The Future of LMS Platforms: What Will Be the Challenges, Roles and Opportunities for Decades to Come?

Abstract

The perception of learning management systems (LMS) by academic staff including teachers, tutors, administrative staff and students before and after the Corona pandemic cannot be compared. Almost all educational institutions worldwide have extended and improved their systems during this time. Many features, functions as well as connections to other systems have been developed. Learning management systems (such as Moodle, Canvas, Blackboard etc.) became more and more central part of the organizations’ infrastructures. The question is now, will these changes be sustainable? Will the developments meet the needs of future academic institutions as well as its teaching and learning demands? This paper will discuss the future of learning management systems by opening up the discussion towards its roles, challenges, and opportunities for the next decades. It will highlight the recent influence of more hybrid teaching and learning settings and will point out the need for more flexibility for integrating new digitalized resourced and activities of the future that hopefully will enable a new level of engagement in digital learning and teaching. Moreover, future LMS will also be influenced to a larger extent by developments of other research fields such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, big data etc. Aspects of LMS systems such as interactivity, usability, scalability, connectivity, user-centered support for collaboration as well as communication will be more significant, but to which extent? This paper will discuss these issues and will try to give also practical insights based on experiences by an expert involved in the development and integrations of learning management systems for many years.