Source: Leigh Blackall

“Your support in Technology,” shared the Human Resources Associate Superintendent in an email, “is the reason that we are able to realize these initiatives. Thanks so much for your help.” Of course, she was referring to the Clerical Assessment Battery (CAB), a screening program for new job applicants to the District. It’s implementation would save the Human Resources Department time in assessing clerical job applicants.

Development of the CAB module—using Adobe’s Captivate program—took 3 weeks and half dozen meetings with the Human Resources Department. The program was developed and deployed within our school district’s learning management system. Since deployment of the CAB, my district has partnered with PBS TeacherLine to license and re-deliver an electronic graphic organizer course. Teachers login into the learning management system—which we call ePath—and participate in a facilitated 100% online course. The course is taught through the use of a course management system; the system we use is the free, open source CMS known as Moodle.

When we announced the course, two days later, the course had 59 teachers registered and registration requests continued to pour in. The enthusiasm for online courses that don’t require a physical, face to face meeting is palpable in districts where their time is lacking.

Using NCLB Title 2, Part D funds, my district will be investing in InfoSource and PBS TeacherLine courses. The InfoSource provider provides teachers and administrators with access to ISTE National Education Technology Standards (NETS) aligned content. The benefit is that teachers can work their way through the content 100% online, checking in with a district facilitator only when they encounter problems. After completing an assessment, a feedback form on the workshop, they are granted a certificate for successful completion and earn professional learning hours. All of this is handled 100% online via the District’s Learning Management System.

School districts need to be able to provide and manage consistent professional learning opportunities that are scalable, platform independent (web-based), as well as allow for interface with your district’s data warehouse and other systems. When considering how to manage your district’s precious learning opportunities, you need to give thought to several questions:

1. Knowing that everyone needs to participate in professional learning, how do you currently manage that?
2. How are you going to help people understand the benefits of managing your district’s learning opportunities?
3. How will the learning management system you select help your end-users manage their own learning?
4. What online content can you find, or develop, that will meet the needs of your learning community?
5. How do you get started?

It is with that last question in mind that we will begin.

• Support for the creation of multiple professional learning paths, also known as a “learning paths,” that different positions can follow. Depending on the complexity of your organization, how wide an implementation you choose to make this, it should be straightforward to create learning paths for your staff. For new teachers, a learning path might include sexual harassment training, discipline training, lesson planning, information problem-solving strategies, and then a wide range of choices. For principals, the learning path might include the teacher options as well as how to assess the level of technology implementation (LOTI), STaR Chart, and getting along with your superintendent.

It is also important that the system allows staff to be a member of multiple learning paths based on there specific job requirements. A principal would be assigned the generic principal’s learning path whereas a new principal would be a member of this learning path as well as a new employee learning path established by Human Resources.

• Online registration and certificate tracking: At its heart, a LMS is a database that should allow online workshop registration, setting up of classes, tracking of student participation, as well as administration of classes and workshop content. It should be expected that workshop participants and facilitators are automatically contacted regarding the status of a particular workshop. Also, participants should be able to un-enroll from a workshop given time but prevent un-enrolling to foil attendance tracking.
• Report Generation: As a principal or department head, or even superintendent, getting an email outlining how many staff have completed a particular strand of training is critical to implementation of a new district initiative.

What online content can you find, or develop, that will meet the needs of your learning community?

In the first two years of implementation, my district was grateful for a comprehensive professional learning solution that could be shared with other district departments. However, eventually, I started to wonder, How can we provide 100%, anytime/anywhere learning opportunities to staff? Of course, the way to accomplish that is to purchase content. And, purchasing content can often be less expensive than developing your own.

Some essential elements of online content to consider:

• Content-Design: It is also important that a district’s workshop session facilitators be able to add content to the LMS. The more flexible an LMS is in allowing the addition of external content, the better. The LMS should also be forgiving if the content added isn’t necessarily SCORM compliant.

Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) makes it possible for online content providers to create and share their content modules with learning management systems. SCORM is the standard, although there are others. Find out more about SCORM at Source: Got SCORM?.

Some learning management systems provide access to custom curriculum development tools, while others require that you build your own and make these items SCORM compliant. A hidden cost of a learning management system implementation is the development of content.

If one considers the cost of developing content, you could easily see a $50,000 cost for development in a variety of areas, for example, Human Resources. Each department might want to invest in a staff member who would serve as an LMS content developer. This content developer would have to be familiar with high-end tools, be able to script video clips, and work with a variety of formats.

While some districts might want to move this into the domain of Instructional Technology, should the cost, time and effort involved be the responsibility of one department or multiple? What approach your district might choose to take, it is clear that having a content development team is important as we look to web-delivered options to meet the increased demand of training EVERY staff member. After visiting one school district, one IT director decided it would be worthwhile to develop her staff’s skills in how to develop online professional development modules.

One district in a large Texas city paid $50,000 to develop a module. The vendor worked with the district on a module for new staff entering the district. Since the bandwidth of the district isn’t robust enough, the content is saved to CD-ROM. The district pays $2 per user for content it helped develop but a vendor content development team put together.

The question that comes to mind is, Do you really want to spend $50,000 per module when you could invest the funding in your own staff? The home-grown solution is always best, at least, until the staff are offered a higher paying job in the district next door.

1. Establish an implementation timeline.
2. Integrate the learning management system with existing information systems, especially Human Resources.
3. Develop learning paths and match learners to their appropriate path.
4. Acquire, develop, and/or link to learning resources.
5. Select appropriate technologies to deliver learning.
6. Require accountability and incentive systems to ensure learning.
7. Create and manage the learning content.
8. Analyze the return on investment.

Learning management systems certainly offer a lot. But, is K-12 ready for them? What is the return on investment? In my district, the return on investment question goes before the School Board soon.

Although my district has about 54,000 students, 9000 employees, and will have to pay an annual cost of $47,000 for its learning management system, the cost is worth every penny. When you consider how much time is spent by countless staff working through the paperwork, it’s clear that schools are well-served by learning management systems.

School districts work hard to train their staff in multiple areas but may not know simple answers to questions such as the following: