The last few years I’ve designed and installed several Microsoft Learning Gateways for a variety of academic institutions such as New Brunswick Board of Education, Calgary Board of Education, Miami Dade County Schools to name a few. The gateway utilizes an academic based information architecture and which consist of SharePoint, Exchange, Class Server and LCS products.
Core Gateway Functionality
For each of the Portals I have noticed some core areas of intrerest to academic institutions which are as follows:
- Portal access – teachers, students, parents and admin staff have access.
- Curriculum mapping – whats being taught Lesson plans, tests, outcomes and measures.
- Delivery and learning – the framework in which cirriculum is delivered to the student.
- Tutoring – support for students.
- Teacher support – teacher support network, communities of practice.
- Communication and collaboration – discussions, eMail, communities of interest, chat, video conferencing.
- Tracking and reporting – management information for improving the portal and measuring user adoption.
- Search – ability to find content easily.
- Learning resources library – Learning object repository (Class Server).