This article comes from Chief Learning Officer.
http://www.clomedia.com/content/templates/clo_article.asp?articleid=881&zoneid=71
What I find interesting and right on the dot is this quote:
"The Swiss Army Knife has a reputation as a handy tool, a multi-functional device that can perform a variety of tasks in a pinch. Return from lunch with a nagging impediment lodged between your teeth? Break out the plastic toothpick. Cooking up some baked beans at a campsite? Use the can opener. Receive a FedEx at your front door? Open it with the blade.
When presented with industrial-strength tasks, however, there are much more appropriate tools. Dental floss, for example, is a much better solution for dental hygiene than a plastic toothpick, and is used by millions as part of a daily cleaning ritual. Counter-mounted can openers yield much better results than handheld devices, and can be found within the kitchens of restaurants. Rubber-gripped box cutters are infinitely more effective at slicing packing tape than two-inch blades, and are used by loading dock staff at department stores everywhere."
I hope this prompts you to think about the way that you use and choose tools for your university. Even though we have CMSs and LCMs at our beck and call, are they the right tool for the job? When do we, both as individuals and as universities, need to start looking beyond what is at hand and start looking at what is handy?
The implications that weigh this decision down are support, reliability, flexibility, scalability and just how many programs do we have to run though before we find the right one? (the answer to that, of course, is that we will never find the right program because we will always find some thing that is a bit righter.
