digital infrastructure required to support this increased traffic on networks becomes the albatross around their proverbial neck in more ways than just one.

From a financial standpoint, unless an institution is already using on open source course management system (CMS) like Moodle or Sakai, paying for Blackboard or Desire2Learn licensing is enough to bust the budget, especially since Blackboard has purchased every competitor but Desire2Learn (D2L). Market competition is almost non-existent. True, those that are priced out of Blackboard can call up D2L and investigate the pricing options, however Blackboard has been so busy filing patent infringement lawsuits against D2L, pulling a good portion of D2L's profit into lawyers fees to defend the company, institutions should be worried about the company's viability and financial longevity.

But you cannot have a robust determination to put more courses and programs online without a course management system. At my institution, Michigan State University, the current CMS is Angel which was purchased by Blackboard in the spring of 2009. With an enrollment of well over 42,000 students, renewing a contract with Blackboard seems fiscally impossible. Where does that leave MSU and other institutions like it? Open source systems like Moodle or Sakai. So the choice becomes paying six-figure licensing fees to Blackboard or buying enough infrastructure (servers, storage) and hiring enough personal to implement an open source course management system. And re-train all support system personel. And provide training for faculty and graduate teaching assistants to migrate their courses over to a new system just as they have figured out the old system. Rock, meet hard place. However, in the current fiscal climate and considering the customer satisfaction one may or may not get with the giant course management system contract, dealing with those challenges and headaches might be the only path for colleges to meet their institutional obligation to support a course management system.