Ten features of Learning Management Systems that I feel are of utmost importance to K-8 teachers are described below. As stated in the article, for LMSs to be effective they need to focus on improving the opportunities for learning while lessening the rigors of managing courses and classes, and by making the development of activities and resources more intuitive. To appeal to more K-8 teachers LMSs must include, or improve upon these features:
Longevity - having had experience with more than one piece of "critical" software go belly-up on me after having invested considerable time learning and designing lessons around it, I see this as being very important to the selection of a LMS for K-8.
Cost Structure - the frugal environment that is elementary education will never be able to support expensive, bloated, and administrative heavy LMSs. Recurring costs associated with renewals of contracts and other costly "required updates" will doom many LMSs from even entering the elementary education market.
Integrated Administrative Features: One major strength of LMSs are their ability to record, track, and report student achievement across time and courses. In the K-12 public education market, there is a critical need for tracking software to be compatible with existing databases so that information can be reported accurately to state agencies.
User Friendly Access - Teachers, administrators, and students must be able to use the system after a modest investment in training. Training materials must be available that are consistent with district materials as well and must be platform (OS) neutral.
Easy Integration of Existing Content - This is likely a given with most LMSs, but if teachers find it difficult or impossible to port their existing lessons, activities, and media files into an LMS, it will lead to widespread and costly failure.
Test Development and Scoring - Generating assessments is a critically necessary feature of an LMS. Providing for multiple measures of knowledge and the ability to properly assess students on course material is vital to widespread success and acceptance of any LMS. Options for easy grading and recording of grades in a standard format is also very important.
Sharing of Materials Between Courses - K-8 teachers love to share materials and if implemented correctly, this could be an important selling point for any LMS looking to enter the elementary education market. The ability to take an entire proven lesson, loaded with content and activities, and easily pass it on to a colleague would be wonderful.
Student Feedback - Every student deserves feedback at all levels of learning and K-8 students need it quickly and repeatedly. LMSs that can provide multiple opportunities for feedback from peers and teachers will succeed.
Ease of Deployment - On the technical side, K-8 schools need an LMS that "just works" right out of the box. If it means installing it on a local server, then tech support must be efficient and timely. If installed and hosted on the Internet, uptime must be near 100% as teachers like to develop and modify content well after normal school hours.
Support for Current and Up and Coming Media - Getting content into a management system cannot be a difficult challenge whereby instructors must spend time converting files of one type into another. Support for web standards is an obvious choice, but LMSs must also look to the future to insure the continued support and availability of content-rich media.