Wyoming to build a statewide K-20 learning management system

Hoping to take full advantage of Wyoming’s recent school connectivity gains and smooth some of the disjointedness between K-12 and post-secondary education, the Wyoming Department of Education is building a K-20 statewide learning management system (LMS).

A statewide LMS would allow education institutions across the state to share resources and customize each student’s learning experience, Laurel Ballard, supervisor of the student and teacher resources team at the state’s education department, told EdScoop TV in a recent interview.

“We are definitely looking for cost savings, but it’s much bigger than that,” Ballard said during a recent gathering of the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA). “We really are looking at, ‘How do we streamline and align our K-20 education?’”

The education department has selected Canvas, the popular LMS from Instructure, as Wyoming’s statewide learning management system.

Department officials hope that a statewide LMS will encourage educators to integrate open educational resources in their lessons, Ballard said. That will help Wyoming move toward its larger missions of personalizing instruction for each student and reducing the cost of curriculum materials.

We want to “really be able to take curriculum materials that fit the needs and the contexts of [our] different districts and build upon those,” Ballard said.

Beyond the statewide LMS, Ballard said personalized learning and interoperability will be top of mind for her in the year ahead.

“There’s so many different types of systems out there that help and support student achievement and student learning,” she said. “We really want to find ways to be able to connect these systems so that it’s easy for students and educators to be able to access and use [them].”