faculty satisfaction:
In 2001, the Centre for Distance Education at Athabasca University (AU) in Canada adopted a course materials approach that was, at that time, fairly unique. We entered each of our course pages into a "blogging" database (provided by www.blogger.com), so that faculty members who lacked programming skills could update the materials themselves via their browsers.

The rapid rise of OS software was already providing efficient alternatives to content management. In late 2003, the Center for Distance Education began exploring an open source (OS) alternative to Blogger. The OS software Plone was chosen to replace the blogging method since materials could be entered into the system more rapidly, and using a standard look and feel. As with the earlier 'blogger' solution, faculty members would then submit their changes to a web editor for checking before online publication.

The Plone application is not a full-fledged learning management system (LMS), but was deliberately selected owing to its straightforward focus on course materials updating. We expect to select a more complete OS package for our learning management process in the coming year, as faculty members become used to this intermediate approach. The "diffusion of innovation" strategy is being designed so as not to overwhelm faculty with too many options and features at once.