An Open LMS: CourseKit

A while back I posted on Facebook that LMSs were prisons for content because they tended to keep content inaccessible and unavailable for quick easy access. Well now their is a new kind of LMS that uses a Facebook type interface to conduct academic business. It’s called CourseKit.

CourseKit instructor page

The concept is radical on two levels. One, it is a different look and feel to LMS systems and two, the customer is not the IT department of the university, its the individual faculty member. According to an article in Forbes called Will Coursekit Launch Up-End Blackboard?

Wharton dropout Joseph Cohen just launched Coursekit — the ultimate disrupter of academic course software, Blackboard (Providence Equity Partners bought it last month for $1.64 billion.) After all, Cohen plans to sell Coursekit to professors instead of letting university IT departments slow him down.

Savvy professors have been using blogs, wiki’s and even Facebook to manager courses outside of the LMS but there are limitations, lack of integration, difficulty with grade issues and keeping things private, CourseKit hopes to change all that.

I haven’t checked it out yet but an considering using it for a course I am teaching next spring. I’ll keep you posted.