TieTgenSkolen odenSe buSineSS college

Elmelundsvej 10 5200 Odense VDenmark

Students3,951 students per year

Odense Business College is a Danish educational institution established in 1954 as a merger of 3 independent business col-leges in Odense. Today Odense Business College is a modern knowledge and competence centre that develops goal-ori-ented courses. The college con-sists of an administration and a division in Odense and Nyborg which offer a basic commercial program, a higher commercial

examination program and adult training courses.

Erik Schou, vice-principal, and Daniel Sigrist Christensen, consultant for pedagogic IT applica-tion, from Odense Business College have both been involved in the decision of implementing the new e-learning system within the organisation of the college.

challengePreviously, Odense Business College has used BlackBoard which was perceived at the college as a separate system to their SharePoint intranet. The SharePoint intranet is primarily used as an internal information system and website. The teachers are divided into groups based on their teaching expertise and every group has their own site with access to information and document sharing.

At one point in time the college did some experiments within a smaller group to use Share-Point as a learning platform. They wanted to test how to utilize SharePoint in pedagogic teaching. The idea was to have all applications running in the same solution. At Odense Business College, Daniel tried to create pages with wikis, document sharing and drop box to be used in the class room. Everything was built with SharePoint permissions and in standard SharePoint. It turned out to be a complicated and protracted process – a site could easily take up to 4 hours to create.

Odense Business College has used several different systems and some of them have been used simultaneously within the organisation. Erik and his colleagues needed to take a deci-sion about replacing their existing and insufficient solution – either an upgrade to the latest and expensive BlackBoard version or to find another solution.

Erik was determined to find a product which was convincing in functionality and had a benefi-cial price structure. Moreover, both Erik and Daniel was very interested in the opportunity of LMS integration to mobile services and run everything in the same application.

SoluTionIn the light of Odense Business College’s experience with previous LMS solutions and their own attempt to build a learning management website, for education on the existing Share-Point portal of the college, SharePoint LMS was chosen.

Erik says the reason for the choice of SharePoint LMS was the ability to have all their IT-

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SharepoinT lmSmaking learning accessible within organisations

“The flexibility is perceived as the greatest advantage of the product. Additionally, Odense Business Col-lege now has an integrated solution between their website, intranet and LMS”

- Daniel Sigrist Christensen, consultant for pedagogic IT ap-plication.

systems collected in one solution and have access to both intranet and LMS from the same portal with single sign in. In addition, SharePoint LMS provided all the features they needed and could not get in their existing BlackBoard version. The price, which was also an important factor, was very cost-competitive in comparison to other solutions.

SharePoint LMS was implemented both at the basic commercial program and the higher commercial examination program on the SharePoint server of Odense Business College. The implementation process within the two programs was completely different. At the higher commercial examination program SharePoint LMS was at first only used by a carefully select-ed group of teachers with special interest in IT. These passionate teachers had the possibility to test SharePoint LMS before the major organisational implementation, Daniel says about the implementation process.

With the basic commercial program a lot of time was spend on analysing and discussing the deployment of SharePoint LMS and at the same time comparing the solution to the Danish system Elevplan which was also used at the college. In this case the teachers were widely involved and the solution was implemented from bottom up.

Even though the deployment of SharePoint LMS was not intended to be forced on the teach-ers, the management of Odense Business College emphasises that it is crucial that teachers have the right qualifications to start using the system. Therefore workshops are offered at the college in connection with putting the system into operation. Furthermore, Erik created a separate LMS course for internal education and certification of the teachers – including both LMS and other subject areas relevant for the development of the teachers’ competences.

reSulTAt the time of writing Odense Business College is still in the start-up phase regarding Share-Point LMS, but they have already formed their own experiences. Overall, the college is very satisfied with the flexibility of SharePoint LMS. Daniel tells. Moreover, the flexibility is per-ceived as the greatest advantage of the product. Odense Business College now has an inte-grated solution between their website, intranet and LMS but without the difficulty from their own attempts to utilize standard SharePoint to support their learning environment.

The integration to the mobile services is, as the LMS, very flexible and can be tailored to the needs of the college, Daniel emphasizes. Other products are more closed and without the possibility to tailor the mobile applications. But while they at the college perceive the flexibil-ity as the greatest advantage of SharePoint LMS, Daniel believe that the product is also very complex as a result of the flexibility and SharePoint foundation.

Generally, Odense Business College has experienced plenty of goodwill from the teachers to use the new LMS even though the beginning of the year was chaotic because of the new LMS, new classes and a whole new academic year. Daniel reckons that it would have been different if the deployment of the LMS had been at a different time of the year. The teach-ers would have had more time to familiarize with the system and prepare the course pages before the beginning of the year. But Daniel believes that it would still be inevitable not to see some teachers being more resistant in using an LMS that is also a new system.

Erik and Daniel were aware of the fact that they moved from a well-tested and evaluated system to one of the latest system on the market. Their experience shows on the other hand that there are many possibilities in SharePoint LMS which solve the needs that BlackBoard Basic could not.

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shAREpOINt Lms - making learning accessible within organisations

SharepoinT lmSSharePoint LMS is a full blown learning management system that incorporates all the best features available to e-Learning today with a pedagogic user interface supported by the scal-ability of the Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server.

SharePoint LMS is a tool that makes learning simple and affordable. With SharePoint LMS you get new possibilities to structure your courses and deliver learning materials to your learners and at the same time you have access to tracking and reporting tools for efford-less evaulation of the individual learner.