Students, faculty and staff will all have a voice this fall, as Niagara College begins consultations as part of a comprehensive review of our Learning Management System (LMS). The process will bring the college community together to identify the digital learning priorities that will take NC into the future.
Our current LMS, Blackboard Learn Original, has been in use at Niagara College since 2004. Learning management systems like Blackboard are essential tools to support teaching and learning. At NC, our LMS is a critical hub for communication, content-sharing, assessment, and feedback with and among students, staff, and faculty.
Given the importance of the LMS review, we are looking forward to gathering input and insights from across the college community. External consultants have been hired to support the consultation process and representatives from across the college have been invited to contribute to the steering and advisory committees. The LMS Review team is committed to transparency and will provide regular updates via College communication channels and on our dedicated LMS Review website.
Town Hall on September 26 at 1:30 p.m.
We want to connect with students, faculty, and staff to understand your priorities for an LMS system. On September 26 at 1:30 p.m. the NC community is invited to participate in a virtual town hall meeting that will kick off the LMS review process, led by NC representatives and consultants from Mindwires. Additional details on accessing the town hall meeting will be distributed in the next few weeks.
These town hall meetings are only the start of our outreach. Surveys and focus groups will follow during the fall, and you can also share your feedback via the website. We want to hear from you about:
- What forms of teaching and learning should an updated LMS support?
- What existing barriers should a new system overcome?
- What features, functions, and capabilities are important to you – now and looking forward to the future?
Background
Niagara College’s current Blackboard license ends in 2024. We believe that now is the right time to discuss our digital learning needs and opportunities to select an LMS platform that will enable new opportunities for connection and Your engagement with the LMS review will allow us to better address the ongoing evolution of student learning needs, preferences, and identities. It will also enable us to modernize the important digital platform that supports our varied academic offerings. Your input will help us to assess the full breadth of teaching and learning needs at NC and select a system that will enable the innovative, applied, and community-engaged education for which NC is so well known.
The three stages of the project include:
Stage 1 – Seeking your input (early Fall 2022)
Stage 2 – Developing a Request for Proposal (RFP) (late Fall 2022)
Stage 3 – Evaluating, testing, and selecting an LMS (Winter to Spring 2023)
More information will be forthcoming, and additional details about the LMS review are available on our new website: niagaracollege.ca/lmsreview.
