IMS Global: How would you rate the effectiveness of CMSs today?

MS: There are different ways to measure it. One is the acceptance of the quality of online education. When I started here more than eight years ago, quality was the number one question, i.e., can online education effectively deliver the education? I think over the years, we've seen significant acceptance and adoption of it, so quality in online education is no longer an issue.

Also, I think there is real promise for the type of data measurement I referenced above with our Learning Outcome Manager to bring more accountability to education at large, not just online education. Data is a powerful tool to dramatically impact instructional design and strategies, thus driving student learning outcomes. It's a way for us to do primary research into key drivers of student success. For so long, the primary research was asking students what they thought. That's critical, but we also need to be able to connect that with what students are actually doing. Those two worlds coming together is a huge opportunity for all of us, not just for course management system vendors, but as an industry and what we owe to our students and to the economics of the entire country. I think we're doing well, but I think we can do even better, and from an eCollege perspective, I don't think that's too far around the bend.

IMS Global: What do you predict for the future of online learning and course management systems? What changes can we expect?

MS: Before, there was always a fear that technology in education was going to make teaching less personal. But I believe that now more than ever, the opposite is true. You can allow instruction to go to a much more personal level because your teacher really understands what you as an individual are doing, how you're interfacing with the content, how you're interacting with the rest of the students, as opposed to students getting lost in a class of 200 kids in a giant lecture hall. And that personalization of the educational experience is something that we all know can drive success. And that is exciting as well.

IMS Global: We're increasingly seeing refuted the old argument that online learning doesn't offer the same quality learning experience as the traditional classroom experience. Does the information eCollege is gathering support that theory?

MS: It's funny, because the question really is, how can you really do a comparison to on-campus learning? And I don't find analogous research in the on-campus environment. It's just not possible because you cannot assess it the same way. You can't assess interaction. You can't assess learning outcomes or participation at the level of granularity and depth that you can online.