Excerpt:
What is it?
The LMS was once the undisputed center of the digital learning ecosystem. But on many campuses, the situation has changed such that the campus online learning environment might be better viewed as a continuum, with the LMS at one end and a student’s own collection of applications, tools, and websites at the other. In the space between these endpoints, institutions may offer other tools—locally hosted websites, personal domains for students or faculty, recommendations for tool choices and content management options, and web-hosting platforms. Meanwhile, at mobile app stores and on the web, students and faculty are faced with a constantly morphing public toolbox filled with apps that offer highly specialized content, mobile options, and new distribution models such as open educational resources and subscriptions. As a result, the campus digital model seems to be changing from a single, contained management system to a facilitation model that provides support for and coordination between a diverse set of resources and services. In addition, some institutions are enabling students to take control of their learning ecosystem by helping them construct a personal cyberinfrastructure where they select the tools they find to be the most comprehensible and effective for particular projects.