[T.e.l.l. March] Flip It Good! Flipping the LMS with an Open and Collaborative Platform

Do you have unmet pedagogical goals due to the constraints of your current LMS? Do you want to have a better experience for your students and yourself? In preparing his Fall 2015 CMPT-363 (User Interface Design) course at Simon Fraser University, instructor and interaction designer Paul Hibbitts faced these same challenges. His solution was to ‘flip the LMS’ by designing and developing an alternative front-end to the institutional LMS Canvas (http://paulhibbitts.net/cmpt-363-153/).  In this approach, the LMS was used only for elements it was best suited for (i.e. student records, grades, etc.) with all other elements handled by an open extensible platform completely under his control. Based on the positive feedback of his students and his own experience, he decided to create an open source course companion built with the no database CMS (Content Management System) Grav to help other Web-savvy instructors get started in flipping their LMS with an open and collaborative platform.

Paul is a university educator as well as a practitioner and advocate of people-centered design. For over 20 years he has delivered successful strategies and design solutions through creating, leading and training for organizations such as SAP BusinessObjects, The Canadian Real Estate Association and The University of British Columbia. Leveraging this professional user experience design skill set with his extensive instructional background, Paul thrives on the challenges of learner experience design for today‘s multi-device world of connected learners.