Unless the CMS has a very open API, a strong developer community, good feedback mechanisms for users (faculty, staff, students) to express their needs, and the willingness of the local institution to develop and maintain resources (staff, test beds, etc) for change, the days of one CMS to rule us all are numbered.

We need a CMS that has a core set of “stuff” we can all agree on – dropboxes, a core quiz system, grading system, etc., but that we also can seamlessly drop new tools into. For example, imagine being able to drop Twitter into ANGEL – so it doesn’t just work, but integrates with the core toolset in a way that doesn’t require any training to use.

That’s the goal we need to strive for. It means we have to advocate a complete rewrite for ANGEL, or drop ANGEL and go with a system that does what I listed above.

Now I’ve spent years (literally) of my life learning, using, and training others on ANGEL. For me to write this here should speak to the severity of the crisis I see looming on the horizon. We have a scant handful of years before the learning community at Penn State becomes so scattered in its use of online tools that we’ll be worse off than we were 15 years ago.