Innovation in LMS: Software-as-a-Service

Yesterday, we continued highlighting excerpts of Khalil Yazdi's whitepaper, Innovation in LMS: Underlying Economic Drivers--Motivating a New Model for the Provisioning of Course, Teaching and Learning Management Software Systems, and explored Yazdi's examination of how the Cloud (cloud computing, specifically) changes not only the traditional IT delivery model, but raises campus technology leaders' expectations in regard to LMS scalability and flexibility and users' subsequent expectations of LMS availability, access and "speed."

Today, we're highlighting how Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), a variant of an externally-hosted solution that separates the middleware services from the business application layer within the traditional IT infrastructure, standardizes the services and then permits institutions to leverage best-of-breed solutions that adhere to interoperability standards that deliver direct and diverse support for unique business functions.

As we continue exploring Yazdi's arguments, let us know how you think LMS delivery is evolving, and what you'd like to see from this wave of LMS innovation. Feel free to discuss in the comments below.

Innovation in LMS: Software-as-a-Service

SaaS is a variant of an externally hosted solution that changes the way in which course and learning management systems are supported. It assumes that core infrastructure and middleware services are standardized and managed separately from the business application through relatively simple technical integration. The institution retains responsibility for middleware (essential services like access and data management). The SaaS vendor is responsible for the application and supporting infrastructure to ensure reliability, availability and security. The institution is generally indifferent as to how the software application or infrastructure is maintained– beyond some relatively simple requirements relative to authentication and data management and replication.

Because the vendor is relieved of the responsibility for access systems and long-term data management, there is no compelling need for the application to reside within the span of control of institutional IT.

With comprehensive interoperability standards, SaaS provisioning allows the vendor to focus on the business processes and logic where it has unique expertise. SaaS providers must work to “very large” scale economies and, to be competitive, meet the technical, security and availability requirements at the highest levels. As such, they will meet any institutional requirements in these areas as part of their capital investment costs (that are recovered over time and across their entire client base). This also means that pricing of services is based on usage, user activity levels and outcomes rather than the sizing of systems and other core infrastructure needs. While this is not currently the case for all SaaS based LMS offerings, it is a natural direction for such offerings to take.

Ideally, SaaS permits institutions to leverage best-of-breed solutions that adhere to interoperability standards to deliver direct and diverse support for unique business functions. This allows for the possibility that multiple course, teaching and learning solutions be used in an institution – which is something that happens quite frequently already through “shadow” solutions without integration or technical interoperability. LMS “selection” can then occur at the discipline and individual faculty level, based on pedagogical “fit” and/or feature sets that uniquely support the needs of a particular academic program. A consistent user interface/ experience for multiple-vendor solutions can be obtained by embedding LMS features within a standardized portal environment that also manages identity, role-based authorizations and content. SaaS solutions hold the potential to enable educators, learners and instructional designers to develop unique mash-ups of services from multiple sources. In addition to supporting diverse complex use cases and pedagogical needs, faculty will enjoy a greater capacity for agility and responsiveness in the face of new pedagogical developments within their respective disciplines.