I have worked with learning applications and Learning Management Systems for the majority of my career. First I worked on an in-house LMS, called OLT that was developed, enhanced and maintained by QUT. It was a great experience - there is nothing like being able to access every bit of code and make the enhancements/customisations that your users require. When the transition was finally made to Blackboard, as a Developer I found it hard to work within its extension framework (Building blocks).  The mindset was different - you could plug in tools buts not interact with other tools. The only way to change terminology was via the language pack. Simple things like adding a field to a form were just not possible. My impression was that you had to adapt your institution to the LMS. …and this lead to me having a tainted view of commercial software and a general view that off-the-shelf can’t be customizable.

I have since moved on - still in edu land, but away from the LMS. I now have an opportunity to learn and implement Microsoft Dynamics CRM. I have spent the last few days reading and experimenting with the software. It has been a big eye opener for me. Dynamics CRM from the ground up has been built to be customised. The business world is not content to adapt their process to off-the-shelf software! I can’t help but think that learning management systems would be much more useful (educationally sound), if they allowed the 11 ways that Dynamics CRM can be customised. 11 is not enough, but its like 11 more than the LMS allows today!

…. and fingers crossed that Dynamics CRM will one day soon run in FireFox. So I guess thats 1 thing Dynamics CRM can learn from the LMS.