Results of Survey of Association Executives
Regarding Learning Management Systems

My report on the results of a small survey of association education executives about their use of learning management systems is accessible from this page (Is data integration the most important feature of learning management systems for associations?). If you responded to the survey, thank you for taking the time to help out. Although the response was small (only 16 associations), the results are still very interesting and I hope that you will find my report to be useful. Please feel free to quote from the report and use any information it contains, and please acknowledge the source.

One observation that I made that was not relevant to the report is that typical LCMS/LMSs can be used for much more than just giving courses and exams. Many of their functions can be used to support communities of practice and learning. I think that it is common for vendors to include a wide variety of communication tools in their software systems that could be used to support ongoing committee work and online seminars and symposia. For those who are not currently using an LCMS/LMS and are considering implementing some type of collaboration software, you might want to take a look at the LCMS/LMS selections.

I found the publicly available articles on the ASTD web magazine Learning Circuits to be particularly helpful. Although they are written from the perspective of corporate applications, many of the ideas can be easily extended to apply to associations.

If you want to be able to discuss many different technology issues related to distance education conducted by associations, please join the Distance Learning Coalition listserv to learn about upcoming meetings in Washington, DC.

Cyrelle Gerson
c_gerson@acs.org

April 19, 2004