Critical Success Factor No.2: Align your LMS strategy with your Business Strategy

It is important to know that Information Technology is not a charm that automatically turns misfortunes of an organisation to better business results. Information Technolgy has no inherent value (Peppard and Ward, 2004).  Information Technology is only a component of a wider conglomeration of entities called Information System. A good start point for understaning the second csf being discussed in this article should be knowing the difference between IT and IS. I should emphasize here that knowing this difference should not be for mere academic recall; appreciating the difference is crucial for managers to begin seeing results out of an LMS investment!

Understanding the difference between IT and IS

Information Technology refers to "all the hardware and software that a firm needs to use in order to achieve its business objectives" (Laudon and Laudon, 2014). Thus Moodle, Blackboard or Astria, together with the keyboard, monitor and mouse used to interact with them belong to the category of Information Technology. They are simply equipment or tools for processing and managing information. The information could be lecture notes, student details, courses, etcetera.

Information Systems, notes Laudon and Laudon (2014), are more complex. Here is a good description of what an Information System is: "An information system consists of people (actors), information (contents), and technology (means), linked together by a process directed towards a purpose" (Luukkonen et al., 2013). An information system consists of components - people, procedures, equipment and business processes - that are carefully planned to work together inorder to achieve a purpose. "Purpose", therefore, comes first before a need for Information Technology or an Information System. Purpose is what should create the need for components of an IS. The desire to achieve "purpose" in an efficient way is what should inspire a carefully planned set of relatonships or interconnections between various components that make up an Information System. This was not the case in the early 2000s when there was a 'dot com' explosion - every company wanted to have a website because every other company was going online! The result - many companies invested in owning websites but most of which were inactive! That is still the case in Zambia. Many companies have inactive websites displaying oudated information and listing email addresses or phone numbers which will never respond to a query of a visitor. Often website visitors have to end up visiting the physical premise of a company to get feedback to a query that should have been  attended to online  via email or a phone conversation. Such a situation is a  symptom of an IS (a website in this case) having been implemented without being inspired by, or being aligned to, the purpose or business goals of a firm. How about a Learning Management System of a college, what would be the sympotms of non-alignment with training objectives of a college?

Symptoms of non-alignment

Are you at a college or university which has a Learning Management System (such as Moodle, Blackboard, or Astria) but yet are experiencing a lot of challenges in using the Learning Management System? Are these some of the challenges being experienced:

• The e-learning system rarely has up-to-date learning materials.

• The system is rarely used to send announcements to students or members of satff.

• You are not aware of any user-policy which you were supposed to sign-up before being given access to the system.

• There is rarely a person available to assist you with technical challenges you may face whilst using the system.

• There is no policy that compels all lectures and students to always use the system: some lecturers prefer to use it and others do not use it at all (those who do not use the LMS  distribute printed notes.

All the above are indications that an LMS was implemented without understanding the business need it was supposed to respond to. That amounts to a huge loss for the organisation that implemented the system.

What follows is a simple guide for ensuring that your LMS is aligned to the training objectives of your college.

Aligning a Learning Management System with Business Objectives

If you are a college offering Distance Learning and would like to implement an e-learning (Learning Management) system, the following list should help you ensure that your LMS will be aligned to your objectives and hence enjoy the benefits of having an LMS:

1. Understand that your core business objective as a Distance Learning provider should be to offer value for money that a student pays. Your purpose should never end with receiving the hard-eaned cash of a student. The student pays that money not because they love your college or want to assist you; that money is being exchanged for the value you promise them.

2. Clearly state the value that you wish to promise your prospective student. Here is an example:

At ABC college our distance learner should be able to:

a) Access learning materials from whereever they may be.

b) Attempt tests, assignments, and other forms of assessments from wherever they may be.

c) Ask and receive prompt reply to any question on notes they are reading.

d) Enjoy their distance learning through visual illustrations of topics covered in notes.

e) Submit an academic or administrative querry and be promptly responded to.

f) Believe in a system that ensures or gurantees that lecturers will perform their duties of attending to them.

3. Clealry state how the above value can be delivered to a student, in exchange for his money. Here is an example of how ABC College can accomplish this:

a) Install a Moodle Learning Management System. Moodle is free. A college can engage an IT expert to perform the installation.

b) Ensure that before a residential school starts, a deliberate plan, with enforcable penalties, is in place to ensure lecturers carefully prepare and upload quality-assured:

• Notes (uniform format and structure)

• Assignments

• Online tests

c) Lecturers have two timetables - one to be used during residential school, and another one for online engagements with students during the post-residential periods. There should be scheduled times for online discussions, and day and time for students to consult with their lecturer. All these activities should be monitored by an administrator to ensure that all lecturers are available to students.

d) Within a DL department there should be a role of  a person checking to ensure all lecture notes posted onto the LMS:

• Contain Visual aids (video links, gaming tools, etc).

• Are not merely copied and pasted from other sources on the Internet. A distance learner needs quality-assured notes which have been sufficiently edited to ensure that they are easy to read and understand and meet TEVETA stands of a Distance Learning Module. 

e) Ensure that there is a person assigned the role of responding to all academic queries. Queries may range from asking about exam requirements to when results will be published. A Distance Learner should never be left to search out this information on their own. They should trust that your system is a great repository of information.

f) Develope a policy and operating procedures that will guide every facilitator (lecturers, Moodle administrator, DL Head of Department) in their duties. The policy should stipulate penalties for any abrogations.

Are you able to see how items listed in (3) above align with objectives in (2)? What is important to know in all this is that colleges often decide to invest in implementing an LMS inorder to be able to manage Distance Learning. However, it is important to be aware of the fact that technology can only support business objectives; it can never guarantee success on its own. So, never implement an LMS when you are not exactly sure of what the system will be used for. Without a clear understanding of how a technological solution will support your business processes, loss and failure becomes inevitable. In the words of Peppard and Ward (2004), "The inability of organisations to realise value from IS/IT investments is, in part, due to lack of alignment between business and IS/IT strategies" (p.44). 

References

Laudon, C.K. and Laudon, J.P. (2014). Management Information Systems. Boston: Pearson

Luukkonen, I., Toivanen, M., Mursu, A., Suranto, K., & Korpela, M.(2013). 

Researching an Activity-Driven Approach to Information Systems Development. Handbook of Research on ICTS  and Management Systems for improving Efficiency in Healthcare and Social Care. Retrieved from https://www.igi-global.com/book/handbook-research-icts-management-systems/72374

Ward, J. and Peppard (2002). Strategic Planning for Information Systems. 3rd Ed. USA: Wiley

Ward, J. and Peppard (2004). 'Beyond strategic information systems: Towards an IS capability'. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems. 13, pp.167-194