Thinking about the "Concept to Register" Process of Curriculum & Course Development
One of the most strategic processes for us at Relay is taking a conceptual idea for a course (what we call a "module") and developing it into something ready to be taught and available for student enrollment. Nearly all of our modules have an on-line and "off-line" (i.e., in person, taught at our local campus in NYC, Newark, New Orleans, etc.) component given our hybrid educational model. As such, development of a new course must consider the material presented on-line and that which will be taught live by our professors. It's a complex process with multiple reviewers, checkpoints, edits, and content types. Presently we run much of this business process through a series of largely manual steps in Word templates and e-mail. That's going to change soon as we embark on a new project, internally code-named "Bolt", the goals of which are to:
Digitize and automate our curriculum development and release process. Minimize the need to manually post and upload finished content to our LMS (the "CP" for "Course Platform", built on Moodle originally, though largely now home-grown code developed in PHP and Symfony 2)
Simplify, stream-line, and optimize the curriculum development process - eliminate redundant and non-value-adding steps
Make this project the first step in implementing an overall content management strategy and platform for the school that will both support other systems such as our public web site and integrate with existing systems such as our Online Video Library (the Relay "OVL")
A key part of this project is the"buy vs. build" decision, which we're undertaking now, although that's really more like:
To what degree should we continue to build our off our home-grown LMS ("CP") which already includes some basic editing functionality?
To what degree are there open source frameworks we can utilize (Drupal 8 looks nice given the role of Symfony 2 within it, given we are a "Symfony shop")
To what degree can we partner with other institutions working on this problem?
Are there portions we need to buy/license?
Another complexity is that we anticipate living in a "multi-LMS" world where we'll want to create content for use in our own LMS ("CP") as well as on platforms like Coursera or EdX. We recently did our first MOOC on Coursera and I expect this will be the first of a series we'll be doing. We'll want to be able to "write once, and publish anywhere" when it comes to our course (module) material. On this, we're excited about developments towards common standard(s) that create standards (such as Common Cartridge) around course taxonomy and hence promote course portability across LMS platforms.
What Content Management Systems are you using? What ones do you like? Have you seen a complex editorial process tackled particularly well, whether it be via a well-known CMS like Drupal or home grown? What are your thoughts on standards that facilitate course portability? [-RFU]