LAMS

Draft

Definition

Learning Activity Management System (LAMS) is a learning design system (software).

Description

LAMS provides:

• a visual authoring interface to design and create learning sequences from a list of building blocks of individual or collective activities
• a monitoring tool through which teachers can track students' progress through an activity sequence.

According to a LAMS website, LAMS includes environments for user administration, student run-time delivery of sequences, teacher run-time monitoring of student sequences and, most importantly, teacher authoring/adaptation of sequences. LAMS is inspired by, and heavily based on, IMS Learning Design and EML. Originally, LAMS was not designed to be a reference implementation of either specification - however LAMS is expected to be IMS Learning Design conformant in the future.

According to Krann (2003), “The heart of the system is a visual editor that allows educators to choreograph a whole learning activity around a particular topic. By dragging and dropping acts like synchronous discussion (chat), web polls, students posting material and structured debates, a series of online lessons can be planned much like a conventional lesson. The player part of the system then allows a group of students to take part in all these activities, and presents the right tools at the right time, and divides the group into smaller groups, if that's what the teacher designed.”

The LAMS 2 environment

This article or section is currently under construction

In principle, someone is working on it and there should be a better version in a not so distant future.
If you want to modify this page, please discuss it with the person working on it (see the "history")

Authoring

Basically, an author has to do the following tasks:

• Assemble a learning sequence
• Assign these to groups (administrator must give him the rights)

Members and courses

This part is not obvious if you don't read the documentation.

Learning Areas

• LAMS is organized by "Groups". These are in fact areas where learning/teaching happens. You can consider them as "courses" for instance.
• Therefore, first thing to do as an administrator is to create groups

MyGroups -> Group Mgmt

Learning Groups

• These are Groups withing LAMS Groups (what I called learning areas)
• Within each "group" the admin must assign roles, at least a teacher who has the right to author and to assign users to a subgoup.

Evaluation

Masterman and Lee (2005:4) who ran an evaluation of LAMS 1.x with 34 participants in the UK reported the following findings:

i) LAMS is capable of supporting a range of pedagogical approaches, in that designers can select those activities that match their preferred style. However, the lack of support for images and graphics can be a hindrance to the design of appropriate learning tasks. The adoption of LAMS within an institution would almost certainly entail an increased workload for teachers, but with time and experience this load could be expected to lessen.

ii) LAMS appears neither to have compromised learning outcomes in comparison with the existing learning environment nor to have resulted in dramatic improvements in achievement. However, using LAMS to raise the level of learning outcomes was not a prime consideration for practitioners. Rather, they perceived its benefits to lie in increasing learners' motivation and in encouraging participation by more reticent students. Feedback obtained directly or indirectly from learners suggests that some appreciated the independence and freedom to work at their own pace, while others did not like the linearity of LAMS sequences or wanted more direct feedback on their progress.

iii) Several participants engaged in some form of reflective activity either while designing a LAMS sequence or afterwards. However, while they recognised the importance of sharing their practice with others, technical and cultural barriers need to be overcome.

DSchneider does not have his own opinion yet (I just installed it on 23:04, 6 December 2006 (MET)).

Installation tips

• See LAMS installation and configuration

(I created a separate page since this is of no interest to users)

Links

Software and downloads

LAMS is free cross-platform sortware. Installation of LAMS does need installation skills ! If you just want to play with LAMS we suggest getting a demo account with LAMS International. See LAMS installation and configuration.

• LAMS 2.0
  • Windows Installation + download help
  • Building LAMS. LAMS needs to be built on Unix systems
  • See also the LAMS development Wiki.

• Older LAMS 1.0x (free for Win, MacOS X and Linux, Source code in GPL
  • Requirements: Java SKD 1.4.2, MySQL

• LAMS is, will or may be integrated into various platforms such as Blackboard (commercial), Sakkai or Moodle. DSchneider does not know if LAMS 2 Beta already works with Moodle (LAMS 1.x does).

General links

• LAMS Foundation, includes manuals, downloads, etc. This site is slow (dec 2006.)

• LAMS Wiki (Technical discussion and development of the new version of LAMS (Learning Activity Management System and dwoload information)

• LAMS Community.org. Maybe the most useful site currently

• LAMS International, provides commercial services around LAMS.

• LAMS Development Wiki

References

• Dalziel, James, Implementing Learning Design: The Learning Activity Management System (LAMS), Macquarie E-learning Centre of Excellence (MELCOE), PDF

• Kraan Wilbert, (2003). Learning Design inspiration, CETIS article, HTML

• David Jennings (2005), Evaluation of Learning Activity Management Systems, HTML

• Liz Masterman, Stuart D. Lee (2005), Evaluation Of The Practitioner Trial Of Lams: Final Report, Learning Technologies Group, Oxford University Computing Services HTML