Lowering usage of LMS and going to alternative platforms

Brian Hoyt

I am wondering if other schools are exploring different options with regards to LMS due to changes caused by distance learning. We are a TYPK-8 school and we have found for us the LMS solution really lacking in the lower grades and using alternatives in upper grades. For grades 3-8 we are heavily relying upon Teams / OneNote Class Notebooks which is included in our Microsoft Licensing and very little is happening on class pages. For Grade 2 and down since we didn't have student accounts setup in the LMS we couldn't really use the platform for distribution and collection of student work. We are going to be implementing Seesaw to handle this for those younger students. Seesaw is comparatively inexpensive to the Blackbaud LMS and has many unique features. We even went so far as discussing dropping the LMS product but you can't if you use the SIS and we aren't ready to move away from that. On other mailing lists like ISED I am seeing many other Blackbaud schools saying similar things of supplementing the LMS with other tools.


Brian Hoyt 

Lauren Marcus Eisenberg

Following! Even before distant learning, our lower grades were using other platforms, such as Seesaw.

Megan Day

We've had to supplement the LMS with a number of other tools and LTI integrations. I've brought this up each year but haven't gotten much traction because of the tie to the SIS. However, this may be the turning point for us. Ideally we would have much more robust communication features with an LMS (messaging, notifications for assignments, better assignment feedback tools, and LMS that actually provides PD resources to teachers...etc.) Definitely curious to hear what other schools are doing/thinking of doing as well.