Technologies Reach Across Campus, State—and World "As collaboration technologies advance and as software companies release new collaborative products, innovative schools will continue to take advantage, often in surprising ways. Because working together is so innate to how people teach and learn, collaboration on campus sometimes takes place without much notice."
Comment: Part of my resistance to large LMS implementations is the structured, one way flow of information (and the fact that they are largely tools intended to help educators organize learners and learning content). For the last several years, the "fringe tools" of blogs, wikis, and other collaborative tools reveal a more learner-friendly approach to learning. Given an LMS and a blog, I would favor a blog as a better tool for dialogue and learning. LMS vendors are starting to understand the need for collaborative tools, and are offering options for dialogue - from synchronous tools to shared work spaces. Only problem is that the instructor still largely controls/creates the dialogue space. Learning is more serendipitous and chaotic. Give learners a voice and a space to explore, and they'll always exceed canned learning objectives.