Having gone through a number of Learning Management Systems (LMS), struggling with downtime, dated tools and lack of flexibility, Grace University has finally found a learning platform that is embraced equally by students, faculty and IT staff: “itslearning has given us the best of both worlds: A flexible set of teaching and communication tools in a stable, accessible environment”, says Director of Online Learning, Nathan Boeker.

Offering students a robust and user-friendly system is particularly important to Grace University as several of their focal programmes require students to complete coursework within an intercultural or off-campus setting. Faculty enjoy the ease with which they now can offer students versatile online learning activities. “itslearning has the tools we need to provide flexible, engaging coursework for online classes, hybrid, and face-to-face classes”, Nathan explains.

High goals

Because their previous LMS lacked the ease-of-use and richness of features that their users demanded, Grace set high goals for their learning technologies search committee. They knew they needed a system that could handle their growing programmes without over-extending the IT budget. And reducing downtime was a must. “But we were not going to skimp on features for the sake of reliability or scalability,” Nathan insists. “And the new platform had to be easy for instructors and students to use … or they wouldn’t!”

With itslearning the committee soon realised they had found what they needed – and more: “Not only did itslearning meet our initial goals of being light, hosted, and full-featured, but it surpassed our expectations by offering a fully-integrated ePortfolio system, automatic plagiarism checking, and several integration options.”

Effortless roll-out

Having switching between LMSs several times already, Grace faculty and administrators were leery about going through the process yet again. But according to Nathan, itslearning took the apprehension out of the process: “Our initial roll-out was effortless and much of the functionality and settings we needed were available right out of the box! itslearning was very helpful by providing hands-on training on our campus and has been available for every step of the way when we have technical questions.”

As a result, there is now a strong faculty wish to migrate to itslearning sooner rather than later. Full integration with the student management systems is planned for autumn 2010. From that point 100% of classes will also be hosted on itslearning.

At Grace University, administrators and faculty feel they have found a reliable partner in their learning platform provider: “If there is anything better than the itslearning platform, it’s the itslearning service! We don’t only feel like we’re buying a great Learning Management System, but we are also buying a great support team to guide us along.”