As part of our ongoing project to identify the next LMS for Wentworth, we’ve created a Next Generation Digital Learning Environment at Wentworth SharePoint site open to the entire Wentworth community. On this site you will find the original Request for Proposals (RFP) that was sent to vendors, the proposals submitted, a calendar of events that we’d like the community to attend, pages to provide feedback and comments, as well as the data that helped inform the RFP.

The data provided is a compilation of analyses done over the last few years looking at how faculty use our current LMS and how students interact with the LMS. In addition, we have conducted surveys and focus groups (open forums) where we have asked what the community thinks are useful and not so useful aspects of our current LMS. We’ve used this combined data set to help determine what the essential features of an LMS are and what features are pain points for the community and included them in the RFP.

If you look at the RFP, you’ll see the community’s needs reflected in the requirements that were specified to the vendors. The proposals are the vendors’ responses to those requirements and will be assessed, along with community comments, to choose Wentworth’s next LMS.

The most critical parts of the site are the events calendar and feedback pages. The current calendar events list the days the vendors will be on campus and we’ll add the specific times for demonstrations to different stakeholder groups. For the demos and open sessions, everyone is welcome to attend. We will be collecting feedback during and after the sessions so please attend what events you can and let us know what you think. After each session, we will be asking attendees to give a rating of the product demonstrated as compared to our current LMS (Blackboard Learn Managed Hosted). Rating against what we currently use rather than ranking all the products allows the community to provide feedback but does not require that they attend sessions for every vendor to provide valuable information.

After each session, we’ll be compiling the community’s comments and ratings and reporting them back using this same site.

Once the committee assesses the various products, we’ll share all the data used to arrive at the selection and reveal Wentworth’s Next Generation LMS.