I think we can agree that the learning management systems currently available, such as Blackboard, are no more than means of providing instructional content to students and receiving some feedback from them. In reality, they mimic classroom instruction at best. What they do not do is manage learning! It is a misnomer to call them learning management systems.

What is needed in the future is a system by which students can truly manage their learning. In broad terms this new system would provide

• requisite structure to guide the learner towards what s/he must learn according to his or her prior knowledge of a domain, and learning preferences, as well as
• desired dialog to accommodate the learner’s creative motivation.

This means allowing the learner to:

• Assess his/her learning preferences, and develop a learning profile as a guide to managing his/her study habits, metacognition and general academic experience that would lead to success

• Offer live and/or automated academic and instructional advising
• Provide a rich array of instructional information to dynamically adapt to the learner’s preferences, prior knowledge and learning objectives.
• Provide for the learner a rich environment for exploration
• Offer relevant environments for learner to develop new ideas, experiment with such ideas and transfer them to novel situations
• Provide supportive and corrective dynamic feedback to the learner, and
• Prompt the instructor to intervene at appropriate times.

It is time for learning management systems to stop being the conveyor of the one-size-fit-all system of education which may have been appropriate in the industrial era and allow learners to engage in the type of learning that they need in order to become competitive in the work place of the future.